To Make All Children Equal is a Change in the Power Structures of Society: The Politics of Family Law in Twentieth Century Chile and Latin America

Abstract

In 1999, Chile became the last country in Latin America to grant full equality to all children regardless of the marital status of their parents. The Law of Filiation (Ley de Filiación) declared all children's right to know their origins, receive support from their progenitors, and participate equally in inheritance. Both supporters and critics hailed the law as transcendental, one of the most significant reforms to civil law since the promulgation of the Chilean Civil Code in 1855. On the day the law took effect, President Eduardo Frei was on hand at a civil registry office to greet the first parents arriving to solicit birth certificates, which no longer specified their children's natal status. He gave them a native quillay sapling, symbol of life and growth, adorned with a ribbon declaring, “Bienvenida, igualdad (Welcome, equality).” In succeeding months approximately 2,000,000 citizens, in a country of 15,000,000, would petition the offices of the civil registry for the new, nondiscriminatory birth certificates. One congresswoman hailed the bureaucratic flood as a “vindication of human dignity.”

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