LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 202, Vol. 42 No. 3, May 2015, 52–72 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X15570884 © 2015 Latin American Perspectives 52 Irreconcilable Differences Political Culture and Gender Violence during the Chilean Transition to Democracy by Hillary Hiner and María José Azócar The politics of national reconciliation during the transitional period of the 1990s in Chile constructed a hegemonic framework that affected discourses in other domains in multilayered ways. In order to achieve consensus among its various factions, the Concertación used “reconciliation” discourse to portray the nation as a family, and poten- tially divisive issues were framed in the most apolitical, ahistorical, and technical way. In this context, gender violence was construed as a matter of family and individual liberties, and the objective of the first family violence law was maintaining the family intact. The framework of reconciliation and its association with Christian forgiveness and family unity promoted the use of conciliation rather than sentencing as the primary means of settling domestic violence disputes and made it difficult for those affected by gender violence to achieve justice. However, the foundational discourses of the 1990s served an important purpose in opening up discursive spaces on gender violence that could be further refined. Las políticas de reconciliación nacional durante el periodo de transición de los 1990 en Chile armaron un marco hegémonico que afectó el discurso en otros campos de múltiples maneras. Para lograr el consenso entre sus diferentes facciones, la Concertación usó el discurso de la “reconciliación” para describir la nación como una familia y los temas que pudieran suscitar discrepancias fueron enmarcados de la manera más apolítica, ahistórica y técnica. En este contexto, la violencia de género fue interpretada como una cuestión de libertades individuales y de la familia, y el objetivo de la primera ley sobre violencia fami- liar fue mantener a la familia unida. El marco de reconciliación y su asociación con el perdón cristiano y la unidad familiar promovieron el uso de la conciliación en lugar de la sanción penal como el medio principal para resolver las disputas de violencia doméstica. Esto hizo difícil que aquellas personas afectadas por la violencia de género recibieran jus- ticia. Sin embargo, los discursos fundacionales de los 1990 sirvieron para abrir más espa- cios de discusión sobre la violencia de género, y ésto es algo que podría ser profundizado. Keywords: Gender violence, Reconciliation, Justice, Memory, Chile Hillary Hiner is an assistant professor of history at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, where she is also the academic coordinator and an investigator. Research for this paper was made possible through a Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT) grant for doctoral research (2009–2010). María José Azócar is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and an investigative affiliate at the Universidad Diego Portales. The authors are grateful to research assistants Ivanna Gómez and Soledad Martin, to Naama Nagar, Myra Marx-Ferree, and Jessica Kirstein and, especially, Roberta Villalón for their insightful comments on previous drafts of this paper, and to the LAP reviewers for their helpful suggestions. 570884LAP XX X 10.1177/0094582X15570884Latin American PerspectivesHiner and Azócar / POLITICAL CULTURE AND GENDER VIOLENCE IN CHILE research-article 2015 at UNIVERSIDAD DIEGO PORTALES on April 27, 2015 lap.sagepub.com Downloaded from