ABSTRACT
While some shantytown women experienced the execution, disappearance, or exile of a family member, this was not the form that repression took for most. More commonly, it manifested itself by way of a persistent military presence in the shantytowns, curfews backed by shooting, and restrictions on freedom of movement, association, and expression. The various forms of repression that shantytown inhabitants endured may be subdivided into direct physical repression and non-violent repression. Non-violent repression included constraints on people's freedoms, not immediately backed by violence. Direct physical repression involved physical violence or the immediate threat of violence by the state. It consisted of generalized repression and targeted repression. Generalized repression was repression that affected everyone in the neighborhood indiscriminately. Targeted repression was repression where a person was singled out for persecution. Both the direct physical repression and the non-violent repression derived from the regime's national security doctrine, according to which leftists were a threat to national security. 109 This chapter examines the generalized, targeted, and non-violent repression that shantytown women experienced, and then explores the endemic and specific fear that resulted from the repression, and the ways in which the repression intersected with poverty and motherhood to shape shantytown women's experiences of the dictatorship.
