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<b><big><big><span class="style1">Guerrilla Girls of the FARC-EP:<br>
Making War, Peace, and History</span></big></big></b><br>
<br>
<span class="style2">by Chris Gilbert and Vilma Kahlo<br>
</span>17.01.14<br>
<span class="style2"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/gk170114.html">http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/gk170114.html</a><br>
</span>
<p>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 <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agustina_de_Arag%C3%B3n"
class="style5">Agustina of Aragon</a>, <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Ben%C3%A1rio_Prestes"
class="style5">Olga Benário</a>, <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_Bunke" class="style5">Tania
Bunke</a>, <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Grajales_Coello"
class="style5">Maria Grajales</a>, and <a
href="http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/cl3171/" class="style5">Celia
Sánchez</a>, or even (stretching a bit) the legendary Amazons. It is
not for nothing that <em>Liberté </em>-- the allegorical figure
depicted by Delacroix in the barricades of the July Revolution -- is a
woman.</p>
<p>Colombia is no exception to this rule. From even before the
independence, women such as the <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaitana" class="style5">Cacica
Gaitana</a> and <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policarpa_Salavarrieta"
class="style5">Policarpa Salavarrieta</a> 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, <a
href="http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/gp120413.html"
class="style5">now engaged in peace dialogs in Havana</a>, has sent a
delegation there that is about a third women.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>Poverty and Injustice</strong></p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>Though women certainly have it worse in Colombia, making up a large
part of the nation's almost <a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22341119"
class="style5">five million displaced people</a>, 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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>These women are continuing an old tradition in the FARC. The
organization was founded in 1964, when 48 peasant farmers in <a
href="http://www.cedema.org/uploads/Diario_Marquetalia.pdf"
class="style5">Marquetalia</a> successfully withstood the attack of
more than 10,000 government troops. Among the "Marquetalianos" were
two heroic young women: Judith Grisales and Miriam Narváez.</p>
<p><strong>Away from the War</strong></p>
<p>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 <a href="https://plus.google.com/103069945768341299969/about"
class="style5">Coppelia</a> for an ice cream or join them in browsing
used books in Havana's innumerable <a
href="http://www.cubaliteraria.cu/librerias.php" class="style5">bookstores</a>.
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.</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.mujerfariana.co/" class="style5">Web page</a> and
Facebook account.</p>
<p>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 <em>compañera</em>
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 <a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/12/21/covert-action-in-colombia/"
class="style5">high-tech bombings</a> 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 <a
href="http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/media/telesur.video.web/telesur-web/#%21es/video/macarena-tumbas-mentiras-y-saqueo/"
class="style5">Macarena</a>, the largest mass grave in Latin America,
where Colombia's special forces deposited <a
href="http://youtu.be/GYJYH1gJ9hg" class="style5">some 2,000 corpses</a>.
At least one member of the delegation has been a victim of torture and
rape by enemy soldiers.</p>
<p>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 <a
href="http://www.es.amnesty.org/presidencia-europea/casos/las-madres-de-soacha/"
class="style5">mothers of </a><a
href="http://www.es.amnesty.org/presidencia-europea/casos/las-madres-de-soacha/"
class="style5">Soacha</a>, 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.</p>
<p>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 <em>are forced </em>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.</p>
<p><strong>Looking Toward Peace</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>For this reason, the most conscious sector of Colombian women has
often taken up arms to change their country's oppressive conditions.</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr>
<span class="style3">Chris Gilbert is professor of Political Science at
the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. Vilma Kahlo is a documentary
filmmaker who is currently working on <em>Rosas y Fusiles, </em>a
film about women in the FARC-EP. En Español: <a
href="http://www.mujerfariana.co/index.php/nos-gusta/141-las-guerrilleras-de-las-farc-ep-parteras-de-la-historia"
class="style5">www.mujerfariana.co/index.php/nos-gusta/141-las-guerrilleras-de-las-farc-ep-parteras-de-la-historia</a>.</span>
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