Envisioning a Socialist Family? The Cuban Revolution’s Early Family Policies and Their Impact on 1960s Chile

This paper centers on the early childhood and family policies during the Cuban Revolution and the various impacts these had in Chile during the 1960s. As several scholars who have focused on Cold War Chile have pointed out, the 1959 Cuban Revolution had a tremendous impact in the Chilean political and social climate during the 1960s. This paper aims to demonstrate the Cuban Revolution’s impact in Chile during this decade was also palpable on ideals of childhood, and family. By exploring the debates and the changing legal and social status of children born out-of-wedlock (or illegitimate and natural children) and mothers in Cuba and Chile during the 1960s, I will argue some of the earlier policies of childhood from the Cuban Revolution became a model to follow in Chile during the 1960s. Further, I will argue in this paper these Cuban policies were a model not just to the Left in Chile, but also to some sectors of the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano), specifically, to Chilean feminist and women’s organizations. For this paper, I will center on the creation and discussions around Cuban Children’s Circles (Círculos Infantiles) and how this model impacted the ongoing congressional debates on National Board of Preschools (Junta Nacional de Jardines Infantiles, JUNJI) in Chile. Through a transnational lens and gender analysis, I seek to demonstrate that socialist ideals of family during the 1960s both in Cuba and Chile sought to respond to Pan American debates around the family, including high mortality rates, poverty, and seeking to prevent child and juvenile delinquency. Lastly, this paper seeks to contribute to understand the relation between ideas of childhood and family and debates to ideals of modernity, and how the Latin American Left, and Latin American feminism heavily influenced these global ideas of childhood and children’s rights.