Fostering solidarity for gender/ethnic reincorporation: the experience of female indigenous ex-combatants in tierra grata, cesar

ABSTRACT

This investigation was developed during the first stage of the implementation of the peace accords in the Transit Normalization Hamlet Zone (TNHZ) of Tierra Grata, Cesar, Colombia in 2017. Through interviews, discussions and ethnographic observation, we reconstructed the trajectories of two indigenous women who contributed to the ethnic reincorporation of female Fuerza Autónoma Revolucionaria del Común (FARC) ex-combatants on a micro-local level. Most ex-combatants are entangled in strong patriarchal ties and have encountered myriad difficulties on their path towards reincorporation. This work seeks to answer the following questions: Who are the main actors of the local reincorporation process? What are their personal trajectories? What are indigenous women’s main difficulties with reincorporation from an ethnic and gender perspective in Tierra Grata?

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous women ex-combatants
• reincorporation
• FARC
• Colombia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. An Arhuaco leader from the Simonorwua region who helped to found the Indigenous League, the first Arhuaco process involving a relationship with indigenous and non-indigenous authorities on a national level.

2. It is important to highlight that the status of concentration spaces changed during this fieldwork. There was a transition from hamlet normalization zones to education and reincorporation spaces for ex-combatants.

3. The following day, we learned that he had arrived from Venezuela just 10 days earlier, where he had been imprisoned for 3 years.

4. This has been denounced and conceptualized by Julieta Paredes (2010) and Lorena Cabnal (2013) in the case of Latin American indigenous women.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ángela Santamaría

Ángela Santamaría: Lawyer (Universidad Externado de Colombia). Master in philosophy (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá). PHD in Sociology of Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales de Paris (EHESS). Post-doctoral student in intercultural communication (Universidad Tres de Febrero, Argentina). She is a professeur of the Centro interdisciplinario de Paz, Conflictos y Postconflictos de la Universidad del Rosario. She is the director of the Escuela Intercultural de Diplomacia indígena EIDI, in the Universidad del Rosario. She works about female indigenous leadership, multiple violences against indigenous women and indigenous women memory process.

Fallon Hernández

Fallon Hernández Palacio: Woman, artivist and decolonial feminist. Internationalist (Universidad del Rosario). She currently works as a professor, researcher and coordinator of projects in the Escuela Intercultural de Diplomacia Indìgena EIDI of the Centro de Estudios Interdisciplinarios de Paz, Conflictos y Post-Conflictos (Universidad del Rosario). She is a promoter and coordinator of the Vulvarte project. Her work topics are related to practices of self-knowledge, self-management and self-care for the experimentation of an integral sexuality by diverse women, artistic-erotic-corporal tools and methodologies for healing, and sexual, reproductive and affective rights with intersectional approach.