Countdown to freedom

Alicia Quiñonez Bustamante
Married 29 years, separated 4 years

Idling at a red light on Christmas Day 1999, Alicia's life flashed before her. Her estranged husband suddenly appeared in front of her car, crowbar in hand. In an instant, he had smashed the windshield and was screaming death threats. Alicia fled while a bystander restrained her raving husband. She found refuge in a home close by and later filed charges with police.

That was the last time Alicia saw her husband, Italo Medina Cuevas. But she is still married under Chilean law. "I'll be the first in line [for divorce] come September," says Alicia Quiñonez Bustamante, a softly spoken 50-year-old.

She married in 1975, just after graduating from university, and the problems started right away. "To be honest, it was always bad from the day we married," she says. "We only dated for six months, and in those days, it was dating old-style here in Chile. Women didn't have it very good. Being a virgin and marrying a virgin was very important. People didn't really know their future husbands. I had very restrictive parents. I could never go out and dance with my partner, or get to know the habits he had."

Those habits included drinking more than a bottle of wine or spirits a day. They also included yelling at her and breaking things whenever something went wrong.

Then Alicia got pregnant. She hoped the arrival of children would change her husband. She reached out to her family for help, but they told her to grin and bear it.

"Here, they teach you to accept the lot you were given," she says slightly bitterly. "Unfortunately we are a generation of repressed women. I was the first in my family to have a professional degree ... They teach you that marriage is for life and I was ashamed to admit that I had made a bad choice. So I tried to maintain the relationship, hoping it would improve with time. But it only got worse."

Her husband started putting their three children down and intimidating them. He stopped working. He started taking anti-depressants and would mix them with his daily alcohol - a cocktail that made him even more explosive.

Alicia shows me the dents in almost every door in her apartment, the broken sockets, the furniture she has had to replace.

Those are the scars she has managed to hide. But when he started acting up against her at work, it was the beginning of the end. Alicia worked for 25 years as a nutritionist with the Chilean air force. Her husband became obsessed with the idea that she was cheating on him after she put a stop to their sex life. He started stalking her and monitoring her phone calls. And he asked contacts of his in the air force to start investigating her.

When she found this out from a superior at work, that was "the drop that made the glass run over," she says. "I have always had the utmost professional prestige. And he was messing it all up." She found a lawyer listed in a newspaper and after a costly court case on family violence charges, he was forced to leave the home and she got her separation.

It was six months before he actually left for good, then he attacked her on Christmas Day. After she pressed further legal charges, he fled to the United States and has not been seen since.

Alicia still fears he will return some day, either to harm her physically or financially. As her husband, he could still theoretically lay claim to half her assets.

Alicia says the separation has been liberating, but that she has still felt stigmatised. "Separated women in our country are not very accepted," she explains. "People categorise you as someone who failed. Friendships change once you are separated. Women start to protect their husbands from you, as if they think you're after them."

"But with divorce, I don't think there will be such a stigma. It will be legal. This right has been accepted."

Hernan Loyola Tobar
Married 28 years, separated 28 years

Hernan Loyola Tobar's reasons for wanting a divorce are very different to Alicia's. He was married for only six months. He has been separated for 28 years.

His wife, Gladys Carter, now lives just a few houses away from him, with another man. She cannot marry her new partner, of course, but Hernan believes that she should have that right if she wants it.

"I was made to get married," he explains. "I was only 21 and I was trying to be a gentleman. Now I think I was an idiot."

Hernan says he felt like a failure after his marriage went sour - they were both too young and quickly found out that they didn't get along. He was a firefighter but after they separated, he did some soul-searching and took up photography. He considers himself a frustrated artist. Today he sells matches on the buses of Santiago.

"I would have tried to get an annulment years ago, but I never had the money for that," he says. Although divorce is illegal, annulment has been widely practised for years. In fact, almost 10% of Chilean marriages end this way. It is a legal loophole, in which the couple argues that their marriage was never valid because they married in the wrong jurisdiction, one where they did not reside. Another possible reason for annulment is if the marriage was never consummated. But that obviously won't wash if there are children.

But even if you can prove the grounds, annulment isn't cheap. It costs around 450,000 pesos (£450). So, for hundreds of thousands of people like Hernan, it has been out of the question.

Annulment must also be a mutual decision. Under the new law, a divorce can be granted even if only one partner wants it, although a couple must have been separated for three years.

Hernan's circumstances easily fit that requirement, and he says he would at least like a second chance, if he should happen to meet the right person. As he puts it: "I'd like to have the freedom to make the mistake again."

Teresa Lobos
Married 16 years, separated 1 year

Freedom is the key word for Teresa Lobos. This 39-year-old mother of two says she has only begun to understand the meaning of that word since she separated from her husband a year ago. Teresa married 16 years ago. Like Alicia, things started to go downhill from the start.

Her husband drank and was obsessive about her leaving the house. She says that the daily psychological violence was unbearable. He would put her down, yell at her, and there were moments where the verbal abuse escalated into physical violence. "He wanted me only for himself and not for the rest of the world to see," explains Teresa. "And the violence reached such a level that I had to leave. He stayed and I left with my two kids. I don't even have my house. I think the divorce law will bring a fair division of our assets."

Teresa went to live first with a relative, and now rents an apartment. As a married woman in Chile, she needs her husband's signature for any major financial move. She cannot buy a house without it. She cannot apply for a mortgage. She cannot start up a business. Her husband refuses to sign papers and is manipulating her financially, she says.

Like many women in Chile, Teresa stayed longer than she should have partly because she was financially dependent. But she started volunteering at a hospital three years ago, and found herself migrating to the ward that deals with rehabilitating abused women. She started identifying with them and found herself giving advice that she realised she should be taking herself. This realisation gave her the impetus to make a break.

The experience of volunteering in the hospital, and doing something she enjoyed, also helped her to find new ways of supporting herself. Last week she began university classes in a rehabilitative therapy programme and is now working part-time in a hospital for abused women in the north of Santiago.

"I think the problem with Chilean women who suffer violence within the home is that they put up with it, and we do this because for generations we have been raised to be submissive housewives," says Teresa. "My family raised me this way. But nowadays women have started going out to work, being more independent and not depending on their husbands for anything."

"It's a liberation," she says. "And within these attempts to liberate ourselves, men have felt threatened and have fought back with their machismo. This machismo has deep roots here, going back generations."

She says society is changing, however, and this law proves it. Teresa feels that divorce will give her freedom. She repeats the word several times over, until it comes out convincingly. "Putting that freedom on paper will at least guarantee me that freedom," she says. "Here, women have been too trapped by their marriages. But I am helping to teach them now that marriage does not mean submission. Love is in freedom."