Daniela Pacheco

In October 2019, a social outbreak shook Chile, one of the most important episodes of collective action in the last decade and, in turn, historic due to the level of conflict that was observed. The supposed Chilean miracle collapsed and we saw a broken society, as Alberto Mayol would say, in which there were approximately five months of protests and multiple actions, starting with the massive evasion of the subway as a first tactic of nonviolent resistance. In fact, this marked the beginning of the outbreak since it was the response of high school students to the increase in fares announced on October 4, 2019 by the Ministry of Transportation. Both the evasions, the public mobilizations, the cacerolazos and even alternative forms such as creative protest took place in Chile to say enough is enough! to the neoliberal abuse that has deepened social inequality in the country.

The demands for a dignified life also included those raised by the feminist movement, which had a powerful precedent of collective action a year earlier in the so-called Feminist May of 2018. In that historic moment for women and dissidents, a group of school students and University students took over educational institutions in rejection of harassment and cases of sexual abuse at renowned universities and high schools in the country. They also sought quality education, non-sexist and free from patriarchal violence, something that was strongly resumed in October 2019, but at a more general level in society and not only in the education sector.

In this context, an important performance emerged that can be framed as a nonviolent campaign after the outbreak of 2019. Un violador en tu camino, from the LasTesis collective, became a very powerful way of denouncing sexual violence by women and dissidents who it implied transferring art and feminist theories to the streets. As a result of this, thousands of women appropriated this performance to break the historical silence and raise their voices in this important event.

The transformative potential of artistic and nonviolent acts allows precisely that: to legitimize the demands of the movement and encourage adherence to collective action to change things. Although thinking about it, and also as an artist, these acts do not seek legitimacy, they seek to make people uncomfortable. Even so, it is important to vindicate the power of these actions that involve art as a form of nonviolent resistance and to emphasize that it occurred in an authoritarian and violent context such as the outbreak where the milicos and the pacos —military and police— were killing them.

LasTesis is a collective made up of Dafne Valdés, Paula Cometa, Sibila Sotomayor and Lea Cáceres, professionals from various fields who aim to bring feminist theory to the streets through the performing and musical arts. And they definitely did it. The convening capacity they had when replicating the performance in different cities in Chile was impressive. They presented it for the first time on November 18, 2019 in their hometown, Valparaíso, in front of the Carabineros Police Station and, later, in Plaza Sotomayor.

The performance quickly also went viral worldwide and this not only reflected a harsh reality of violence that (us) suffers because we are women, but also that the silence in the face of that reality had come to an end. As a current researcher on the subject, I have come across testimonies such as that of Nathalie, 44, who participated in one of the LasTesis performances outside the National Stadium in Santiago de Chile, and for her that moment was a “flag that all the women”. She loved the energy and the possibility that the performance offered to make the participation of women more common, for example, in the 8M march, which is now a mandatory commemoration of each year for them.

From the performance, the patriarchal and femicidal violence that plagues Latin America is repoliticized, which appropriates the body as a territory of war —in reference to Rita Segato. In a neoliberal Chile, with a repressive historical structure, putting the body on the street, as the feminist and academic Judith Butler mentions, was already an act of resistance in itself. But, not only that, it was a nonviolent act. Both Butler and Gene Sharp, and other authors, study the potential of nonviolent methods to challenge power structures without resorting to violence. LasTesis, and all those who participated, challenged the government of Sebastián Piñera, took charge of the police and the military, literally, burned fear and did nothing more than sing and dance.

If we stop to analyze the video of the performance, we can understand the force of art as a trench to question the logic established by the system, since we cannot separate the discourse from its materiality. For example, body movements such as pointing and blindfolding represent mourning and state responsibility in the historical repression of women, but also in the context of the social outbreak of 2019, this refers to the eye mutilations that police officers used as a form of systematic repression.

Nonviolent political art also allows memory to be built by symbolizing forms of torture such as the squats that were used in the Pinochet dictatorship to verify that women did not store any object in their vaginal cavity, and also the sign of arrest as a symbol of torture while shouting the president. In studies on nonviolence, it is said that adversaries are challenged by provoking them, in such a way that they cannot repress —and it was like that in a certain way. In the first place, the fact of occupying public squares on the outskirts of police installations as it was in Valparaíso and in Santiago de Chile, the capital, has a lot of symbolic value. Secondly, the use of the carabineros anthem as a way of repoliticizing and reappropriating these institutional symbols:

sleep peacefully innocent girl

Without worrying about the bandit

That for your sweet and smiling dream

watch over your carabinero lover

Now, I cannot affirm that the police and/or the military have repressed a specific performance by LasTesis because the context was repressive in its entirety —I do not have that certain information. However, based on my own perception and opinion, I can say that the performance achieved its objective of strategically inconveniencing the government without using violence. Unlike other campaigns that do not confront each other directly, LasTesis, and those who replicated the performance, did do so by shouting the rapist is you. It’s you, State; it is you, judge; it’s you, paco (police). Even in the video you can hear the direct responsibility of Sebastián Piñera, president of Chile at that time.

Finally, this performance was controversial in every sense of the word. Although it had worldwide repercussions, it was also the object of ridicule and the famous “those are not the ways”. I wonder, then, what are they? Literally, those who put the body were the precarious ones, the ones violated daily, they had to go out to sing and dance to get the attention of a deeply patriarchal society and even then it has not been enough to understand such basic demands as respect for life. However, they bothered us, and they left us the message that these actions are necessary because they are disruptive, build new sentiments and do not resort to violence, unlike those who have done so and will continue to do so.

Daniela Pacheco

Political scientist, master’s degree in Political Sociology from Flacso Ecuador and musical artist. She has the faithful conviction that art can and should change the world. For that reason, she investigates issues related to collective action and art as a form of nonviolent resistance.

Posted: March 3, 2023

Translated by Damian Vasquez