Men and women don the same fatigues and perform the same work: cleaning, cooking, build


Men and women don the same fatigues and perform the same work: cleaning, cooking, build

Zero intercourse haven

Rios’s mountainside camp regarding the local government out of Icononzo holds 3 hundred some one, at which 125 is ladies, in keeping with the latest gender ratio off FARC overall.

“For all of us, females have the same legal rights due to the fact guys,” said 38-year-old Gregory Morales, a 17-year veteran of your push back class.

In lieu of suitable-wing paramilitaries it fought against, FARC has actually a gender discourse, told you Kimberly Theidon, a professor and you will educational movie director out-of gender research for the global degree within Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

Both previous and you will latest women in FARC IRIN questioned told you that they had joined the latest rebels voluntarily along with come liberated to like its sexual couples. Nothing said that they had encountered sexual attacks – statements in keeping with just what you to stress counsellor who works together with ex-combatants had plus noticed.

This type of levels differ from accounts written by peoples liberties watchdogs such as Amnesty Internationally and people rights don’t stretch on their bodies when it came to pregnancies.

“When you are an effective guerrilla, you have to get contraception,” said Victoria Sandino, an elder FARC frontrunner who was the newest group’s user into the an excellent gender sandwich-commission through the serenity conversations in the Havana, Cuba.

She told you it absolutely was a necessity once the FARC was a student in a keen active combat. In the event the guerrillas got expecting and you will wished to contain the child, that they had to depart the team. Once they desired to remain, they’d so you’re able to abort, said Sandino.

“There’s the newest ideology and there’s the reality, and there’s a gap between the two,” said Theidon, noting how she got viewed center-old commanders having pretty females from the their side. “What exactly is towards forty-five-year-old man to the young guerrillera?”

Theidon, who may have researched the FARC widely, told you male guerrillas said they won’t must marry the comrades since females competitors have had multiple sexual people. “Discover a beneficial stigma up to such girls, even among of those they offered.”

Women aren’t illustrated regarding the top echelons of your armed clothes. On eight-representative secretariat one controls the fresh new FARC, for-instance, there are not any ladies.

“For people, it’s been hard to enter ranking out of management since it is a military which have a great patriarchal system and you may machismo,” Sandino accepted, including you to inside serenity dealings, an interior endeavor having recognising people ensued.

“If you are likely to place the landmine, you need to be sure to usually do not inhale, that the give do not move”

5 years ago, she told you, there are zero ladies among 29 older commanders of your own FARC’s shared general teams. Now, you can find 61 commanders and you will eleven of those is lady.

Friendship and you can fraternity

From the time thirty two-year-dated Yurany Cardenas is actually a child increasing through to a farm boxed in by araderie. She dutifully assisted their mommy and nothing brother develop corn and you will yucca, nonetheless it is actually a mature male relative she seemed up to. When she try 14 years of age, you to definitely relative, aged 22 during the time, remaining to join the fresh FARC.

Cardenas, including anyone else raised into the remote sides off Colombia, was already accustomed the team. The girl mom try also terrible to send Cardenas along with her cousin to college and you can FARC competitors pitched within the. “They provided my personal mother money thus i may go to school, buy books and uniforms,” told you Cardenas. “Making use of their let, We examined 3 years from top university.”

But Cardenas wasn’t wanting university. She wanted to sign-up their relative. Cardenas told you she generated multiple attempts to convince the brand new guerrillas and it finally agreed, into condition she talked to her mother about it. Their mother, not surprisingly, begged the girl to keep: “You’re larger, but not big enough,” Cardenas recalled this lady claiming.