An open wound: torture committed against women in the basque context

Abstract

This study is a provisional and open exercise that addresses the progress and difficulties involved in the process of construction of memories on torture experienced by women who, over a period of more than 50 years of political and armed conflict in the Basque Country, were subjected to political violence by the Spanish state. Based on in-depth interviews and observations of testimonies given by women who suffered torture and political-sexual violence in the form of torture, this paper provides an account of the important process that these women are going through in the current context marked by the end of ETA and the rise of feminism. The permitted spaces for enunciation are shaped by an environment in which torture is debated between impunity and recognition, where the discourse on human rights is expanding but still does not recognize all subjects, and where the feminist movement as a whole has yet to fully incorporate this issue in its political agenda. Even so, despite lacking any kind of formal organization or roadmap, these women are making progress on that memory, which does not emerge now but does live through a moment filled with possibilities and risks, from a feminist perspective, in which this study also positions itself, in that crucial crossroads between studies of memory, social suffering and feminism.