1. Noticias, Servicio de Registro Civil e Identificación, October 27, 1999. The law was passed in October 1998 and entered into effect 1 year later. https:// www.registrocivil.cl/Institucion/hitos/detalle_hitos/27-10-1999/27-10-1999.html. (June 20, 2015).

2. “Más reclamaciones de paternidad,” El Sur, May 16, 2005.

3. This is particularly worth emphasizing given that a narrative of “Chilean exceptionalism,” which characterizes the country as more modern, stable, and democratic than others in Latin America, often characterizes writing about Chile. The notion of a unique Chilean legal culture and the special status of the rule of law in Chile is central to this narrative.

4. Caulfield, Sueann, “The Right to a Father's Name: A Historical Perspective on State Efforts to Combat the Stigma of Illegitimate Birth in Brazil,” Law and History Review 30 (2012): 1–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wertheimer, John, “Gloria's Story: Adulterous Concubinage and the Law in Twentieth-Century Guatemala,” Law and History Review 24 (2006): 375–421CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. See Linda Lewin, Surprise Heirs: Illegitimacy, Patrimonial Rights, and Legal Nationalism in Luso–Brazilian Inheritance, 1750–1821 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2003). Many of the broad arguments she makes about illegitimacy and inheritance in Brazil hold true for Spanish America as well.

6. Mark Burkholder, “Honor and Honors in Colonial Spanish America,” in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America, ed. Sonya Lipsett–Rivera and Lyman Johnson (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), 34–37.

7. Ann Twinam, Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999).

8. Nara Milanich, Children of Fate: Childhood, Class, and the State in Chile, 1850–1930 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009).

9. Alejandro Guzmán Brito, Codificación civil en Iberoamérica. Siglos XIX y XX (Santiago: Editorial Jurídica, 2000), 467–68; and Pedro Lira Urquieta, Código civil chileno (Santiago: Editorial Jurídica, 1956), 27.

10. Clara Guzman con Ramon Tagle por filiación y alimentos. 1851. Archivo Judicial de Santiago, 2a serie, Legajo 1268–69. Martín Zapata, “Discusión jurídica sobre la prueba en materia de filiación natural,” Gaceta de los Tribunales, November 2, 1850, 3000–3045.

11. Milanich, Children of Fate, ch. 1.

12. Individuals born prior to 1857 were permitted to bring these suits, which were otherwise prohibited.

13. Milanich, Children of Fate, ch. 2.

14. Joaquín Escriche, Diccionario razonado de legislación y jurisprudencia. First published in 1831 and appearing in multiple editions thereafter, Escriche's was perhaps the most widely circulated and cited reference text on Hispanic law in the nineteenth century.

15. Goran Therborn, Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 1900–2000 (London: Routledge, 2004), 156.

16. Aspectos biodemográficos de la población de Costa Rica (San José: Secretaria de Salubridad Pública y Protección Social, 1942), 57; Bastidas, Antonio J., “La ilegitimidad, factor de letalidad infantil,” Boletín del Instituto Internacional Americano de Protección a la Infancia 6:4 (1933): 364Google Scholar.

17. Two exceptions to the single-digit rule in Western Europe were Sweden, 15.6% and Austria, 25.2% (both 1935). But consider that the lowest rate of illegitimacy in Latin America that year, Argentina's, was 25.4%. Bauzá, Julio A., “Importancia del factor ilegitimidad en la mortalidad infantil,” Boletín del Instituto International Americano de Protección a la Infancia 14:3 (1941): 397Google Scholar.

18. Thomas Klubock, Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile's El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Karin Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Culture and the State in Chile, 1920–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); and Ximena Valdés S., La vida en común. Familia y vida privada en Chile y el medio rural en la segunda mitad del siglo XX (Santiago: LOM, 2007).

19. Again, the highest exceptions to the single-digit rule are Sweden (11.3%) and Austria (13%), in 1960. But compare these numbers to Chile's historic low of 16.4% (1956). Once again, the lowest Latin American rates still exceeded the highest European ones. Béla Tomka, A Social History of Twentieth-Century Europe (New York: Routledge, 2013), 88; and United Nations, Demographic Yearbook, 1959.

