Leftist Feminist political prisoners

At the Memoria Borgoño, we used embroidery art to celebrate the courage of women political prisoners' anti-fascist resistance against the guards, despite the degrading circumstances.

Young Communist League feminists pose in front of the Red Star, which Pinochet's bandits had stolen from the Party headquarters and riddled with bullets, only to be miraculously found and recovered after 17 years.

Women political prisoners speak out about the abuses at the National Stadium.

The Women's Locker Room, a memory site in Chile's National Stadium where an estimated 1,200 women were detained during the Pinochet dictatorship. (Hillary Hiner)

FORCED PREGNANCY = TORTURE

Delhi Police raided Communist Party of India (Marxist) headquarters to arrest Aishe Ghosh in 2021 case; MP John Brittas calls it revenge for protest role Delhi Police on Tuesday reached the CPI(M) headquarters in New Delhi to arrest SFI leader and former JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh in connection with a 2021 case. CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas alleged that the move was an act of political revenge, claiming Ghosh was being targeted for her role in recent protests.

On the 100th Day of Detention, Sezin Uçar: They Want to Create an "Acceptable" Prisoner Like an "Acceptable" Woman

Yet the voice Sezin Uçar raises from prison does not merely recount the unlawfulness she has suffered and the judicial pressure she faces; it also focuses on the shared life the women in Ward B-6 have woven and the deep rights violations to which they are subjected.

Uçar compares the collective life of the detained women, which transcends the limits of the ward, to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous feminist utopia Herland: “We took first-aid lessons from the healthcare workers among us and learned the Heimlich maneuver; every day we do sports with our pilates instructor, and we play the bağlama and sing folk songs.”

How do the days pass in prison? How do you organize your daily life? What are your readings, your work, or the things that keep you going?

In a quite crowded closed Ward B-6 where the physical conditions are difficult. The ward was first planned for 12 people, then expanded with bunks and extra beds first to 24 and then to a capacity of 36.

In recent months our number rose to as many as 53. When our number is high, you even have to plan the simple details of life such as when sports and cleaning will be done, when meals will be eaten, when laundry will be washed and dried. Despite all these difficulties it is an environment in which individual and collective work is also carried out.

Above all we try to follow social and political developments outside. On the one hand I am reading about fascism and anti-fascist struggle experiences. After all, when one becomes a captive, one’s responsibility for the development of social struggle does not disappear. So how should one act?

Here this is a subject on which we read more, think more, and discuss more. Shouldn’t a person also reflect on their own action? After all, outside, in the midst of so much rushing about, there is often little time left for thinking, isn’t there?

Here we are together as women from different segments of society. We try to turn this into an advantage.

For example there are healthcare workers among us. The other day they both gave a talk on basic topics related to women’s health and gave us a first-aid lesson. Outside we had never had the opportunity to take this lesson. (We all learned the famous life-saving Heimlich maneuver, for instance.) Every day our pilates teacher works us through pilates.

I am trying to improve on the bağlama, which I began playing in high-school years and which I pick up again whenever I am detained. Since there are also musician friends in the ward, I decided not to miss the opportunity.

There is a book called Herland. I read it a few years ago. It is a utopia narrative.

I liken this place a little to the country created by the women in that book with their magnificent way of thinking and living. Of course one must not forget that prison, apart from the aspects I have listed, is also a center of entertainment production.

Our jokes played on those who are detained for the first time are famous. The comedies that arise while trying to share incoming food fairly; the calculations we make about at what angle we should place which bed relative to another in the common area (the upper mezzanine of the ward, which is described as common because the number of captives exceeds capacity) in order to benefit from physics for a more comfortable sleep—we have quite a bit of fun.

In short: we are reading, thinking, discussing, learning from one another, having fun—in other words, as women we are deepening the relationships we form with each other and strengthening the bonds we build.

“They want to create the acceptable captive”

What are your observations regarding the other prisoners in the prison? What would you like to say especially about the problems experienced by sick prisoners and about prison conditions?

A great deal is written and reported about the problems experienced in prisons. Especially after the establishment of Administrative Observation Boards, the increasing frequency of disciplinary investigations and the postponement of the release dates that captives have earned (defined in captive literature as “burning the sentence”) is a fundamental problem.

