María Inés Aguilera

María Inés Aguilera Castro (9 September 1935 – 28 January 2021) was a Chilean teacher and politician from the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). She served as a deputy for Santiago between 1965 and 1969.

Aguilera was born in Guacarhue —today part of the commune of Quinta de Tilcoco— the daughter of Jerardo Noé Aguilera Núñez and María Castro Horta.

She completed primary school in her hometown (1944–1950) and secondary studies at Liceo No. 2 de Niñas in Santiago (1950–1955), followed by evening classes at the Liceo Federico Hanssen (1956). She then attended the Colegio Comercial Manuel Rodríguez (1957–1958).

She married Eddie Pinto; the couple had three children.

Professionally, she worked as a teacher at the Escuela Rural de Valdivia de Paine (1958–1959) and also engaged in agricultural work.

Aguilera joined the Falange Nacional in 1956; the following year it became the Christian Democratic Party (PDC). She helped organize the party’s peasant center in Guacarhue, later serving as women’s director and community leader. Within the party she was commune secretary and community adviser for Lo Valledor Norte, president of the Ninth Commune, women’s president, and president of the United Catholic Creed United Command.

She served as secretary to Santiago councillor Irene Frei (1963–1964).^{[note 1]} She also led support forces for PDC candidate Eduardo Frei Montalva in the 1964 Chilean presidential election, in which he was elected.

Aguilera was elected deputy for the First District of the Seventh Departmental Group (Santiago) in the 1965 parliamentary elections, obtaining 4,812 votes.^[1] She sat on the Permanent Commission on Public Education and the Commission on Roads and Public Works.

Following the killings of eight workers in the mining town of El Salvador on 11 March 1966, she joined the Chamber’s delegation that visited the site on 14 March and then served on the “Special Investigative Commission on Events in the El Salvador Mine,” which concluded the police action had been lawful.^[2] She sponsored a bill to provide benefits to the victims’ families and the wounded, enacted as Law No. 16,988 on 23 October 1968.^[3]

Another initiative she promoted established daycare centers for the children of working mothers. Merged with a similar initiative from the women’s department of the CUT—presented by deputies Gladys Marín and María Maluenda—it became Law No. 17,301 (22 April 1970), which created the Junta Nacional de Jardines Infantiles (JUNJI).^[4][5]

This bill is a tribute from the women of this Parliament to the working mother, to the mother who suffers and waits. This is our response: we present this bill which, while it may not be all we wished, is honestly a great step forward, since the children of women who go out to work will now have a second home where they can stay.

She ran for re-election in 1969 but was not returned to the Chamber.^[4]

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