Personal and Political Narratives: Radicalization of Peruvian Women Combatants

Introduction

The last stage of political violence in Peru confronted the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (Partido Comunista del Perú- Sendero Luminoso; PCP-SL) and the Revolutionary Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru; MRTA) against the Peruvian state that lasted until the year 2000,¹ ending with the defeat of both armed groups.² In 2001 the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación; CVR) was established in order to analyze the causes, responsibilities, and costs, both human and material, of the violence that ravaged the Andean country for two decades. The "Informe final" (Final Report) concluded that there were approximately 69,280 people killed, including deaths and disappearances. Three out of four of those killed lived in rural areas and 75 percent of the total spoke Quechua or had an indigenous language as their mother tongue. The development of Peru's internal armed conflict aggravated existing social, ethnic, and gender inequalities in Peru.³

Today, although there is a certain degree of consensus on the causes that triggered the wave of violence: structural roots, sociocultural, and historical circumstances,⁴ and political will,⁵ women from both groups are judged through gender stereotyping and superficial analyses that emphasize their biological and psychological traits, their incarceration is claimed to be only related to private and emotional issues, and they are in some cases classified as "deviants," in an attempt to erase all traces of politicization and agency. Because of the lack of academic research in this area, they are perceived as a threat to the system in that they are likely to destabilize it by transgressing the role assigned to their gender. Nevertheless, some of the research conducted in the last decade on women's subjectivity and memory focuses on women as agents of political violence, not as victims.⁶

There is not much academic literature on Peruvian armed conflict from a critical feminist perspective, unlike media articles—especially during the decade of the 1980s and 1990s, which treat the issue with sensationalism and morbid fascination. Society, media, and the legal system judge women who commit to acts of violence more severely than men accused of similar acts. Women fully participated, playing many roles, such as ronderas,⁷ neighborhood leaders, peace activists, human rights defenders, and fighters. In general, women are only acknowledged in the role of victims, because among other factors sexual violence was common not only during the Peruvian conflict as a military strategy, but also throughout the rest of the world during wartime.⁸ Therefore, research on the Peruvian conflict with a gender perspective largely focuses on sexual violence and transitional justice.⁹

The discourse of the Peruvian media and government, in order to punish this violation of gender stereotypes (not peace-loving girls, but women who kill), achieved their objective in Peruvian society, provoking intense fear of and anger against women suspected of participating in armed actions.¹⁰ The women in the PCP-Shining Path caught the attention and interest of the media, whereas the women of the Tupac Amaru Movement barely appeared in the newspapers.

The dominant discourse about women in armed groups defined them as ruthless, unfeeling, unnatural, and cruel. In the press, women from Shining Path were frequently described as "monsters, killing machines and crazed automatons, qualities less frequently ascribed to their male counterparts."¹¹ These fears were incorporated into special police training courses, which claimed that women are more dangerous, fierce, and bloodthirsty than men. One 1990 National Police training manual describes "female subversives" as "more determined and dangerous than men, [they have] extreme conduct [and are] very severe. They have the dichotomy of weakness and hardness, are indulgent, exploit and manipulate other, they are impulsive and risky."¹²

In spite of recent research, there are many myths on this topic that attempt to make female political violence invisible, apply gender stereotyping psychology to the participants, and devalue the presence of women in armed struggle. Hence, it is important to highlight the social and political factors influencing this phenomenon.¹³ In the Peruvian case, faced with...