00:00Beneath the dark veil of human history, there is a pain that spans centuries like an open wound.
00:07Invisible to eyes that refuse to see, inaudible to ears that refuse to listen.
00:15Sexual slavery, a practice as old as the very idea of possession and domination,
00:22It reveals not only the monstrosity of societies that have organized themselves around power,
00:27but the extreme fragility of the human body when reduced to a commodity, instrument, and object.
00:34From the earliest civilizations, when humankind was still shaping its existence,
00:40with blood and mud all the way to modern times, where technology conceals the chains under codes and ciphers,
00:49The plight of sex slaves persists as the most silent and enduring of horrors.
00:57Long before empires rose with the solidity of stone, there was already the theft of freedom and of
01:05female body.
01:06In the Code of Hammurabi, engraved on clay tablets more than 3,700 years ago,
01:12There are laws that regulate not only the slave trade,
01:16but explicitly the use of women as concubines,
01:21often acquired as part of a debt or a military victory.
01:26The enslaved woman was doubly possessed; her body belonged to the Master, and her soul was condemned to silence.
01:36Among the Sumerians and Akkadians, there was a brutally pragmatic understanding of sexuality.
01:43The vanquished woman was an extension of the man's victory, a living trophy, flesh molded to satisfy the conqueror's lust.
01:52War has always been the mother of sexual slavery.
01:57Egyptian records also reveal similar practices.
02:03Starting with the Middle Kingdom, when Egypt consolidated itself as a military power,
02:08There are mentions in temple and tomb inscriptions of foreign women brought as prisoners.
02:16to serve in royal harems or in the homes of nobles.
02:21The harem, although shrouded in an image of luxury and mystery,
02:25For many, it was a prison where screams dissolved behind linen curtains and thick perfumes.
02:33Female sexuality was domesticated, disciplined, but never liberated.
02:40The pharaoh could have hundreds of concubines, and each one represented a life taken from her people.
02:50from their culture, from their identity, to be reconfigured as a piece on the grand chessboard of dynastic power.
02:58In Ancient Greece, the cradle of democracy and philosophy, social hypocrisy reached extreme levels.
03:06which the thinkers themselves avoided denouncing vehemently.
03:10While Socrates taught about virtue and Plato wrote about the soul,
03:16The squares of Athens were frequented by men who bought and sold enslaved women.
03:22as mere consumer products.
03:25The pornai, enslaved prostitutes, lived in brothels run by the state or private individuals.
03:34There was no room for love or choice, only the obligation of sexual service.
03:40imposed by force and the total absence of rights.
03:44Freedom, a concept so celebrated in the agora, was systematically denied to these women.
03:53whose existence did not even deserve to be recorded by official chroniclers.
04:01In Rome, the system was even more sophisticated and cruel.
04:06Roman law established the ius vitae nesisque, the right of the master over the life and death of the slave.
04:15And that included absolute power over the female body.
04:19Sex slaves were an integral part of domestic and public life.
04:24They could be concubines, prostitutes, or even used in public performances.
04:31For the entertainment of the masses, who went wild in the arenas, while female bodies were violated.
04:39as part of the show.
04:41The practice of brothels, legalized houses of prostitution, reveals an underground world.
04:48where thousands of women, many of them from conquered provinces,
04:54They were forced into daily sexual exploitation.
04:57Sexual slavery was institutionalized, regulated, and accepted as a normal occurrence.
05:05of Roman existence, celebrated even in literature, as in the poems of Catullus and Ovid,
05:13which depicted, with aesthetic beauty, what was, in essence, brutal violence.
05:20And when empires fell, and the Middle Ages rose upon the smoldering ruins of Antiquity,
05:28The practice not only survived, but transformed itself.
05:32In feudal Europe, the bonds of servitude imposed on women servants.
05:38were sexually available to feudal lords,
05:43in a custom known as droi du señor, the right of the lord.
05:48Although some historians dispute the true extent of this practice,
05:55There is no doubt that the sexual exploitation of subordinate women
06:00It was a constant reality, often perpetuated.
06:04under the protection of the church and the aristocracy,
06:08who transformed the female body into a political currency,
06:12Military reward or religious offering.
