Amorals, Countercultural Youth and Drugs during the Uruguayan Dictatorship. The Fight against “Vice”

Abstract

During the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1984) a policy of fear was built that linked homosexuality, counterculture, consumption of psychoactive substances and subversive activities. This article analyzes the way in which these issues were grouped under the “vice” category. The view that drug consumption produced in men the rejection of their masculinity, and in both genders sexual frenzy and group sex practices, and that this was a strategy of communism to weaken Uruguayan youth is visible in the press of the time. and the official publications of the Montevideo Police Headquarters. The goal of the text is to analyze the way global changes in the field of sexuality, the destabilization of the heteronormative binary and the visibility of some recreational drug consumption impacted Uruguay and were used to develop a policy of normalization and repression on youth, which gave the police a prominent role in the fight against subversion within the framework of the “war on drugs” and the Cold War.