Adriana Muñoz (politician)

Adriana Blanca Cristina Muñoz d'Albora (born 25 September 1948) is a Chilean sociologist and politician who has been President of the country's Senate since March 2020.

Adriana Blanca Cristina Muñoz d'Albora
President of the Senate of Chile
Assumed office
17 March 2020
PresidentSebastián Piñera
Preceded byJaime Quintana
Senator in the Senate
Assumed office
2013
ConstituencyCoquimbo Region
President of the Chamber of Deputies of Chile
In office
11 March 2002 – 13 March 2003
PresidentRicardo Lagos
Preceded byLuis Pareto González
Succeeded byIsabel Allende Bussi
Deputy in the Chamber of Deputies
In office
1989–1993
Constituency16th district
In office
1997–2013
Constituency9th district
Personal details
Born (1948-09-25) September 25, 1948
Santiago
NationalityChilean
Political partyParty for Democracy

Early life and education

Adriana Blanca Cristina Muñoz d'Albora was born in Santiago on 25 September 1948.[1] She is the oldest of five children in a Christian family.[2] Her father owned a store and her mother was a housewife.[2] She completed high school in 1965 at the Jesús de Nazareno Passionist Religious School, before studying sociology at the University of Chile in Santiago from 1966 to 1968.[1] Her professors included Clodomiro Almeyda and she later said she "intellectually became a Marxist."[2] Muñoz joined the Socialist Party of Chile in 1967 and was an elected delegate to the University of Chile Student Federation.[1] She became a Trotskyist and travelled to Cuba in 1969, returning to "work hard for the revolution."[2] She said, "we were trying to radicalize the party from within ... [w]e were trying to redistribute the wealth ... we had time to reflect in exile on how out of touch we were with the sense of security Chileans cherish and how threatened they felt by our great schemes."[2]

Early career and exile

Muñoz worked at the Agrarian Reform Corporation and Rural Training Program from 1971 until 1973.[1] At age 22, she was an undersecretary in the Allende administration's Department of Agriculture. She later said she was "swallowed up" in the intensity of party militancy and "oblivious to the risks."[3]

After the 1973 coup, Muñoz went into exile with her husband and infant son in Vienna, where she lived until 1982.[1][2] While in Austria, she completed a Master's in Sociology and began a Doctorate in Political Science and Sociology at the University of Vienna.[1] She was a researcher for the Austria Project in the International Economic System in Luxembourg.[1]

Return to Chile

Muñoz returned to Chile in 1982, selling signs in her brother's shop for nearly two years.[2] She eventually became a researcher in various projects for the Women's Study Center (CEM). In 1987, she founded the Institute for Women.[1] In the 1990s, she was a consultant for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean and the IDEAS Foundation for progress, and an advisor to the Ministry General Secretariat of the Chilean government.[1] Between 1997 and 1999, she was vice president of the College of Sociologists of Chile.[1]

After her return from exile, Muñoz worked with Ricardo Nuñez to reconstruct the Socialist Party and in 1986 she led the reconstitution of the Federation of Socialist Women,[2] of which she was president from 1988 to 1990.[1] She participated in the founding of the Party for Democracy (PPD) in 1987[1] and was Vice President of the PPD from 1991 to 1992, from 2000 to 2002 and again from 2009 to 2010.[1]

Political career

Muñoz was elected to the Chamber of Deputies of Chile representing the PPD for District 16 in 1989. In 1991, she introduced a bill to decriminalize therapeutic abortion, but it died in committee without debate.[4] She chaired the Labor Committee from 1990 to 1993.[4] She ran for re-election in 1993 but was defeated,[1][4] owing in part to lack of support from her own party after the most conservative presidential candidate José Piñera focused part of his campaign on attacking her for her abortion initiative.[5][6] She later reflected that she had also failed to connect and communicate well with her district.[2]

From 1993 to 1997, Muñoz served under José Joaquín Brunner as liaison between the Executive and Congress.[2] Muñoz was elected Deputy for District 9 (part of the Santiago Metropolitan Region) in December 1997 and was vice president of the Chamber from 11 March–8 October 1998.[1] She authored draft laws on Intrafamily Violence, Sexual Harassment, and Constitutional Reform.[1] She was re-elected in December 2001, and from 11 March 2002 – 13 March 2003 was President of the Chamber, the first woman in the position.[1][4] In 2002, she supported the proposal to legalize divorce.[3][7] Later that year she said, "The country is afraid of debate. Or we as the beaten-down left are afraid to be considered adding once again to divisiveness, destruction. There is a very strong trauma within us..."[3]

Muñoz was re-elected again in the December 2009 election for a fourth term representing District 9.[1] In the November 2013 election, Muñoz was elected as PPD candidate for the Senate for the fourth circumscription, representing the Coquimbo Region.[1] On 7 July 2015, she became the first woman Vice President of the Senate, holding the position until March 2016.[1] She has been called one of the country's "most active feminist legislators."[4]