Just as the political power wants to create the acceptable woman and the acceptable opposition, it also wants to create the acceptable captive. It wants to create people who do not object, who do not seek their rights, who correspond within the boundaries drawn by the administration, who read the books the administration wants, and who choose as visitor friends people who fit these boundaries.

I have observed more clearly here how the burning of sentences turns into a pressure on captives. It is not only an uncertainty about the date on which one will be released; it is desired that the entire life of the captive be designed taking this possibility into account.

Let me recount an incident that occurred the other day, for example. The imposition of handcuffed examinations and the soldier’s refusal to leave the examination room (they have now also fixed a body-worn camera; in addition to accompanying the examination they also want to record it) is a highly restrictive practice with regard to captives’ access to treatment.

Now, in addition to this, separate investigations have begun to be opened against captives on the ground of refusing treatment.

Especially for sentenced captives the following contradiction arises: either they will try to go to hospital and receive treatment—yet because of the conditions I mentioned, the probability of encountering a disciplinary penalty that results in the burning of their sentence because they “refused treatment” after being unable to receive treatment is very high—or, solely so that their sentences will not be burned, they will not go to hospital despite very serious illnesses.

While I am on the subject I would also like to touch on the decline in quality regarding the ethical principles concerning the treatment of prisoners among healthcare workers.

Last month, while arguing with a doctor in the gynecology clinic about the removal of the handcuffs and the removal of the commander with the body-worn camera from the examination room, I mentioned the protocols related to the treatment of prisoners.

The doctor turned to me and said, “Oh come on, madam, if we get hung up on protocols we won’t be able to get any work done here.”

Their seeing the examination as a process that begins with going behind a curtain and removing clothes, their not being disturbed by conditions that disregard patient-doctor privacy, their finding it strange that I did not answer the questions asked while the soldier was still in the room, and so on, are indicators of this decline in quality.

Of course it is not right to generalize. I do not want to do an injustice to the physicians who continue their profession in accordance with ethical principles despite all difficulties.

I wanted to give an example of the decline in quality in healthcare relative to the previous period, and of the reflection on captives of the lack of merit that the state is trying to design in all areas. Apart from this fundamental problem, the prison administration bases its entire policy on making the lives of captives more difficult. Pencils are sold in the canteen, but pencil sharpeners are not. Mechanical pencils are sold, but the leads are not. Only pads are sold as menstrual products. Access to tampons or menstrual cups is not possible. For such quite simple daily needs you may have to make long efforts.

The Meeting of Women of Latin America and the Caribbean was inaugurated this Friday in Buenos Aires, Argentina .

Three years after the last meeting, revolutionary, anti-fascist, and anti-imperialist forces from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Paraguay, Honduras, Chile, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Argentina are gathering to strengthen the organization and struggle of proletarian women and the entire working class worldwide.

Our party, the Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR), the Union of Revolutionary Youth of Mexico, and other social and labor organizations from across the country are present.

"It was savage, aberrant": account of women abused during the dictatorship

ENGLISH DUBBED

Beatriz Benzano, a former militant of the MLN-Tupamaros, recounts her arrest in 1972 and the horrific abuses she and her companions suffered, including forced nudity, public exposure in barracks, and various forms of sexual violence

The National Liberation Movement –Tupamaros (Spanish: Movimiento de Liberación Nacional – Tupamaros, MLN-T) was a Marxist–Leninist urban guerrilla group that operated in Uruguay. Women leadership in militant revolutionary organizations was deeply threatening to capitalist patriarchy. And so extreme measures of state violence and humiliation tactics was used to break their spirit. As military men they were offended by the idea of women guerillas as their equal enemies. And so the nude parading of Marxist guerilla women on the barracks parade ground made a grotesque mockery out of them.

Women victims of Pinochet's tortures on the misogyny of the guards (23:14-27:57).

The torturers justified their actions by expressing that women should remain at home and focus on their families, and therefore, their involvement in politics was seen as an offense. A survivor explains, "We were punished because we had misbehaved, gone beyond the proper boundaries, and it was our fault that we were here." Furthermore, the victim notes that the guards "rejected women's involvement in politics because they believed women should be at home" and viewed their political activities as a "break with tradition."

In Women's Hands (PBS Americas, 1993, 57 mins.)

Revolutionary hip hop song in honor of Comandante Tamara's attempted Tyrannicide of Pinochet.

