"Chile's military dictatorship incorporated traditional gender roles in its efforts of political domination".

Wars, armed conflict and similar situations of violence always leave a wake of pain and death. Sexual violence and other forms of torture long have been used against women detained or disappeared in these contexts. It is often difficult for women survivors to share these experiences with other people, but talking about the torture is part of the healing processes. Dr. Maria Isabel Matamala stresses the importance of speaking out in this interview by Revista Mujer editor Adriana Gomez.

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Why is it so important to examine torture from a gender perspective?

When we talk about political participation under the dictatorship and the impact of torture on women and men who were political prisoners, it is essential to employ a gender perspective. The armed forces completely incorporated gender roles in their political domination under the dictatorship that brutally overthrew the rule of law in our country. Any symbolism with regard to the social construction of gender was exaggerated when it came to the political role of women.

From the patriarchal perspective of the military, women's autonomy was precisely what was most forbidden; it was absolutely illegitimate. They could not accept that women would take political initiative. This was a complete violation of ideal of the female role. I believe that the fundamental objective of the military torturers was to establish their domination over the women and break them by causing long-lasting repercussions in their relationships with male partners. The impact of torture on women's reproduction and sexuality was fundamental in this respect.

How did the military view women's sexuality and reproduction?

Reproduction was addressed in two ways by the patriarchal military dominion. Women were condemned for being politically active in addition to being mothers. Because they were not "saintly" mothers, they were clearly "whorish" mothers. The military also assumed that all women were mothers, and they threatened to torture your children sexually, psychologically or physically. So on one hand, they blamed the women for being something more than mothers, and then they used motherhood against the women by showing them proof that their son or daughter was being tortured or threatened with torture.

With regard to the sexuality of the women political prisoners, we must bear in mind how the patriarchal system constructs women's sexuality and women's bodies. When the military dictatorship took power, women's sexuality in general was not exercised in a context of self-esteem based on autonomy, on women's ability to make decisions regarding their lives or their own body. In other words, conscious liberation was not common among the women who were politically active or who sympathized with those who fought the dictatorship, much less so among among Chilean women in general. Rather there was a very incomplete idea of women's liberty and autonomy that was hobbled by a leftist, Marxist perspective that did not go as far as we have today.

So the symbolic aspects of the construction of the body and sexuality were there, ready for the taking, to be used by the military. The threat of rape, actual rape, sexual abuse, sexual domination became fundamental mechanisms in the patriarchal efforts to break down the women and to transform them into tools to be used by the military.

It was logical that the first thing that the torturer would do would be to strip off your clothes. By ripping off something that covers you, part of your protection is removed. Now you are clothed only in your self-esteem. So if you are weak, if you don't have some sort of inner strength, something to sustain you, then you suffer much more. This is not gender analysis; it is much broader.

Self-esteem was a sort of shield.

Of course, and there are many things that reinforce one's capacity for self-esteem, such as your social class, your ethnic background, age, level of maturity, educational level, etc. These are protective processes, and if you do not have them, then you are much more vulnerable to your body or sexuality being used by others, in this case, by torturers. So women reacted in many different ways to the sexual violence. On the other hand, in terms of maternity and reproduction, I think that the women who were tortured reacted more similarly, even though these personal stories are still playing out. We have seen that the generation of women who endured the processes of domination and repression are much less open to allowing their children to be free and autonomous than their own mothers! Most of the women who were political prisoners were active politically in the 1960s. They had to break with the previous generation or had to negotiate with the members of the earlier generation and transform them so that they would accept the new lifestyles and freedoms that we so eagerly sought in those emblematic years. Nonetheless, after the terrible ordeals that the women experienced in prison, they were changed. The torture had such a tremendous impact on their lives that they finally became much more protective than their own parents. I have found that the women reacted in much more similar ways with regard to maternity, but the sexual torture left scars on their bodies and on their sexuality that vary widely from woman to women.

Some pregnant women were tortured while they were political prisoners. There were women who were made to miscarry. There were women who had forced pregnancies. Each woman had a different reaction. One woman I know said, "This baby is not the child of the soldier who raped me. It is my child, and I am not going to have a abortion because it belongs to me, regardless of the circumstances in which it was conceived."

So the torturer used the woman's body to break her spirit.

It's related to how each woman analyzed her relationship with her body. For example, people like me who worked in the healthcare field had a unique relationship with the body, with what the body means, and what it means to be naked. Perhaps that's why, when we were detained, we were better able to deal with being stripped in the torture sessions. However, other political prisoners who didn't share our background suffered terribly because they were not use to being naked unless they were in a situation of intimacy.

These difficulties also explain why so long afterwards it is still hard to express publicly what happened to women after the sexual violence of torture. It is very disturbing for society to have to confront the stories that these women have to tell. It is hard to hear the testimonies of these brutal experiences. On one hand, you have not shared these experiences; yet you can imagine them. And on the other hand, hearing the stories of women who were subjected to sexual torture is intolerable because if you are a woman, you cannot help imagining yourself in the same position. Even if you are a man who hears these stories, it still affects you very profoundly.

Do you think that that these stories have been silenced?

When women try to recount what happened to them, even when they are speaking in a legal or institutional context, they are quickly silenced with the response: "Oh, yes, I understand, don't worry, you needn't go on ..." Their testimony is stopped short because there is already a notion of what the experience of sexual torture entails. This need to stop the narrative is, in my opinion, a legitimate form of self-defense used by those who were not tortured. But when we look more closely, we can see that such responses have limited the healing process that could have occurred through the narrative act.

In other words, something is keeping this healing process, which occurs when one recounts what has happened, from taking place. Society keeps it from happening, as well as the institutions and even the women themselves.

