Zero sex utopia

Rios’s mountainside camp regarding local government out-of Icononzo retains three hundred individuals, from which 125 try girls, consistent with the intercourse ratio of FARC overall.

“For people, people have a similar rights as the boys,” said 38-year-old Gregory Morales, an effective 17-season experienced of your break the rules category.

In place of the proper-wing paramilitaries they fought against, FARC have a sex commentary, said Kimberly Theidon, a professor and you can academic manager out-of intercourse research when you look at the in the world education at the Tufts University’s Fletcher College or university.

The previous and current feamales in FARC IRIN questioned said they had inserted the newest rebels willingly together with already been able to favor their sexual people. None said that they had confronted sexual attacks – statements in line with just what one upheaval counselor who works with ex-combatants had and additionally observed.

These profile change from accounts published by individual rights watchdogs such as for example Amnesty Worldwide and people rights didn’t continue on their regulators whenever they came to pregnancies.

“If you are good guerrilla, you have got to get birth-control,” told you Victoria Sandino, an elder FARC frontrunner who was simply the fresh group’s member on the an excellent intercourse sub-commission while in the peace talks from inside the Havana, Cuba.

She told you it had been a necessity due to the fact FARC was in a keen active war. In the event that guerrillas got pregnant and you can wanted to keep the child, they had to exit the group. If they desired to remain, that they had to help you abort, said Sandino.

“There was the ideology and there is the facts, and there’s a space among them,” said Theidon, noting how she got seen middle-old commanders which have very ladies because of the the side. “What is on 45-year-old man toward young guerrillera?”

Theidon, having investigated the fresh FARC extensively, told you men guerrillas said they don’t must marry the comrades given that girls fighters have had several sexual couples. “There is certainly a stigma doing this type of lady, even one of the of these they presented with.”

Girls commonly illustrated throughout the ideal echelons of one’s armed clothes. In the seven-user secretariat that controls the brand new FARC, as an instance, there are not any lady.

“For all of us, this has been tough to enter positions of frontrunners because it is a military which have an effective patriarchal design and you will machismo,” Sandino recognized, incorporating that into the serenity negotiations, an interior struggle for recognising people ensued.

«When you are gonna put the landmine, you need to make sure to try not to inhale, that give never move»

5 years ago, she said, there are no women among the many 29 elderly commanders of one’s FARC’s joint standard professionals. Now, discover 61 commanders and 11 of those try girls.

Friendship and you will fraternity

Since that time 32-year-old Yurany Cardenas is actually a young child growing abreast of a farm boxed-in by the araderie. She dutifully aided the lady mom and nothing aunt develop corn and you will yucca, however it was a mature men relative she seemed as much as. When she try fourteen years old, that cousin, old twenty two at the time, left to become listed on the new FARC.

Cardenas, such anybody else increased when you look at the secluded edges out-of Colombia, has already been regularly the group. Her mommy was also bad to send Cardenas and her brother to school and you will FARC fighters pitched within the. “It gave my personal mother money thus i could go to college, pick instructions and you may clothing,” told you Cardenas. “Along with their assist, We analyzed three years out of first college or university.”

However, Cardenas wasn’t finding college. She desired to signup this lady relative. Cardenas told you she generated multiple attempts to encourage the fresh new guerrillas and you may it eventually consented, towards the status she spoke so you’re able to their mom about it. The girl mother, and in addition, begged the woman to remain: “You are large, not adequate,” Cardenas recalled this lady stating.