20. Chant, Sylvia, “Researching Gender, Families, and Household in Latin America,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 21 (2002): 545–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. It is important to note that the declining fertility of married women in Chile at least in part accounts for the increase in the illegitimacy rate. Osvaldo Larráñaga, “Comportamientos reproductivos y natalidad, 1960-2003,” in El eslabón perdido: familia, modernización y bienestar en Chile, ed. Eugenio Tironi Barrios, Samuel Valenzuela, and Timothy Scully (Santiago: Taurus, 2006), 137–175. On natal trends generally, see Irarrázaval, Ignacio and Valenzuela, Juan Pablo, “La ilegítimidad en Chile. Hacia un cambio en la formación de la familia?” Estudios Públicos 52 (1993): 145–90Google Scholar.

22. League of Nations, Study on the Legal Position of the Illegitimate Child (New York: International Document Service, 1939); and Krause, Harry D., “Bastards Abroad—Foreign Approaches to Illegitimacy,” American Journal of Comparative Law 15:4 (1966): 726–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Nara Milanich, “Illegitimacy and Illegitimates,” in Minor Omissions: Children in Latin American History and Society, ed. Tobias Hecht (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 72–101.

24. Milanich, Children of Fate, 223–24.

25. Congresos Panamericanos del Niño. Ordenación sistematica de sus recomendaciones, 1916–1963 (Montevideo: Instituto Interamericano del Niño, 1965), 158, 194.

26. “Fuchs, Rachel, “Seduction, Paternity and the Law in Fin-de Siècle France,” Journal of Modern History 72 (2000): 944–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 960; Lilienthal, Georg, “The Illegitimacy Question in German, 1900–1945. Areas of Tension in Social and Population Policy,” Continuity and Change 5 (1990): 249–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Feminist Movements Are Different Abroad,” New York Times, October 10, 1915, 56–57.

27. Asunción Lavrín, Women, Feminism and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 158. These aspirations were at least partially realized in the Children's Code a few years later.

28. K. Lynn Stoner, From the House to the Streets: The Cuban Women's Movement for Legal Reform, 1898–1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 160–1.

29. Ibid., 63–66, 67–69; 160–5.

30. Laura Gotkowitz, A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880–1952 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 178.

31. Klein, Herbert, “‘Social Constitutionalism’ in Latin America: The Bolivian Experience of 1938,” The Americas 22 (1966): 258–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Gotkowitz, Revolution for Our Rights, 101.

33. Rossana Barragán, and José Luis Roca, Regiones y poder constituyente en Bolivia. Una historia de pactos y disputas (La Paz, Bolivia: PNUD, 2005), 408.

34. Constitución Política de 1938. http://comisiondeconstitucion2002-2003.awardspace.com/cpehistoria/cpe_1938.htm (June 20, 2015).

35. Constitución de la República de Guatemala, March11, 1945, art. 76; and Wertheimer, “Gloria's Story.”

36. Constitución de la República de Guatemala, 1956. http://www.minex.gob.gt/ADMINPORTAL/Data/DOC/20100930181956036Consti1956.VerArt,1transi.Pag49.pdf (June 20, 2015).

37. Isabella Cosse, Estigmas de nacimiento. Peronismo y orden familiar, 1946–1955 (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006), 9.

38. Cosse, Estigmas de nacimiento, 175.

39. Rafael Rojina Villegas, “En defensa de los hijos naturales,” in Estudios jurídicos en homenaje a M. Borja Soriano (Mexico City: Editorial Porrua, 1969), 681–703.

40. Jorge Errázuriz Tagle, and Guillermo Eyzaguirre Rouse, Monografia de una familia obrera (Santiago: Imprenta Barcelona, 1903), 66.

41. Cosse, Estimas de nacimiento, 11; and Nicolas Palacios, Raza chilena, 4th ed. (Santiago: Colchagua, 1988 [1904]), 12. The concept of “orphan” in both Chilean legal and social parlance referred not only to the children of deceased parents but also to those rendered parentless by illegitimacy and parental nonrecognition.

42. However, the code gave inheritance rights only when paternity had been proven in particular ways. Lavrín, Women, Feminism, and Social Change; Birn, Anne-Emanuelle, “The National–International Nexus of Public Health,” Histôria, Ciencias, Saude-Manguinhos 13 (2006): 675–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Anne-Emanuelle Birn, “Uruguay's Child Rights Approach to Health: What Role for Civil Registration?” in Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History, ed. Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter (London: Oxford University Press, 2012). An earlier reform of Uruguayan civil law, in 1914, had legalized paternity suits; see Christine Ehrick, The Shield of the Weak: Feminism and the State in Uruguay, 1903–1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2005), 80–82.

