Objective/Context:

To propose an analytical reading of histories about the political-sexual violence unleashed in torture centers of the secret police (National Intelligence Directorate - dina) during the dictatorship in Chile (especially the period 1974-1976). The analysis unveils the psychosocial mechanisms of sadism that characterized the protagonists of this sexual violence.

Methodology:

The research is based on the monitoring and discursive analysis of “false” testimonies offered by some known torturers (Osvaldo Romo, Miguel Krassnoff, Ingrid Olderock) and disclosed in printed publications, audiovisual records and judicial documents released between 1990 (at the beginning of the first civilian transitional government) and 2014 (when the first lawsuits for sexual torture were filed).

Originality:

the article offers a psycho-political interpretation of political-sexual violence, presented as a product of a sadistic prostituting institution. It shows how this institution was operated by torturers whose “truth” was that of the perverse social and sexual contract of the dictatorship: a truth that also emerged regarding the “pact of silence” and denialism concealment in the mismatches implicit in their discourses.

Conclusions:

The analysis allows us to conclude that the socio-sexual contract of the dictatorship needed to foster, capture and feed on the sadism of the subjects hired as secret agents. It also shows how this contract normalized the sadistic apathos and the sexualized cruelty unleashed in spaces of exception (the clandestine detention and torture centers), from which the “normality” outside those spaces was imposed and reinforced as a project of authoritarian patriarchal domination.

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