Description
This work analyzes, from a Critical Feminist Epistemology, the continuities of police Political Sexual Violence (PSV) during two historical moments in Chile. First, the cycle of anti-authoritarian struggles against the dictatorship (1973-1989). Second, the Chilean social uprising that began in 2019. PSV was systematically applied against women involved in politics during the South American dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. In this context, sexual violence on feminized bodies represented both physical and moral domination of the ‘other’, with the aim of indoctrinating women and preventing them from participating in politics. After the dictatorship, survivors of the dictatorship and contemporary feminist groups alike construct the concept of PSV as serving a dual purpose: personal and political. When the 2019 Chilean uprising began, political violence was reactivated on a large scale, and these activists sought to help protesters through education and support to denounce these acts. This political activism was key to confronting and signifying these experiences, creating a common narrative that empowered people after the systematic violence used by the state to repel them from the protests.