43. Constitución Política de la República de Panamá, 1946. http://bdigital.binal.ac.pa/bdp/older/constitucion1946.pdf (June 20, 2015). The Constitution of 1941 in contrast specified that parents had equal “duties” toward illegitimate children. Constitución de la República de Panamá, 1941, art. 52. http://www.organojudicial.gob.pa/cendoj/wp-content/blogs.dir/cendoj/CONSTITUCIONES_POLITICAS/constitucion_politica_1941.pdf (June 20, 2015).

44. Cuba's constitution did not specifically mention children's natal rights, but recognized nonmarital unions in language that suggested recognition of the rights of children born in them.

45. This pattern is surmised from the jurisprudence discussed in Hugo Sandoval Saavedra, Código civil boliviano. Con secciones de legislación, doctrina y jurisprudencia, vol. 2. (Sucre: Imprenta Universitaria, 1970).

46. One example of such research is Sueann Caulfield's recent work on Brazil, which shows the opposite scenario: a growing embrace of natal rights by judges in the absence of corresponding reform of civil (or constitutional) law. See “The Right to a Father's Name.”

47. Teresa Valdés and Enrique Gomáriz, eds., Mujeres Latinoamericanas en cifras (Santiago: FLACSO, 1995), 143. This volume erroneously lists Paraguay as discriminating against extramarital children, although a 1993 reform abolished a final point of discrimination by equalizing inheritance rights among all children.

48. Message from the president reprinted in Arturo Alessandri, Reformas introducidas al Código Civil y a otras leyes por la Ley. No. 10.271 (Santiago: Ediar, 1955), 161–83.

49. Alessandri, Reformas introducidas al Código Civil, 57. By the 1990s, these categories had apparently acquired still other meanings, this time in relation to relative degrees of paternal certainty. That is, hijo natural was the privileged status enjoyed by a child whose father was certain of his paternity, whereas simply illegitimate status apparently applied to those whose fathers harbored doubts about their paternity.

50. Alessandri, Reformas introducidas al Código Civil, 36

51. Bernard Gesche Muller, Investigación de la paternidad ilegítima (Concepción: Departamento de Divulgación de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, 1967).

52. Azun Candina, “Los hijos no matrimoniales en Chile contemporáneo. De la tragedia privada a la esperanza de la igualdad (1930–1998),” in Conservadurismo y transgresión en Chile: reflexiones sobre el mundo privado, ed. Azun Candina (Santiago: CEDEM/FLACSO, 2005): 91–123; 118, fn. 41.

53. Testimony of Sra Ministra Directora del SERNAM Josefina Bilbao, in Senate debates, Legislatura 334a, Extraordinaria, Sesión 24, January 14, 1997. In 1980, Santiago's population hovered near 3,700,000; by 1990, it had grown to 4,600,000.

54. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises, 154–56.

55. Nelly Hermosilla, “Informe de la Visitadora Social del Servicio de Asistencia Judicial del Colegio de Abogados de Concepción,” in Gesche Muller, Investigación de la paternidad ilegítima, 169.

56. Klubock, Contested Communities; and Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises.

57. In this it parallels the technocratic process of family law reform that occurred during the military dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile later in the century. Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

58. Alessandri, Reformas introducidas al Código Civil, 11–12.

59. Milanich, Children of Fate, Introduction.

60. Liesl Haas, “Legislating Equality: Institutional Politics and the Expansion of Women's Rights.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1999, 124.

61. Castaldi, Cesar Frigerio, “La filiación,” Revista Chilena de Derecho 1 (1974): 87–91Google Scholar. On the Allende bill, see also the remarks of Juan Hamilton Depassier, Legislatura 334a extraordinaria, Senado, Sesión 24a, January 14, 1997.

62. In the late 1970s, the dictatorship appointed a commission to design a reform of the Civil Code focusing on married women's juridical status and the marital property regime, but also including changes to filiation law. The initiative went nowhere after conservative ideologues attacked the thrust of the reform. It seems the proposed changes to filiation law were less public, and it is unclear what, if any, response they generated. Leslie Tomasello Hart, and Alvaro Quintanilla Pérez, Reformas al regimen matrimonial y de filiación (Valparaíso: EDEVAL, 1981); Htun, Sex and the State, 73–75.

63. Lazzara, Michael J., “Neoliberalism in Chile's Public Imagination,” A Contracorriente 6 (2009): 272–79Google Scholar.