Comandante Tamara was one of the leaders of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), a guerilla organization which arose from the Communist Party of Chile in the 1980s to fight against the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

His brutal, misogynistic targeting of the Party’s women comrades to be enslaved as property, had lead to a period of demoralization. Humiliation was used to terrorize women out of politics. A military-wing of the Party lead by women leading a direct attack on Pinochet himself inspired a regalvanizing of the resistance. Comandante Tamara inspires us with the power of Marxist-Feminist women to lead revolution under the most degrading of conditions.

Recabarren Pilgrimage, 1989, Communist Youth of Chile - JJCC -

In honor of the founder of the Party

Luis Emilio Recabarren ended his life tragically on December 19, 1924. His death causes great shock and regret in the social and political movement, and in the people who take to the streets in a massive farewell to who was the main labor leader of recent decades. Testimony of this remains in the documentary “El Funeral de Luis Emilio Recabarren” by Carlos Pellegrín, in which the tour through the streets of Santiago can be seen, especially along Av. La Paz.

On May 21, 1989, in another historic moment, the Communist Party of Chile carried out a pilgrimage to the General Cemetery along the same route. They were the end of the dictatorship and the path towards the restitution of democracy in Chile.

The record of the pilgrimage was photographed by Juan Carlos Cáceres, for the Fortín Mapocho newspaper. These photographs that are part of the Fortín Mapocho Photographic Archive are shared below.

Women's Protests against Pinochet 1986

English Dubbed Documentary

In the third episode of "Chile, The Forbidden Images", broadcast on August 28, 2013, what was not seen of Pope John Paul II's visit to Chile is shown. You will also learn about the testimonies of the women who organized to protest against human rights violations during the Dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Chilean women activists extinguish Pinochet's "eternal flame of liberty"

Interpretive dance on the sufferings of leftist women political prisoners

Using Carlos Alonso's Anonymous Hands series as a gestural and movement score, the victim/perpetrator duo is presented in an endless narrative. Capture, abduction, humiliation, torture are presented as different sections of a complete action that is continuously repeated.

Performers: Physical Theatre Staging Laboratory Noelia Cavalin, Paula Fernández Dossi, Adrián Cozzi, and Leo Di Napoli. Director: Yamil Ostrovsky

The Anonymous Hands series comprises works created since 1981 using various materials, primarily oil pastels. They speak to us of the brutal human rights violations committed during the dictatorship; they are the visual representations of state terrorism. This collection could well illustrate the accounts gathered by the CONADEP in the Nunca Más report . 

In the series, the representation of the violated human body transforms the work into a critique of the exercise of power, challenging the way of representing a traditional genre such as nudity.

Carlos Alonso worked on the theme of violence throughout his life; his work proposes another context for interpreting it, a non-time anchored in the human condition.

Throughout his extensive career, Alonso experimented with a wide range of materials and techniques: oils, acrylics, collages, drypoint, woodcuts, lithographs, etchings, and aquatints. His work falls within the expressionist movement, representing reality in an incisive, dramatic, and stark manner, sometimes with a touch of irony or sarcasm.

He was openly interested in political and social themes, directly impacting the viewer through his portrayals. These creations constitute a Brechtian, embodied style. It is not a uniform or static style. Regarding this, he would say: “For me, embodied style means that it appears when the actor is mobilized carnally, in their entirety. It is not just intellectual; the flesh, the viscera, the whole person are involved. It is not handled as a merely manual art; it goes much further. A series of coincidences are needed, gears that come together, and then the embodied style begins to function. It appears when several qualities combine, not only color, form, and composition, but also other substances” (La Marea Magazine No. 22: 2004) .

The disappeared women suffered specific forms of torture because of their status as activists (belonging to a political, neighborhood, community, or workers' organization). This systematic torture involved various forms of sexual abuse, mistreatment and torture of pregnant women, clandestine maternity wards, and the theft of babies born in captivity.

Argentine Dawn II,  1984. Pastel on paper.

In the cultural model the dictatorship attempted to impose, women were confined to the domestic sphere—they could not be active in their political positions—and were expected to remain subservient and obedient to their husbands and, through them, to social power. The torturers, embodying patriarchal and religious values, materialized the mandate to "inflict pain," carrying out merciless torture. This was the punishment for the collective desire and will for "another paradise" without such inequality.

Argentine Dawn III , 1989. Pastel on paper