[News] Guerrilla Girls of the FARC-EP - Making War, Peace, and History

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*Guerrilla Girls of the FARC-EP:
Making War, Peace, and History*

by Chris Gilbert and Vilma Kahlo
17.01.14
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/gk170114.html

If regular armies are generally a man's world, guerrillas and insurgent 
forces are just the contrary. There women have always had a central 
role.  Think of Agustina of Aragon 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agustina_de_Arag%C3%B3n>, Olga Benário 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Ben%C3%A1rio_Prestes>, Tania Bunke 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_Bunke>, Maria Grajales 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Grajales_Coello>, and Celia 
Sánchez <http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/cl3171/>, or even 
(stretching a bit) the legendary Amazons.  It is not for nothing that 
/Liberté /-- the allegorical figure depicted by Delacroix in the 
barricades of the July Revolution -- is a woman.

Colombia is no exception to this rule.  From even before the 
independence, women such as the Cacica Gaitana 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaitana> and Policarpa Salavarrieta 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policarpa_Salavarrieta> have had a key 
role in armed struggle.  Today this legacy of women in resistance 
continues in Colombia's FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, 
People's Army), which is the world's longest-lasting guerrilla still in 
operation.  This seasoned political and military organization, now 
engaged in peace dialogs in Havana 
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/gp120413.html>, has sent a 
delegation there that is about a third women.

Who are these women?  What makes them risk their lives for the ideals of 
socialism and national liberation in a country that is heavily dominated 
by the U.S.?  What is their role in the current peace process, which 
aims at a negotiated solution to Colombia's 50-year-old internal 
conflict?  As a result of our visits to the peace delegation in Havana 
during the past months, we have come back with interesting answers to 
these and other questions about women in the Colombian insurgency.

*Poverty and Injustice*

That Colombia's society is characterized by extreme inequality (with a 
Gini index as high as .89 in some areas) is well known.  Yet, like 
poverty worldwide, its burden is born especially by women.  A combatant 
named Marcela González referred to the link between gender, poverty, and 
oppression: "Women have the worst lot in this conflict. . .   Most 
displaced people are women.  Added to this is the sexual violence, 
family violence, and the fact that most [displaced people] are heads of 
families and wander with their children around the national territory. 
  It is a human tragedy that women live in Colombia."

Though women certainly have it worse in Colombia, making up a large part 
of the nation's almost five million displaced people 
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22341119>, the principal 
reasons men and women enter the guerrilla are just the same.  These are 
basically poverty, injustice, and the inability to do legal political 
opposition from the left.  "The indigence and poverty," Marcela 
continued, "obliges people to look for a way out of that reality."

The lack of political options is really key in determining how struggle 
takes shape.  The last serious attempt to constitute a legal alternative 
party was the Unión Patriótica, formed in 1985.  It generated widespread 
enthusiasm.  However, agents of the oligarchy massacred the U.P.'s 
militants to the tune of about 5,000 deaths in less than a decade.  The 
historical lesson, written on the walls with the blood of the political 
opposition, is that one has to fight for democracy where it doesn't 
exist.  For now, it is only possible to question Colombia's oligarchical 
regime -- armed to the teeth by the U.S and its allies -- bearing arms 
oneself.

Once in the guerrilla, men and women take on all the same tasks.  "Men 
and women have the same rights and the same responsibilities," explained 
Bibiana Hernández, who has been in the guerrilla some thirty years.  "In 
the same way as we tote wood and other supplies and organize the mass 
movement, so we also go to combat and face the enemy.  We're in the same 
conditions as men." Women also assume roles of direction and leadership 
in the FARC-EP, and their equality is part of the statutes of the 
organization.

The women in the current peace delegation come from highly varied 
backgrounds.  Camila Cienfuegos was born in a family from the 
countryside and saw extreme poverty with her own eyes as a youngster. 
  Laura Villa got a medical degree in Bogotá.  She mentions 
privatizations in education and health services as weighing in her 
decision to join the FARC's revolutionary struggle, where she now 
contributes her medical expertise.  Alexandra Nariño, born Tanja 
Nijmeijer in Holland, found a job teaching English in Colombia in 1998. 
  Then a gradual process of learning about the oppression and political 
injustice in the country led to her entering the guerrilla.

These women are continuing an old tradition in the FARC.  The 
organization was founded in 1964, when 48 peasant farmers in Marquetalia 
<http://www.cedema.org/uploads/Diario_Marquetalia.pdf> successfully 
withstood the attack of more than 10,000 government troops.  Among the 
"Marquetalianos" were two heroic young women: Judith Grisales and Miriam 
Narváez.

*Away from the War*

The dozen or so women members of the FARC's delegation may be survivors 
of a brutal conflict -- one of the dirty not-so-little wars of the U.S. 
-- but their soft-spoken manners and civilian clothes tend to make you 
forget about war.  You can sit down with them at the historic Coppelia 
<https://plus.google.com/103069945768341299969/about> for an ice cream 
or join them in browsing used books in Havana's innumerable bookstores 
<http://www.cubaliteraria.cu/librerias.php>.  Despite their political 
tasks, there is still time for reading.  Diana Grajales, a guerrillera 
from southwest Colombia, told us that she is immersing herself in the 
books of Che Guevara.

One of these women's current projects -- in addition to "rearming" with 
books and participating in the peace conversations with government 
delegates -- is to make contact with women's organizations.  "We are 
listening to the proposals of Colombian women's organizations that come 
to us," Alexandra explained, adding that the contacts are also with 
international women's groups.

