In the 1960s and 1970s, on the back of Cold War global politics, several South American countries experienced right-wing, military coups d’état in response to perceived internal and external threats from communism (and other “subversions”). During this tumultuous time, the state violated many individuals’ human rights because of their association with specific social groups – homosexuals, Blacks, Indians, and women, to name a few. While returning to civilian rule during the 1980s and the 1990s, ten of the twelve countries south of Panama rewrote their constitutions (the outliers being Uruguay’s 1967 and Bolivia’s 2008 constitutions). The authors of these new constitutions wrote into them protections based on social groups such as the ones above – including explicit equality between men and women. For the sake of this assignment, I asked: Since the constitutions affected women’s legal status, to what extent did women affect the creation of the constitutions?

To answer this question, I looked at how many women signed the constitutions of the twelve South American nations. The assumption there being that if an individual signed a document, they would have had a hand in its creation. Finding the various countries’ constitutions was an exercise in researching documents and archives. Navigating each country’s government website afforded insight into its priorities and organization. How deeply must one go into the site to access the constitution (often in the form of a downloadable pdf)? Some had a link directly on the homepage, while for others I received a crash course in government structure. Additionally, I learned that Brazil offers its constitution in audio form, and Argentina provides translated videos in sign language.

Immediately, I encountered inconsistencies both between different countries’ documents, and within individual countries. Most frustrating when comparing different countries’ documents were their inconsistencies in listing people involved. Some did not provide a list of signatories and instead opted to sign collectively as “the Assembly” in the case of Colombia, or “the Congress” for Perú, while others used only their titles, “President, Secretaries, and Conventionals” (what is a Conventional?) like Paraguay’s constitution states. Other constitutions simply stopped after their amendments and did not provide any signatories. To know the persons behind the writing and legalization of these countries’ constitutions would require further in-depth archival research. I would need to learn who was part of the Assemblies or Congresses, or held public offices (legislative, executive, and/or judicial) during the years of ratification.

There were also discrepancies within individual countries’ documents. While signatures accompany most of the typed names listed as part of the National Assembly of Venezuela, there are a handful of missing signatures. How do I interpret this? Could I assume they took part in the debates and discussions leading up to the constitution’s creation and they simply chose not to ratify it in the end? Or were they absent the entire time and thus have no input in the document? To what degree would we consider them “decision-makers?” Another interesting digitized document is Brazil’s 1988 Constitution. Click on the “Updated Text” button, and you can read the entirety of the constitution on the site. The site lists thirteen individuals (along with their titles) as signatories at the bottom, one of whom is assumingly female. However, on the pdf version these same thirteen are joined by more than 542 other names. Below these additions, there are 29 more listed as “participants,” followed by 5 people grouped under “in memory.” It would take substantial time to research everyone’s contribution to creating the text.

Even for those countries that publish the signatories’ names, distinguishing between male and female is problematic. My tallies are assumptions of each person’s sex based solely on their name. Additionally, there are many names with Indigenous or African ancestry that are impossible for me to interpret. This problem steams from that fact that the information of the signatories’ sex was not ascribed on the text. To know the sex of everyone who signed the twelve constitutions in South America, and thus speculate the power women had in their creation, would require considerable archival research. Furthermore, to gain a sense of change over time and consequently the impact these constitutions had on women, researchers would need to examine the role women played in the various military dictatorships and compare that to after ratifying the new constitutions. Until I complete such detailed research, the data for the names and sex of those signatories will remain unknown.