The Munoz brothers said that party promoters feel pressure to be “hotter” than their competitors.
That includes scantily clad, older male and female dancers; strip shows that hold back just enough to remain legal; and party names intended to titillate, like “What would you do in the dark?” On this night, dancing was interrupted for a “slapping” contest onstage in which a boy, pulled from the crowd, was blindfolded and had his arms held behind his back. A lineup of girls and boys took turns slapping him, with the final blow delivered by a heavyset DJ that sent the slender boy flying across the stage. As he rubbed his reddened face, the boy got his reward: the chance to make out with the girl of his choice in public to the screams of other teenagers.
“Everything starts with the kiss,” Nicole Valenzuela, 14, said during a break from dancing at the Cadillac Club.
“After the kiss follows making out, and after that, penetration and oral sex,” she added. “That’s what’s going on, sometimes even in public places.”
Her mother, Danitza Geisel, a 34-year-old sex therapist, said in an interview that she did not worry about her daughter’s attending the parties and, expressing a somewhat contrarian view among academics here, she said the current generation of teenagers was no more promiscuous than previous ones. But Geisel lamented the dearth of sex education in Chile.
The parents of most adolescents today never received formal sex education. Chile’s first public school programs were put in place at the end of the 1960s. But after the 1973 military coup, the Pinochet government ordered sex education materials destroyed, and moral conservatism took hold. It was not until 20 years later, in 1993, that a new sex curriculum was introduced in the schools. Even so, by 2005, 47 percent of students said they were receiving sex education only once or twice a year, if at all. And now educators say they are struggling to keep up with the avalanche of sexual information and images on the Internet.
“Of course we are not happy with that,” said Maria de la Luz Silva, head of the sexual education unit of the Education Ministry. She said that the explosion of Internet access had created a “tremendous cultural breach” that was straining the limits of educators, but added that the ministry was putting in place a new sex education curriculum this year to better “protect” children.
For now, Chile’s teenagers are making decisions on their own.
“This is about being alive,” Cynthia Arellano, 14, said after the Bar Urbano party. “It is all about dancing, laughing, changing the words of the songs to something dirty.”
And with a slight giggle creeping in, she said, “Well, it’s about making out with other boys.”
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