64. The military junta had dissolved the Congress in 1973.

65. These proposals are mentioned in Mensaje Presidencial a la Cámara de Diputados, Nos. 198–326, July 22, 1993. In Camara de Diputados, Sesión 25, Legislatura 326, August 10, 1993. Several are discussed in greater detail in Hernán Corral Talciani, Familia y Derecho. Estudios sobre la realidad jurídica de la familia (Santiago: Universidad de los Andes, 1994), 177.

66. The bill also expanded patria potestad, a legal relationship of paternal authority that had previously applied only to legitimate children, to cover those born extramaritally, and expanded the inheritance rights of surviving spouses, a provision whose relevance willbe discussed subsequently.

67. These included the American Convention on Human Rights (also known as the Pact of San José), the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights.

68. Centro de Estudios de la Mujer, Argumentos para el cambio, 24, June 24, 1998. http://www.cem.cl/argumentos/ediciones/argu24.htm (June 20, 2015)

69. Senator Ramon Vega Hidalgo, Senate, Legislatura 338a ordinaria, Sesión 17a, August 4, 1998.

70. Orozimbo Fuenzalida Fuenzalida, July 2, 1998 letter to Senator Jorge Martínez Busch, reproduced in Senado, Legislatura 338a ordinaria, sesión 17a, August 4, 1998. See also Talciani, Hernán Corral, including “¿Igualdad de lo desigual? Notas sobre la equiparación jurídica entre hijos legítimos e ilegítimos,” Revista Chilena de Derecho 20 (1993): 21–37Google Scholar. This argument was also a favorite of conservative legislators.

71. Cited in Haas, “Legislating Equality,” 116.

72. Libertad y Desarrollo, Boletín 1060–07, March 21, 1997, 50.

73. Sara Navas, “Igualdad en la filiación legítima e ilegítima. Atentado contra la familia.” El Mercurio, August 11, 1996.

74. Htun, Sex and the State. It is also worth noting here the case of Argentina, where full natal equality was achieved only under Raul Alfonsín, president of the first democratic government following the end of the military dictatorship in that country, in 1983. Likewise, in Spain, the 1978 constitution marking the end of the Franco regime established natal equality, a principle fully realized in civil law reform 3 years later.

75. The regime's 1980 Constitution provided for the institution of designated senators. These positions were abolished in 2005.

76. These included Ronald McIntyre Mendoza and Olga Feliu Segovia as well as Pinochet himself, who became a senator-for-life upon his resignation as commander in chief of the army in 1998.

77. It is also worth noting that the designated senators did not vote as a block against the bill. Haas, “Legislating Equality.”

78. Frigerio Castaldi, “La filiación,” 88.

79. See, for example, Htun, Sex and the State; and Valdés, Vida en común. Chile and Malta were the last Western countries without divorce laws. Although abortion is illegal everywhere in Latin America with the exception of Cuba (and Mexico City), Chile also prohibits therapeutic abortion (abortions performed when the life of mother is at risk). This provision was passed as one of Pinochet's final acts prior to leaving power. The characterization of Chile as the most socially conservative country in Latin America recurs in the United States media; for example, Larry Rohter, “With New Leader, Chile Seems to Shuck its Strait Laces,” New York Times, March 8, 2006, A4.

80. The Bishop of Valparaíso did so in a letter presented by Senator Otero, November 20, 1996, Informe de la Comisión de Constitución, Legislación, Justicia y Reglamento.

81. Letter to Senator Martínez Busch, cited above.

82. These include Bishop Fuenzalida and the outspoken lay critic Hernán Corral Talciani, a law professor affiliated with the Universidad de los Andes, a private university with ties to Opus Dei.

83. Haas, “Legislating Equality,” 132.

84. Carrying the signatures of two bishops, this document appeared in the Catholic monthly Mensaje. Fernando Ariztia Ruiz and Javier Prado Aránguiz, “La Iglesia Católica y la Ley de Filiación,” Mensaje [June 30, 1998]. http://documentos.iglesia.cl/conf/documentos_sini.ficha.php?mod=documentos_sini&id=572&sw_volver=yes&descripcion=.

85. Haas, “Legislating Equality,” 113.

86. Roberto Muñoz Barra, Legislatura 334a extraordinaria, sesión 24a, January 14, 1997.

87. Htun, Sex and the State, 139–40. The anonymity of this informant is significant and is discussed further.

88. Libertad y Desarrollo, Boletín, 56.

89. Ibid., 58.

90. Jorge Medina, Bishop of Valparaíso, cited by Senator Otero, November 20, 1996, Informe de la Comisión de Constitución, Legislación, Justicia y Reglamento.

