Both women and men don an equivalent fatigues and you can perform some exact same work: clean, preparing, design

Zero gender paradise

Rios’s mountainside go camping about local government from Icononzo holds three hundred someone, at which 125 is female, in keeping with the latest sex proportion from FARC as a whole.

“For us, ladies have the same rights because men,” told you 38-year-old Gregory Morales, an excellent 17-12 months seasoned of the rebel classification.

Unlike ideal-side paramilitaries they struggled, FARC provides a sex commentary, told you Kimberly Theidon, a professor and you may educational movie director regarding sex study in the around the world degree on Tufts University’s Fletcher University.

Both former and you will current ladies in FARC IRIN questioned told you that they had registered new rebels voluntarily and had become liberated to prefer the sexual partners. None said that they had encountered sexual attacks – statements consistent with exactly what you to definitely traumatization counsellor who works closely with ex-combatants got and additionally observed.

These types of profile differ from accounts compiled by people legal rights watchdogs particularly Amnesty Around the world and those liberties did not stretch on their regulators whenever it concerned pregnancies.

“If you are a beneficial guerrilla, you have to take birth control,” said Victoria Sandino, a senior FARC chief who was the group’s associate with the a beneficial gender sub-fee while in the peace talks within the Havana, Cuba.

She said it was a requirement since the FARC was at a keen productive combat. In the event that guerrillas had pregnant and wanted to keep the kid, that they had to go out of the team. Once they wanted to stand, they had in order to abort, said Sandino.

“There’s new ideology and there is the facts, as there are a gap between the two,” told you Theidon, noting exactly how she had viewed center-aged commanders that have quite women because of the their front side. “What exactly is towards forty-five-year-old-man toward more youthful guerrillera?”

Theidon, who has researched new FARC extensively, told you male guerrillas have said they don’t need to marry the comrades while the women competitors experienced numerous intimate couples. “There was good stigma as much as such ladies, actually one of the of those they offered.”

Women aren’t depicted from the ideal echelons of armed outfit. On 7-user secretariat one controls new FARC, for instance, there are no women.

“For people, it’s been hard to get into positions of management because it is a military with a beneficial patriarchal program and you can machismo,” Sandino recognized, adding one to from inside the tranquility deals, an internal endeavor to own recognising female ensued.

“When you find yourself gonna place the landmine, you should be sure to do not breathe, that hand dont shake”

5 years in the past, she said, there have been no girls among the 29 elder commanders of your FARC’s mutual standard team. Today, you will find 61 commanders and eleven ones was girls.

Friendship and you can fraternity

From the time thirty two-year-old Yurany Cardenas was a young escort services in El Paso child expanding up on a ranch boxed-in from the araderie. She dutifully assisted her mother and you can little sis develop corn and you will yucca, however it is an adult men relative she appeared around. When she are 14 years of age, you to definitely cousin, aged twenty two at that time, remaining to participate the FARC.

Cardenas, such as anyone else elevated inside secluded corners away from Colombia, had been used to the group. Her mommy was too poor to send Cardenas and her sis to school and you will FARC competitors pitched during the. “They gave my personal mommy money so i might go to college, buy books and uniforms,” told you Cardenas. “With regards to help, We examined 3 years away from top college or university.”

However, Cardenas was not trying to find college or university. She wanted to sign-up the lady cousin. Cardenas told you she produced several attempts to persuade the new guerrillas and it eventually concurred, for the condition she spoke so you’re able to the woman mom regarding it. The lady mom, not surprisingly, begged her to keep: “You will be big, although not large enough,” Cardenas appreciated this lady stating.