This dissertation studies Chilean communists’ public and private lives. It examines the experience of being a communist and the Communist Party of Chile’s efforts to shape that experience, both in the street and at home. To what extent did communists follow party principles regarding public and private life? To what extent did communism succeed in challenging the public-private divide so dear to liberalism? These are the questions I seek to answer in this dissertation. I argue that communism was lived quite intensely, but that it would be an exaggeration to claim that most party members lived and breathed communism. Communists lived a bifurcated life: one life lived to the fullest in the public sphere and another life lived less intensely at home. This dissertation provides a detailed portrait of communist men and their relations, both at home and in the street, in order to understand how they came to inhabit and expand the Chilean political sphere. Communist ideology and activism helped men reaffirm their masculine sense of self and claim a space in the public arena, but self-sovereignty came at the cost of family life. Communism strengthened the gendered public-private divide by pulling men from their homes and imbuing them with a strong sense of mission. Communist men’s intense involvement in public affairs was to the detriment of their wives, who ended up confined to the domestic realm. Notwithstanding communist discourse, the practices fostered by the party led communist men to think of public and private as separate spheres.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T19:30:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Elisa de Campos Borges.pdf: 1412193 bytes, checksum: fd072ab9f580785ade3a76850fa6a1fa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-10-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This work have as purpose to know, to comprehend and to attend the effort for the introduction of the project the chilean way to socialism idealized by the Communist Party of Chile. This project has purposed the passage from chilean capitalist regime to socialism based on the maintance of the establishment, without insurrections or armed conflicts. Such formulation had a great repercussion in the political project of the Popular Unity, wich had conducted Salvador Allende to Presidency of the Republic in 1970. To accomplish this research it was made use of a bibliography as source about the Popular Unity and about the subject of our research, many documents from the Communist Party, and personal witness by the same way, which constitutes oral source for the studies in History. In the Introduction, we had made a characterization from the Communist Party and from the original project of this research, that will be separated into the first and the second chapters, such as a chilean political and economical contextualization. In Chapter I we had upraised some arguments occurred about the peaceful way to socialism. We had tried even to identify the political development of the Comunist Party along it s policy of alliances and it s fundaments in several presidential elections. In Chapter II we looked forward to reflect how the mentioned questions from the past Chapter will influence the formulation of The Chilean Revolution, it s repercussions among the left-side parties and the for the Popular Unity consolidation to face the 1970´s elections. In Chapter III then we looked forward to analyze, from the Communist Party documents written between 1970 and 1973, the political behavior of the Party in the Alludes government quotidian / Este trabalho tem como proposta conhecer, compreender e acompanhar o esforço para a implantação do projeto via chilena ao socialismo , idealizado pelo Partido Comunista do Chile. Este projeto propunha a passagem do regime capitalista chileno para o socialista a partir da manutenção da institucionalidade, sem insurreições ou luta armada. Essa formulação teve uma grande repercussão no projeto político da Unidade Popular que levou à Presidência da República Salvador Allende em 1970. Para realizar essa pesquisa foram utilizadas como fonte uma bibliografia sobre a Unidade Popular e sobre o nosso objeto de pesquisa, diversos documentos do PC, assim como depoimentos pessoais que se constituem fonte oral para estudos da História. Na introdução, realizamos uma caracterização do PC e do projeto que se desdobrará no primeiro e segundo capítulo, assim como uma contextualização do sistema econômico e político chileno. No Capítulo I levantamos algumas discussões realizadas sobre a via pacífica ao socialismo. Também procuramos identificar o desenvolvimento político do Partido Comunista através da sua política de alianças e seus fundamentos em diversas eleições presidenciais. Procuramos no Capítulo II refletir como as questões apontadas no capítulo anterior vão influenciar na formulação da Revolução Chilena, sua repercussão entre os partidos de esquerda e a consolidação da Unidade Popular para disputar as eleições de 1970. No Capítulo III procuramos então, analisar a partir dos documentos partidários do PC escrito entre 1970 e 1973, o comportamento político desse partido no cotidiano do governo Allende