Memorias de mujeres campesinas del valle de Aconcagua a 50 años de la Reforma Agraria Chilena

Abstract

The article presents the results of an investigation that aims to rescue and value the collective memory of rural women who were part of the Agrarian Reform process in the Aconcagua Valley, Valparaiso Region, Chile. The methodology is guided by studies of collective memory, defining time and space within the framework of the Chilean reform process. The research group corresponds to peasant women linked to farmers benefited by the Agrarian Reform process. The information was collected through biographical interview and documentary review, allowing to interpret personal memories and endow them with stability and collective transcendence. The analysis considers the documentary information available and the memories of the peasant women compiled. The results indicate that peasant women were direct recipients of government actions that claimed their social rights and contributed to the improvement of rural living conditions in the areas of health, housing and education. The main conclusion is that the right to land of the peasant woman was mediated by her conjugal relationship with a beneficiary peasant or assignee of the process, through the exercise of the right of conjugal partnership or inheritance. Five decades after the Chilean reform process, it can be affirmed that the Agrarian Reform promoted structural transformations that had a direct impact on the living and working conditions of the peasant family, being the peasant man his main economic protagonist in the farm and the peasant woman his main social beneficiary in the home.