As Soledad Larraín, in collaboration with Lorena Valdebenito and Luz Rioseco, demonstrate in their pioneering study, Country Assessment on VAW: CHILE, published in July 2009 and sponsored by the United Nations, violence against women (VAW) is an area of major concern in Chile. The authors define VAW as

• (i) Occurs within the family or domestic unit or within any other interpersonal relationship, irrespective of whether the perpetrator is currently residing or has resided in the past with the victim, such violence includes, among others, rape, battery and sexual abuse;

• (ii) Occurs in the community as a whole and is perpetrated by an aggressor, including among others, rape, sexual abuse, human trafficking, forced prostitution, kidnapping and sexual harassment either in the workplace, in educational institutions, health facilities or in any other place;

• (iii) Is perpetrated or condoned by the State or its agents regardless of where it occurs.

The third point raised – which itself points to the culpability of State employees actively condoning or turning a blind eye to VAW – is significant and has an important resonance for the two novels written by Chilean women and studied in this and the following chapter, that is, Diamela Eltit's Fuerzas especiales (Special Forces; 2015) and Carla Guelfenbeim's Contigo en la distancia (In the Distance with You; 2015). Fuerzas especiales, in particular, as we shall see, focuses on the representation of VAW, and it does so in the context of the broader political lockdown imposed by State authorities on Chile's subaltern classes.

The authors of the above-cited report also draw attention to the promulgation in Chile of Law No. 19.325, dated August 1994, and Law No. 20.066 of October 2005, which served to criminalize domestic violence, as well as Law No. 19.617 (1999) and Law No. 19.927 (2004), both of which relate to sexual violence and are symptomatic of a ‘conceptual change regarding the judicially protected asset, which was initially considered as being confirmed to the family sphere and to public morality, but is now considered part of “sexual freedom”’. The monitoring of crimes demonstrated that ‘femicide represents nearly half the women murdered in Chile and that they generally occur in a context of past or present intimate relationships’.