06:15On the other side of the world, in the Islamic caliphates,
06:20another form of sexual slavery emerged,
06:23deeply organized and widespread.
06:27The harems.
06:28In the splendor of Baghdad, Damascus, and Istanbul,
06:32Women from various parts of the world were kidnapped or bought.
06:38to integrate the harems of caliphs, sultans, and emirs.
06:43Many came from the far reaches of Europe, captured by Barbary pirates.
06:48Others were brought from sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, or the Caucasus.
06:54In Ottoman harems, for example, women like Roxelana,
06:59who rose from slave to wife of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent,
07:05They exemplify one of the very rare exceptions to the rule of absolute submission.
07:11Most, however, never saw the world beyond the stone walls and inner gardens.
07:18forever confined to a life of isolation and submission.
07:23Sexuality, in this context, was meticulously controlled.
07:29an exclusive privilege of the sovereign, who determined when and how each woman would be used.
07:37In the African continent, sexual slavery also manifested itself in diverse ways.
07:44both in traditional structures and in the context of the transatlantic slave trade.
07:50Arab caravans crossing the Sahara kidnapped women for the markets of North Africa.
07:57and from the Middle East, where they would be sold as concubines or integrated into harems.
08:05With the arrival of Europeans and the development of the slave trade,
08:10Sexual slavery became intertwined with the trade in human bodies on an industrial scale.
08:17Captured African women were frequently subjected to sexual abuse.
08:25during forced marches to ports and, later, during ocean crossings.
08:33In the Americas, already as enslaved people,
08:36They became targets of systematic violence from plantation owners, merchants, and colonists.
08:42who saw in them not only a source of labor, but also a permanent sexual object.
08:48Brazil, as the largest recipient of enslaved Africans,
08:53Its historical formation bears the indelible mark of this practice.
08:59Slave quarters were spaces where sexual violence against Black women occurred.
09:05It was a daily and brutal practice, perpetuating a dynamic of exploitation.
09:10which generated not only incalculable suffering,
09:13but also a silent legacy of forced miscegenation,
09:18where children were born from violence and grew up under the same system that had violated their mothers.
09:24And so, over the centuries, sexual slavery has metamorphosed.
09:31adapting to the social, economic, and cultural contexts of each era.
09:36In the 19th and 20th centuries, even with the formal abolition of slavery in many countries,
09:43Sex trafficking networks flourished in the shadows.
09:48The term "white women trafficking" emerged in Europe as a euphemism.
09:54for the kidnapping and sexual exploitation of young girls taken to brothels in distant countries.
10:01Sexual slavery was abandoning its iron chains.
10:05but she retained intact the psychological and physical shackles that had always characterized her.
10:12Today, in the 21st century, the plight of female sex slaves persists.
10:18More hidden, more sophisticated, but no less brutal.
10:22The global human trafficking industry generates billions of dollars.
10:27fueling criminal networks that kidnap, lure, and sell women and girls
10:34for sexual exploitation on every continent.
10:38What was previously perpetrated under the legitimacy of imperial laws,
10:42It now occurs under the indifference of consumer society.
10:46who often consumes products and services without realizing that behind a luxurious storefront...
10:54A single digital click can lead to a life being shattered by sexual slavery.
11:01And so we continue as humanity, carrying this silent burden through the ages.
11:08always finding new ways to deny, conceal, or downplay a crime that has never ceased to exist.
11:16But the scars remain imprinted on the bodies, in the collective memory.
11:23in the invisible fabric that connects generations.
11:26Because sexual slavery, more than a historical phenomenon,
11:30It is a mirror that reflects the darkest side of the human condition.
11:35The infinite capacity to transform the other into an object, to mold the flesh of others.
11:42The very desire to extinguish one's own soul in the name of pleasure, profit, or power.
11:49And as long as there is no one to look these women, from yesterday and today, in the eyes,
11:55recognizing in them not the condition of silent victims,
11:59But for a violated humanity that cries out for justice, this drama will continue.
12:05traversing the centuries, reinventing itself, perpetuating itself,
12:10like an endless echo of our deepest moral bankruptcy.
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