Corpos Marcados e Crimes Silenciados: a violência sexual no conflito armado colombiano

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to investigate how the structural gender conditions in Colombian society produce and legitimize the use of sexual violence during the armed conflict, focusing on the actions of the paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) between 1997 and 2002. The research starts from the argument that militarized masculinities, marked by aggressiveness and control over feminized bodies, use sexual violence as an instrument of power, social control, and humiliation of the enemy, contributing to economic gains and the strengthening of the group’s internal hierarchies. The adopted methodology is based on Feminist Political Economy, which analyzes the intersections between political-economic inequalities, militarization, and gender identities at local, national, and global levels. The dissertation articulates post-structuralist and decolonial feminist approaches to understand gender as a discursive structure that produces violence and security in the context of war. The work unfolds in three chapters: initially, it discusses the construction of hegemonic masculinities and militarist discourses that associate virility with the use of force, consolidating hierarchical gender roles. Next, it examines the dynamics of the Colombian conflict, highlighting the convergence of interests among agrarian elites, state agents, and extractive capital, who use sexual violence as a tool for territorial expropriation and social control. Finally, it analyzes the sexual violence perpetrated by the AUC and its military and economic purposes, evidencing its role in reproducing a social order marked by gender, race, and class. The results demonstrate that sexual violence is an institutionalized and instrumentalized practice, sustained by power arrangements that traverse coloniality, racism, and militarized patriarchy. The research contributes to expanding the debates by placing Latin America at the center of analyses on sexual violence in war, emphasizing the need for intersectional approaches that consider sexuality, race, and class as co-constitutive dimensions of the war economy.