Photograph of protest art from a report on the sexual torture of women political prisoners under the Pinochet regime. In educating the masses on what women endured, it is crucial to confront them with the direct brutality and horror of what women suffered. When threatened by the revolutionary power of women, the patriarchal capitalist state reduced them to a literal position of sexual slavery. Naked and blindfolded they were dragged around by chains attached to their necks. When pulled the chain would put enormous strain on their vulnerable necks choking them and cutting off oxygen. It was an instrument of control to keep militant women in submission and compliance. Survivors recall the cruel taunts "Look at you now, puta. Chained and collared like the communist animal you are." Instead of being silenced by humiliation and shame, creating this gigantic protest art reverses the shame. It is of crucial symbolism that despite being blindfolded, we can still look into her eyes. Whatever the Junta thugs attempted to reduce her to, she is still a revolutionary heroine.
La violencia sexualcomo forma de torturahacia las mujeres
The military dictatorship that began in Chile in 1973, after a bloody coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende and left thousands of people dead, missing,
Imprisoned and expelled from the territory, during the 17 years he was in power, he exercised permanent repression and persecution of men and women considered "dangerous" to the stability of the de facto regime. Torture, in its various forms, began on the same day as the coup against people who were taken prisoner in the streets, houses, workplaces, universities, factories, neighborhoods, and continued with great intensity throughout the period in which the military were in power, with Augusto Pinochet at the helm.
Women were not absent from this sad record. In fact, many still suffer today from the profound physical and psychological consequences left by torture, and many others died as a result of it. Sexual violence was a main part of the sessions with which the military of the various branches ruthlessly sought to punish women who dared to politically dissent, or who helped in one way or another people opposed to the regime.
However, despite the fact that torture with sexual violence was experienced by a large number of the prisoners, it was not always viewed by them as a practice with gender-based violence connotations.
On this occasion, we present an article by the Chilean psychologist Carolina Carrera, from the La Morada Corporation, Citizenry and Human Rights Area, which refers to the research "Women victims of sexual violence as torture during political repression in Chile, 1973-1990. An open secret", carried out by this organization and by the Women's Institute, with the aim of making visible that during the Pinochet dictatorship women were subjected to specific torture because of their sex.
We complement this writing with an interview with Dr. María Isabel Matamala, an expert in gender and women's health issues, with extensive experience in defending human rights, who, from her personal experience as a former political prisoner, refers to the traces of torture and sexual violence and to the need to give space to the stories as a way of healing for the victims and society as a whole. Stories that have mostly been silenced until today.
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