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This presentation is based on the second chapter of my dissertation: Paula la Politica: Popular Women’s Magazine and Chile’s Public Sphere During the Dictatorship, 1967-1988. It explores how Paula Magazine strategically navigated censorship and repression during the early years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1975). While most left-leaning and oppositional publications were swiftly dismantled by the military regime, Paula leveraged its affiliation with its elite publisher and its status as a women’s magazine to maintain a unique, sheltered editorial space. This perceived political insignificance allowed its contributors—primarily women journalists—to engage in a quiet form of resistance, using coded language, thematic subtext, and editorial nuance to challenge both patriarchal and authoritarian power. The presentation examines Paula's role in preserving journalistic integrity, fostering oppositional  discourse, and shaping a new kind of media practice under conditions of intense surveillance and censorship.

Drawing from archival material, press history, and oral history, it highlights how gendered assumptions about media and femininity were repurposed as tools for subversion, making Paula a rare site of critical expression during one of Chile’s darkest periods.

Light lunch provided.

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