91. Boletín, 55.

92. The reform changed widows' status to legitimarias and increased the conjugal portion.

93. Larráñaga, “Matrimonios,” 140.

94. Claudio Pizarro, “El huacho del terrateniente,” The Clinic, April 26, 2009. http://www.theclinic.cl/2009/04/26/el-huacho-del-terrateniente/; Daniela Mohor W., and Magdalena Andrade N., “Hacia un nuevo escenario de la paternidad,” El Mercurio, April 22, 2008. http://www.emol.com/noticias/Tendencias/2008/07/23/731148/hacia-un-nuevo-escenario-de-la-paternidad-.html; Andrés López y Angela Neira, “Joven comprueba con test de ADN que es hijo de agricultor que dejó millonaria herencia,” La Tercera, December 21, 2008. http://www.latercera.com/contenido/680_86324_9.shtml; Andrés López, “Hijo no reconocido de agricultor es nombrado heredero de fortuna,” La Tercera, March 26, 2009. http://www.latercera.com/contenido/680_113441_9.shtml; and Ximena Pérez Gallegos, “Suprema condena a hermanos que revelaron secreto familiar por herencia,” El Mercurio, November 26, 2009. http://diario.elmercurio.com/detalle/index.asp?id=%7B56da33e2-269e-4b13-be68-a55143880e0b%7D

95. “Investigan a Pablo Huneeus por usurpación de nombre en juicio de paternidad,” La Tercera, March 11, 2008, 16.

96. Boletín, 58.

97. Mensaje Presidencial, Primer Trámite Constitucional, Cámara de Diputados, July 22, 1993. Other such references include Discusión General, Josefina Bilbao, Ministra Directora de SERNAM, Primer Informe Comisión de Constitución (Senado), November 20, 1996, sesión 12, Legislatura 334; Bilbao, Senado, January 14, 1997, sesión 24, Legislatura 334.

98. Boletín, 60.

99. Italics are mine; Boletín, 53.

100. Blofield, Merike, and Haas, Liesl, “Defining a Democracy: Reforming the Laws on Women's Rights in Chile, 1990–2002,” Latin American Politics and Society 47 (2005): 35–68Google Scholar.

101. That political scientist was Mala Htun. The interview took place in Santiago in June 1998 and is cited in Sex and the State, 139–40 and footnote 46. Personal communication with Mala Htun, May 2010.

102. Haas, “Legislating Equality,” 124. Personal communication with Liesl Haas, June 2010.

103. Blofield and Haas, “Defining a Democracy,” 47.

104. See, for example, the statement by Hamilton, sesión 24, January 14, 1997.

105. Boletín, 63.

106. Nikki Craske, and Sylvia Chant, Gender in Latin America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 166. The social science and policy literature often portrays households and kin networks as bulwarks of survival for the poor, lamenting the erosion of kin ties as a drain on social capital and issuing calls to support “the family” as a poverty reduction strategy.

107. Paul Posner, State, Market and Democracy in Chile: The Constraint of Popular Participation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and Ricardo Ffrench–Davis, Economic Reforms in Chile: From Dictatorship to Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2002).

108. Tironi, Valenzuela, and Scully, “Familia en Chile: Los impactos de la modernización” in El eslabón perdido.

109. For example, in the 5 years after the reform, only 3,000 paternity cases had been decided, even as an average of 33,000 children had been born extramaritally each year. “Modificaciones a la ley. Más reclamaciones de paternidad,” El Diario del Sur, May 16, 2005; “Solicitan Cambios a Ley de Filiación,” El Mercurio, June 23, 2000.

110. Although these second reforms apparently elicited little public opposition, some conservatives objected to them. Libertad y Desarrollo, for example, referred to the further facilitation of paternity suits as “dangerous.” Boletín 3043–07, December 5, 2003, 37–44.

111. Candina, “Hijos no matrimoniales” notes that filiation reform in Chile in the 1990s originated from above, rather than filtering upward from groups in civil society demanding change. That seems to be a characteristic of natal rights generally. See, however, the related scenario of poor mothers mobilizing for child support in El Salvador: Ready, Kelley, “Child Support as a Strategic Interest: La Asociación de Madres Demandantes of El Salvador,” Gender and Development 11 (2003): 60–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.