Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Huerta cheers first woman president of Chile
 Teresa Huerta has reason to celebrate the January 15 election of Chile’s first woman president, Michelle Bachelet. Huerta, associate professor of Spanish, is a native Chilean. She came to the United States in 1987 to complete a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Purdue University and join her husband, Guillermo Latorre, USI professor of Spanish, in Evansville. The couple lived in Chile with their three small children when Augusto Pinochet seized power through a military coup in the early seventies. “Michelle Bachelet is a brave and intelligent woman whose family was persecuted during Pinochet’s dictatorship,” Huerta said. “Her father, an air force general, died of a heart attack as a result of torture, and she and her mother were imprisoned and tortured in detention centers during the dictatorship.” Huerta recounted the day of the coup, September 11, 1973: “I was living in Santiago very close to the secondary school for boys where I worked. After the election of Salvador Allende in 1970, the general conditions in the country had gradually deteriorated. There was a dramatic scarcity of basic products, and the country had come to a standstill as the result of widespread striking. I knew, as most Chileans did at the time, that something was going to happen, but I didn’t know what, or when it would happen. “The day of the coup I was walking towards the school where I worked when my neighbors stopped me to tell me that the presidential palace was surrounded by tanks, and that the air force was going to attack the palace if the president did not quit. I could not believe my ears when I listened to the Allende’s farewell speech on the radio. “My family and I were deeply moved and very concerned about the unpredictable turn of events. That evening, the hissing sound of isolated bullets could be heard. Later on that night the sound of machine gun combat was even more frightening, especially since electricity was no longer available. Running water had turned muddy, and we were afraid to drink it. We could not leave our house for a week, and we survived on a diet of lentils and onions. “I was able to return to work in three weeks. I was tense and confused because some of my colleagues and students had not come back, and I didn’t know if they were alive or dead.” Pinochet, 90, in poor health and under house arrest, awaits trial on human rights violations, tax evasion, and corruption. “Pinochet’s Chile was frightening,” Huerta said. “There was not freedom of speech or press, and the military were everywhere: in the streets, at the universities, and in public institutions. There was no cultural activity, and a ruthless market economy was imposed from above. People from the lower classes were begging for food in the streets.” Along with her daughter, Carolina Latorre, a 1994 USI graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, and a master's degree and Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Purdue University, Huerta will present “The Rise of Woman to the Presidency in Chile: An Analysis of the Political Discourse of Michelle Bachelet” at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Spanish and Latin American Literatures and Film at Florida International University in February. The paper is written in Spanish, and the Spanish title is "El ascenso al poder de la mujer en Chile: un análisis del discurso político de Michelle Bachelet." It establishes a relationship between the semantic and structural content of Bachelet’s discourse and the cultural and political context of contemporary Chile. It underlines Bachelet’s efforts to formulate an inclusive national policy opening up spaces for marginalized groups in Chilean society. According to the abstract, “Bachelet’s leadership is visualized as the starting point for an important cultural change that alters the tendency toward a growing masculinization of political discourse in Latin America during the nineties. Paradoxically, Bachelet uses her condition as mother and housewife in the private domain as a key element in her public image.” In addition to the Ph.D., Huerta has a Master of Science degree in foreign language education and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the Catholic University of Chile. She teaches humanities and elementary, intermediate, and advanced Spanish courses. She also coordinates the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Colloquia Presentations. She’s been with the University since 1992. |
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