Comandante Yira Castroobserved that women's movements are often made 
invisible, but the peace process has allowed the guerrilleras in the 
delegation to learn more about other women's struggles and share 
experiences with them.  They also maintain a Web page 
<http://www.mujerfariana.co/> and Facebook account.

Despite the unbroken tranquility of Havana, the war comes back in 
surprising ways when you are in the company of the delegation.  Seeing a 
scar on an exposed arm or noticing the limp of a /compañera/ serves as a 
reminder of how Colombia's government has systematically violated human 
rights during the war.  Colombia's is an unequal, imperial conflict in 
which -- like those in Vietnam or Algeria -- no holds are barred to 
maintain the neocolonial order.  Many of these women have survived 
high-tech bombings 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/covert-action-in-colombia/> 
that resemble the U.S. and Israel's "surgical" assassination attempts. 
  Some have lost close friends and family members, killed in cold blood 
or disappeared into mass graves like the Macarena 
<http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/media/telesur.video.web/telesur-web/#%21es/video/macarena-tumbas-mentiras-y-saqueo/>, 
the largest mass grave in Latin America, where Colombia's special forces 
deposited some 2,000 corpses <http://youtu.be/GYJYH1gJ9hg>.  At least 
one member of the delegation has been a victim of torture and rape by 
enemy soldiers.

Laura Villa spoke of the harsh realities of war: "A war is a war.  This 
is a war for the liberation of the people, and in it there are deaths 
and wounded.  There are casualties that affect us very deeply."  Among 
the painfully felt losses is that of Comandante Alfonso Cano, who 
initiated the current peace process but was murdered by the army two 
years ago.  "The historical record is full of military people who abuse 
power and are guilty of disappearing people," said Camila Cienfuegos. 
  "Think of the mothers of 
<http://www.es.amnesty.org/presidencia-europea/casos/las-madres-de-soacha/>Soacha 
<http://www.es.amnesty.org/presidencia-europea/casos/las-madres-de-soacha/>, 
whose children were presented as false positives [assassinated and then 
dressed as guerrilla fighters].  That is . . . state terrorism."  Camila 
speaks from experience about state terror: she has cigarette burns on 
her hands and arms from being tortured during an interrogation by the 
Colombian army.

On top of the human rights violations, there is nonstop defamation of 
the FARC's women combatants by Colombia's mass media.  They invent 
stories about guerrilleras that are simply a projection of the society 
outside -- a society that, because it pressures women to enter into all 
kinds of exploitative relationships in work and private life, sometimes 
accepts the mistaken and malicious idea that women /are forced /to enter 
the FARC.  Or again, the commercial media falsely accuses guerrilleras, 
who enjoy conditions of gender equality in the FARC that are far 
superior to those in the society outside, of being merely the cooks and 
sexual partners of the comandantes.

*Looking Toward Peace*

One reason for this kind of defamation is to try to divide and conquer 
the FARC-EP, separating women from men.  The effort is futile, say the 
women of the delegation.  In fact, it does not deter a growing number of 
women from making the decision to change the world rather than simply 
contemplate it -- to use Laura Villa's description of her own motives 
for entering the guerrilla -- nor does it cause the women already in the 
FARC to alter their basic vision of social problems or abandon a 
struggle that they understand to be essentially about class and social 
justice.

This last point is important.  The women in the FARC see patriarchal 
domination as part of class struggle and are unwilling to separate the 
two, as some feminists have fallen into the error of doing.  They fight 
not just for Colombian women but for Colombia as a whole.  By the same 
token the peace they might make -- a peace with social justice, a peace 
which goes to the roots of the conflict in social inequality -- would 
also be a peace for the whole society.

How, then, to understand the importance of women in the struggle of the 
FARC-EP?  Why is it that, as Victoria Sandino says, "a revolution 
without the participation of women is impossible"?  Perhaps the key lies 
in the old idea that says those groups, the ones that a society's 
structure places between a rock and a hard place, are the very ones 
called upon by history to change the society.

This is what is called a historical mission.  Nothing could better 
describe the position of Colombian women, whose situation cannot be 
improved without fundamental changes in the whole society.

For this reason, the most conscious sector of Colombian women has often 
taken up arms to change their country's oppressive conditions.

Today that same mission may call for new tactics.  With profound changes 
occurring in many Latin American countries and the resurgence of 
Colombia's popular movement, insurgent men and women may find that they 
can now make peace to achieve the same goals once pursued with war.

Whether that is possible or not depends on whether the Colombian state 
will change its tune and permit a democratic opposition.  That is, 
whether it will be willing to allow the forces of change to become 
participants in normal, legal political activity.  From this humble 
starting point -- a "democratic window" paid for with the lives of many 
guerrilleras as well as guerrilleros -- Colombia's most committed and 
selfless political force could begin the process of dismantling the 
country's structural injustices and thereby forging a lasting peace.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris Gilbert is professor of Political Science at the Universidad 
Bolivariana de Venezuela.  Vilma Kahlo is a documentary filmmaker who is 
currently working on /Rosas y Fusiles, /a film about women in the 
FARC-EP.  En Español: 
www.mujerfariana.co/index.php/nos-gusta/141-las-guerrilleras-de-las-farc-ep-parteras-de-la-historia 
<http://www.mujerfariana.co/index.php/nos-gusta/141-las-guerrilleras-de-las-farc-ep-parteras-de-la-historia>. 

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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