Guerrilla Governance: Troubling Gender in the FARC

By Kimberly Theidon
As featured in the Human Rights Quarterly, August 2024
Photo credit for featured image: Associated Press (Figure 1. Peace Negotiators in Havana, Cuba)

ABSTRACT

All armed groups have internal regulations, and these regulations frequently involve the governance of affect, intimacy, and reproduction. Drawing upon my ethnographic research with female former combatants from Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), I explore the gendered aspects of these governance regimes. How was intimacy dictated and policed by commanders and peers? What are the tropes regarding women and violence, and how are these frequently eroticized? What forms of reproductive governance were exercised within the ranks? For women who chose to leave the FARC, either informally or via official Demobilization, Disarmament, and Reintegration programs, to what extent does reintegration involve the redomestication of “transgressive” women?