On 17 March 2020, Muñoz was elected President of the Senate with 22 votes to 14 over Chile Vamos's Carmen Gloria Aravena. She is the second woman to hold the position after Isabel Allende.[8][9] An agreement had been made between parties that the President would be a member of the PPD, and her colleague Felipe Harboe declined to nominate for the role due to the need for greater gender equality and female participation, saying "It will be an honor for me to continue working for parity, committing myself to working for the defense of women's rights."[10][11] Muñoz advocates for gender parity.[11]

Muñoz supports the effort to change Chile's constitution.[12] After the October 2019 protests, Muñoz announced the creation of a Truth Justice and Reparation Commission, criticising the government for confusing social demonstration with vandalism.[13] Former president of the Constitutional Court Marisol Peña criticised Muñoz for "legislative populism", saying she was willing to ignore the constitution for what people want.[14] In October 2020, Muñoz said that over 800 people have been detained without due process for over a year after the protests, although this number has been disputed.[15] Muñoz said she condemned violence but not social protest. But she affirmed that she did not agree with bringing the election forward, saying, "President Piñera has run a bad government, but he was elected by the people. I belong to a generation that is very afraid of institutional breakdowns."[16]

Publications
  • Muñoz, Adriana (1988). Fuera feminista y democracia: Utopía a realizar (in Spanish). Santiago: Centro de Estudios Económicos y Sociales.
  • Muñoz D’Albora, Adriana; Ramírez, Dora Cecilia; Luna, Lola G.; León, Magdalena; Ramírez Rodríguez, María Himelda; Roldán, Martha; Palma de Feuillet, Milagros; Valente, Virginia Vargas (1992). Género, clase y raza en América Latina: algunas aportaciones (in Spanish). Seminario Interdisciplinar Mujeres y Sociedad, Universitat de Barcelona.
  • Muñoz D'Albora, Adriana (1996). "Mujer y política: complejidades y ambivalencia de una relación" (in Spanish). CEPAL. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  • Munoz D’Albora, Adriana; Wojciechowski Levine, Scarlett (1996). "La importancia de una ley de cuotas en Chile" (in Spanish). Santiago: Fundación IDEAS. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Personal life

Muñoz is divorced and has a son.[1] She separated from her husband while in exile in Austria.[2]

References
  1. "Adriana Muñoz D'Albora" (in Spanish). Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile.
  2. Hite, Katherine (1999). When the Romance Ended: Leaders of the Chilean Left, 1968-1998. Columbia University Press. p. 7986.
  3. Hite, Katherine (2005). "Breaking the Silence in Post-Authoritarian Chile". In Max Paul Friedman; Padraic Kenney (eds.). Partisan Histories: The Past in Contemporary Global Politics. Palgrace Macmillan. pp. 55–74.
  4. Haas, Liesl (2011). Feminist Policymaking in Chile. Penn State Press.
  5. Valenzuela, María Elena (1998). "Women and the Democratization Process in Chile". In Jane S. Jacquette; Sharon L. Wolchik (eds.). Women and Democracy: Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe. The John Hopkins University Press. pp. 47–74.
  6. Blofield, Mireke (2001). The Politics of "moral Sin": A Study of Abortion and Divorce in Catholic Chile Since 1990. FLASCO-Chile. p. 51.
  7. Erlich, Reese (10 April 2002). "Untying Chile's marriage knot". The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  8. "La progresista Adriana Muñoz se convierte en la segunda mujer en presidir el Senado de Chile" (in Spanish). EIPais. 17 March 2020. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  9. "Adriana Muñoz es la segunda mujer en asumir la presidencia del Senado" (in Spanish). CNN. 17 March 2020. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  10. "Felipe Harboe declina a la presidencia del Senado para que Adriana Muñoz asuma en el cargo" (in Spanish). CNN. 22 January 2020. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  11. Catalina Batarce, María (25 January 2020). "Adriana Muñoz pide impulsar paridad en elecciones municipales y parlamentarias" (in Spanish). PAUTA. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  12. Muñoz, Adriana (24 October 2020). "A votar para empezar a construir un nuevo Chile" (in Spanish). Cooperative. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  13. Jiménez, Marcela (31 October 2020). "Presidenta del Senado, Adriana Muñoz: "Si la centroizquierda no escucha lo que sucedió el 25 de octubre, quiere decir que queda a la cola de la historia"" (in Spanish). ElMostrador. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  14. Edwards, Sebastian (25 June 2020). "Ex presidenta del TC: "Adriana Muñoz le ha dicho al país que está por un populismo legislativo"" (in Spanish). El Libero. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  15. Salinas, María Gabriela (18 December 2020). "Prisión preventiva y falta de debido proceso: las cifras que desmienten a Adriana Muñoz" (in Spanish). El Dinamo. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
  16. "5 momentos que dejó la entrevista a Adriana Muñoz en Tolerancia Cero" (in Spanish). CNN. 30 November 2020. Retrieved 12 January 2021.
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