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Just in the week in which the pandemic reaches its worst moment, with a record of infections, ICU beds to the limit, 30,000 dead Chileans and 16 million under quarantine, much of the world of power joined in a common goal: to criticize the President of the Medical College.
It is an escalation that says little about Izkia Siches, but a lot about the way in which power is understood, accumulated and defended in Chile.
Ten days ago, on the “La Cosa Nostra” podcast, Siches spoke in the relaxed tone of a private conversation. “I humbly acknowledge my mistake,” he later admitted. But the gale still continues.
The candidate defeated by her in the last union elections said that “I do not know if a woman when she is pregnant has the right to say things that do not correspond.” The vice president of RN demanded her resignation from the Medical College, as her sayings “a blow to institutions and democracy”, which reveals “everything she carries inside: contempt, hypocrisy, resentment”, and shows that she is “an obedient wearing the red shirt that she wears under her white coat. Until now the country has observed a talented actress ”. The UDI directive declared that “he is not up to the job” and requested his removal from the Social Table for his “double discourse, double standard.”
The directors of the 29 health services signed a letter rejecting the “offenses” of Siches, and supporting the “extraordinary work” of his boss, Minister Paris. The Minister of Social Development demanded that he “amend the course”, under penalty, he warned to “submit my resignation to the Medical College.”
“His mask fell off,” declared the El Mercurio cartoon. The government’s favorite attorney, Penta and SQM, Gabriel Zaliasnik, wrote a column (“The Heart of Darkness”) abounding on the idea. Izkia Siches took off her mask. She showed us her true face (…) Her heart continues in the midst of the darkness of her past in the Communist Youth, she being an active part of the totalitarian barbarism ”.
Siches achieved the miracle of matching Zaliasnik with his most staunch adversary, Daniel Jadue. “They are tones that you will never find in me. These are words that seem more like insults to me, ”warned the Communist Party presidential candidate.
Who’s Afraid of Izkia Siches? Apparently much of the elite.
It is that, in the midst of the power vacuum that Chile lives today, the president of the Medical College is the most influential person in the country. She is the highest-rated public figure in polls, and she has the “international leadership” that some are so sighing for: Time named her one of the world’s 100 emerging leaders in 2021.
The only two relevant national agreements of this pandemic were promoted by her: the fund of 12 billion dollars in social assistance, and the change in the date of the plebiscite. Neither parliamentarians, nor ministers, not even the President of the Republic, have the credibility to push them. This week, again, only Siches’s “let’s go” allowed the debate on the postponement of the April elections to open.
This influence is a stone in the shoe, not only for the government, but for all those who are used to monopolizing power in their spheres. That a young woman, from regions, with Aymara ancestry, without bombastic surnames, political godparents or accounts payable to anyone, has reached such a position, seems something unbearable for the hermetic Chilean elite. Of course, if she wanted to (she has ruled it out) she could threaten all current presidential candidates, starting with Jadue.
The background of this transversal attack is the self-defense of power. Its shape, exudes machismo. The doctor in Law Yanira Zúñiga explains that misogyny is “an animosity towards those who adopt behaviors that are perceived as subversive in relation to patriarchal norms.” And that is evident, from the usual treatment of “Izkia”, against the formal “Doctor Mañalich” or “Doctor Paris” that is reserved for his counterparts.
Women leaders often suffer “verbal attacks using words with sexual connotations, which affect their political career by damaging their reputation,” says expert Elin Bjarnegård of Uppsala University.
Already last year, the former director of the SII Ricardo Escobar (the same one of the “Escobar doctrine”, according to which the false ballots of politicians are not a crime), wrote a fable in which Siches was a “fox”, who was deceiving everyone to carry out their “delusional proposals.” But, Escobar concluded, “the monkey, dressed in silk, stays cute.”
That language (“bitch”, “cute”) has consequences. Gabrielle Bardall, from the University of Ottawa, has documented how female leaders “receive more death threats and sexual violence, against themselves, their children and family members” than men. This Friday, a security guard from the Superintendency of Education was arrested for threatening to kill Siches, his family and his unborn daughter. Last year, two subjects had also threatened her with death with sexist and racist epithets.
A study by academics from the University College of Dublin and the University of Jaén shows that among the stereotypes with which women are usually defined are “calculators” and “vindictive”. The “dead mosquito” that conceals its true intentions and the “fox” that deceives its victims are deeply embedded in our macho culture. Associating a woman with any of these clichés, as has been repeatedly done with Siches, is a way of damaging her credibility.
Virginia Woolf said that historically “women have served as mirrors endowed with the magical and delicious virtue of reflecting the figure of man at twice his natural size.”
When a woman stops being a mirror and takes on her own power, some suspect with horror that this will dwarf their own figure.
That is what they fear.
