Confessions to intimate violence: FARC testimonies to sexual violations in the Colombian conflict

ABSTRACT

This article examines a rare event: confessions to “intimate” acts of sexual violence by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Using a dramaturgical approach, it explores the transformation of “confessional acts” from silence and denial to excuses to eventual remorse and condemnation. It explains the shifts in the FARC’s narratives (scripts) in terms of who performed them (actors), when and where (stage and timing), audiences’ reactions, and the role of directors (FARC leaders). The article uses the unique FARC case to consider how confessional acts can break global patterns of denial and silence around sexual violence in armed conflicts. As sexual violence lacks heroic or military justification and has the potential to harm armed groups’ image, it is logical that leaders would attempt to manage what is said. Audiences comprised of the FARC’s opponents, former combatants, victim-survivors, and enemies influenced scripts. On alternative stages, new narratives acknowledged sexual violence and acceptance of responsibility for it. Over time, leaders lost directorial control over the original denial performance. Understanding this dramatic and contentious process, the article contends, holds the potential for helping to build a strong norm – shared by all sides of Colombia’s polarized post-war society – to condemn sexual violation whenever it occurs and whoever is involved.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual violence
• FARC
• Colombia
• transitional justice
• confessions

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the insights from the following colleagues: Mariana Ardila, Jelke Boesten, Gwen Burnyeat, Mariana Casij, David Jimenez Di Murill, Martha Maya, Ivan Orozco, Daniela Quinche, Alexandra Valencia Molina, Paula Vargas, Nicolas Zuluaga Afanador, Julia Zulver, and the International Feminist Journal of Politics’ anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Sexual violence is defined as “rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity” (ICC 1998, 4).

2 Non-governmental organizations working with victims, investigative organizations, and Colombian academics documented sexual violence committed by the FARC in the early 2000s (see for example Amnesty International 2004; Fiscó 2005; SISMA Mujer 2007). In 2008, the Colombian Constitutional Court acknowledged that sexual violence had been perpetrated by all of the illegal armed groups and the Colombian armed forces. It documented sexual violence during territorial advances, to obtain information, as a war strategy, against women informants, and as “sheer ferocity” (de simple ferocidad) (Corte Constitucional 2008).

3 Despite this promise of equality, women combatants regularly faced discrimination and sexual violence from male comrades, as documented in reports (see for example Amnesty International 2004; Fajardo Arturo and Valoyes Valoyes 2015).

4 The JEP “investigates, clarifies and punishes those most responsible for the most serious acts of the Colombian armed conflict” (JEP 2023a). Macro-Case 11, which opened in September 2023, focuses exclusively on “sexual violence, reproductive violence and other crimes committed because of prejudice, hatred and discrimination based on gender, sex, identity and diverse sexual orientation in the context of the Colombian armed conflict” (JEP 2023b).

5 Not all of the Corporación Rosa Blanca members were child soldiers or faced sexual violence at the hands of the FARC. Nonetheless, the organization is often linked to the FARC’s enemies on the right, owing to its criticism of the peace process on social media (Twitter) and traditional media platforms (Corporación Rosa Blanca n.d.).

6 Though coverage of such confessions is rare or non-existent in the media, prosecution hearings have documented these crimes. For example, in Justice and Peace trials (which focus on paramilitary forces’ criminal activities), magistrates have presided over cases in which former paramilitaries have recognized sexual and gender-based violence committed by members of their organization (see for example Sala de Justicia y Paz 2020).

7 For other narratives, see for example Inger Skjelsbæk’s (2015) analysis of sentencing judgments against sexual violence offenders during the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

8 The “EP” after the FARC abbreviation stands for “Ejército Popular” (“People’s Army”).

9 This extract is taken from a private interview with Sandino carried out by Kiran Stallone and Julia Zulver. Parts of this interview can be found in Stallone and Zulver (2017).

10 See Note 9.

11 Timochenko has himself been accused of sexual violence. At the JEP, Luz Fary Palomar Quintero stated that he raped her when she was a 13-year-old child soldier and then forced her to have an abortion (Semana 2020a).

12 Karina has also been accused of encouraging the rape of a woman (El Tiempo 2022), but we have not found any responses from her about this specific sexual crime.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Fell Fund, University of Oxford [Grant Number 0011163].

Notes on contributors

Leigh A. Payne

Leigh A. Payne is Professor of Sociology and Latin America at St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, UK. She is the author of books, chapters, and articles on transitional justice, confessions to violence, and human rights.

Kiran Stallone

Kiran Stallone received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California Berkeley, USA. Her research examines gendered agency in war, with a focus on Colombia.