Claims, negotiations and discursive strategies. Women´s petitions during the independence, Chile 1810-1832

Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine the use of petitions as a discursive resource employed by women to obtain the benefits they demanded in the context of Chilean independence and the early republican decades. First of all, it seeks to identify those petitions that reflect the economic, social, and family difficulties faced by women during this political context. Secondly, it aims to analyze the discursive strategies implemented by them to persuade the competent authorities.
Women devised strategic discourses in their negotiations with authorities. On one hand, they used the political languages of the period to frame their demands within a legitimate political context, especially when their family and daily lives were affected by the consequences of independence. On the other hand, they deployed a gender narrative that positioned them as mothers and wives defending the subsistence of the family unit.
This study demonstrates that petitions were central to the feminization of the public sphere during independence, showing how women emerged as active agents of political discourse, incorporating practical and symbolic ideas of the period, whether adhering to or rejecting national political projects according to their aspirations, and how their claims represented a significant form of female protagonism and a broader notion of citizenship based on their own self-representation of feminine duty.
The methodology is based on the analysis of a documentary corpus composed of 467 petitions extracted from the “Ministerio de Hacienda”, the “Ministerio del interior”, and the “contaduría mayor” corresponding to the period 1810–1832.