ABSTRACT
The contemporary world has witnessed ethnic and cultural violence among peoples that includes the systematic rape and violation of the female population. Indeed, it is now known that rape has always been by-product of warfare between peoples. However, I should like to point out that during the period of state terror in Latin America in the last quarter of the 20th century, authoritarian regimes waged a brutal war against their civilian populations-women and children as well as men-with the goal of silencing all critical consciousness. When women have spoken out against extreme economic and social inequities, their protests have often been met with the wrath of the torturers’ weapons as the terrorist state ruthlessly implements an ideological cleansing of the body politic. Often women have been a gender-specific target of misogynist military and paramilitary forces that kidnap, torture, and murder at will. It is my aim in this chapter to analyze the impact on women of state terror in Latin America and to demonstrate that in conditions of extreme political repression women in the civilian population become direct victims of the traumatizing violence organized by the militarized state. My exploration will attempt to explain the complex relationship between gender and political repression in Latin America and the ways in which gender affects one’s psychological response to state organized terror.