Do you think we need a dialogue about torture under the military dictatorship, specifically sexual torture?

There has reflection on what the political activism of women in these circumstances implied. But we have not examined more seriously the impact of sexual torture, even though the impact of torture on people and on the political parties, movements and organizations has been analyzed. Nonetheless, as women in Chile and throughout Latin America became more familiar with the powerful ideas of European and North American feminism, we began to compare our reflections on torture and political activism, on torture and the body, and share our thoughts as both feminists and political activists.

An initial, more collective analysis of these issues in Chile was a roundtable held at my house in 1992. But it really was soto voce, because there was no public. It seems as if these issues really bothered a lot of people who were involved in political activism at that time. Those of us who had been exiled were talking about our experiences of torture and sexual violence, but those who had stayed in Chile had not yet voiced what had happened to them. They felt that maybe it was inappropriate to share these experiences.

What is the tendency at the international level, to keep quite of to speak out?

Well, we should remember that in 1976 in Belgium the first Women's Tribunal to denounce crimes of this nature was held, but we are talking about Europe. Later, there were many other tribunals, even in the contexts of the NGO Fora of the many world conferences in the 1990s. But I do think that it is essential that we create the opportunity for women to speak out about what took place, to put the issues out there for public debate so that a wide range of women can talk about what happened to them then and what has happened to them since. How have they dealt with this pain? What has helped them?

Is it possible that some of the women who were raped while they were imprisoned feel guilty for being raped because of the patriarchal construction of sexuality and the body in our society?

Yes, it is possible. There are signs that you can see in some of the women. It is revealed in certain attitudes. For example, I remember some women who had been tortured and raped who admitted that they would never let anyone give them a gynecological exam. It is really amazing how these women gradually have taken up many different opportunities for freedom, but nonetheless, there is a contradiction that underlies their daily lives. I have spoken with women of other countries who have endured similar experiences of sexual torture, and they agree that often their relationships with men reproduce the models of patriarchal domination. This has come out, for example, in the comprehensive care given to victims of gender violence in which we often see that women who had been sexually tortured as political prisoners were also involved in violent relationships.

What is important is that there already are some Latin American studies on the topic, and others will follow. For example, Las Dignas in El Salvador undertook a very valuable study on sexuality and reproduction as landmark experiences in the lives of women guerrilleras that was carried out under the guidance of Teresita De Barbieri. There's also the study done by La Morada in Chile that refers specifically to sexual torture (Ed. Note: see pp. 57-62, in this issue). There is so much to talk about; we need to create more opportunities for dialogue, to propose different perspectives and emphases from the diverse experiences of women. In this regard, we must remember that the revolutionary undertaking has been very male dominated, but women were always involved in different ways, some as leaders, others as companions, and this has an impact on their experiences of torture through their bodies and in their lives.

There are always comments that women torturers were especially cruel Is this true or le it another gender stereotype?

There is an idealization that men tortured but women did not. There were proportionally more male torturers, but there were also women who tortured the political prisoners. I would say that the men were more sadistic, but we would also have to examine the experiences of men who were tortured by women. This has not been documented either.

The infliction of pain was erotic for the men who tortured us. This was very obvious. The torture took place in the context of sexual aggression and sexual pleasure through pain. Sexual torture and sexual violence were not the only erotic components for the torturers; the very infliction of pain was as well. This is clearly sadism.

How can we create awareness about these facts so that they never occur again?

By encouraging autonomy, empowerment and self-esteem, we can strengthen society, both collectively and individually. The citizenry as a whole and people as individuals must be autonomous and have power over themselves, be able to make their own decisions over their own bodies, and this will make them strong enough to be able to resist the power of the military. Saying "Never Again" and teaching the military about human rights is useful, but it's not enough. It doesn't guarantee a change. This transformation will come when we have a citizenry that is much freer, made up of people who are freer and more powerful.

When we are evaluating the damage done by torture, I think that being less damaged has to do with the empowerment that each of us was able to develop socially and individually, as a whole, holistically, how we created our own sense of freedom, even when we were in jail, being able to feel free despite it all. And how, today, we see that despite what happened, what we experienced, today we are freer. But this is not just an individual phenomenon; it is a social one, this society of more liberated and more powerful people is the only force of resistance that can oppose the abusive exercise of power.

Was that the case for you? Are you free despite having been imprisoned and tortured?

I was in prison for nearly two years, and during that time, I felt as if I had certain protective elements that helped me survive the moments of torture. I understood what was happening to my body intellectually, as a doctor who had studied physiology, the mechanisms of the body. Knowing one's self and one's body is also part of your freedom and individual sovereignty.

That's why we felt such an identification with the book Our Bodies, Ourselves when this publication reached Latin America in the late 1970s. This book confirmed that the body is a political territory through which we must exercise our right to make our own decisions. Or when we were in exile and had firsthand experiences with the feminist movement in Europe in the Belgian Tribunal that I mentioned earlier or the World Conference on Women in Mexico in 1975. All of this had an impact on me and helped me to reinforce the protective elements that were so useful to me when I was imprisoned. Once I was outside of Chile, these elements allowed me to talk with other feminist women who had lived through similar experiences and share many things.

I was strongly influenced by and still am very much in agreement with Amartya Sen who proposes development as an expression of freedoms. Both individually and collectively, this means increasing your power to decide freely. It is the basis upon which we develop, achieving equity and equality in all spheres of life: this is real freedom, freedom that comes from within. It is the difference between eating well and taking vitamins. When you eat a well-rounded, nourishing diet, you get all the vitamins you need, and this is good for your entire body and your whole life.