The International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol.

4, 2010, 110129,
doi: 10.1093/ijtj/ijp029

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface

of War and Peace in Peru
Jelke Boesten

Using the political conflict in Peru as a case study, the author argues that the thesis that
rape is a weapon of war obscures other rape regimes during political conflict. These include
rape as consumption, opportunistic rape, rape by neighbors or family members, forced
prostitution and rape in the aftermath of war. Neglect of forms of sexual violence that do
not fit the rape-as-a-weapon-of-war script seriously impedes the transformative potential
of processes of transitional justice, as it allows for the continuation of (sexual) violence
against women that perpetuates hierarchies based on gender, race and class.

Introduction
The widespread rape of women in wars has been rightly analyzed as an element of
broader war strategies and as a weapon of war. The rape of women identified as
belonging to the enemy camp can be a planned dimension of the overall attempt
to defeat that enemy. Several scholars have identified such practices in the former
Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Guatemala, Peru, Mozambique and elsewhere.1 Reflecting on
this literature, Jean Franco recently explored the cases of Guatemala and Peru, highlighting the atrocity and injustice of mass rape as war strategy.2 Franco emphasizes
the horrific violence of these rape acts, the collective character of perpetration
and the racist underpinnings of rape as a weapon of war the last an aspect that
is particularly relevant to these countries. In both Guatemala and Peru, rape was
facilitated by the idea of racial otherness, by the ingrained belief that indigenous
women are lesser human beings. In the case of Guatemala, moreover, the Commission for Historical Clarification (Comision para el Esclarecimiento Historico)
found that state violence constituted genocide.

Lecturer in Social Development and Human Security, Politics and International Studies, University
of Leeds, UK. Email: j.boesten@leeds.ac.uk
Carolyn Nordstrom, Rape: Politics and Theory in War and Peace (Canberra: Peace Research Centre,
1994); Euan Hague, Rape, Power and Masculinity: The Construction of Gender and National
Identities in the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Gender and Catastrophe, ed. Ronit Lentin (London:
Zed Books, 1997); Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997); Diane
M. Nelson, A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1999); Narda Henrquez and Julissa Mantilla, Contra viento y marea:
Cuestiones de genero y poder en la memoria colectiva (Lima: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of
Peru, 2003); Narda Henrquez, Cuestiones de genero y poder en el conflicto armado en el Peru (Lima:

Tecnologica,

Consejo Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnologa e Innovacion

2006); Dubravka Zarkov,
The
Body of War: Media, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Break-Up of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2007).
Jean Franco, Rape: A Weapon of War, Social Text 25(2) (2007): 2337.


C The Author (2010). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

Abstract

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

111

3
4

6
7

Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Lima: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru, 2003) [hereinafter CVR Report].
Ibid.; Dirk Kruijt, Exercises in State Terrorism: The Counter-Insurgency Campaigns in Guatemala
and Peru, in Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in Latin America, ed.
Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (London: Zed Books, 1999).
To talk about rape is to talk about silence was Kimberly Theidons experience in Peru. Kimberley
Theidon, Gender in Transition: Common Sense, Women and War, Journal of Human Rights 6(4)
(2007): 453478. On the silence of Guatemalan war widows, see, Judith Zur, Reconstructing the
Self through Memories of Violence among Mayan Indian War Widows, in Gender and Catastrophe,
ed. Ronit Lentin (London: Zed Books, 1997).
Julie A. Hastings, Silencing State-Sponsored Rape in and Beyond a Transnational Guatemalan
Community, Violence Against Women 8(10) (2002): 11531181.
Ibid.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

The 19801995 war between radical leftist Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso)
insurgents and the state in Peru is generally perceived as one of the most violent conflicts in Latin America, resulting in an estimated 70,000 deaths and
disappearances.3 It was not an ethnic war; that is, the violence had no ethnically
motivated objectives as it did, for example, in the wars in the former Yugoslavia
and Rwanda. Shining Path focused on class in its analysis of the wrongs of Peruvian
society, which it did not ideologically translate into a conflict between specific ethnic groups. Nevertheless, class being intertwined with perceptions of race in Peru,
the violence had a strong ethnic and racist dimension.4 This was clearly reflected
in the occurrence of and subsequent institutional response to the use of sexual
violence during the war.
Jean Francos, and others, insistence on the reading of rape as a weapon of war,
and in some cases as a weapon of ethnic warfare, helps us to keep focused on the
strategic use of rape in any war, and the continuing effects such experiences have
upon victims, their families and communities. Rape as a weapon of war seems to be
an effective strategy partly because of the persistence of stigma (and the resulting
silence) that is attached to being raped.5 This is largely the cause and consequence
of the inability or unwillingness of institutions to give political meaning to a
broad range of sexual violences. For example, examining the claims of Guatemalan
women requesting political asylum in the US, Julie Hastings found that women
used an almost scripted narrative of state-perpetrated rape in order to fit the authorities definition of rape as a political act.6 Analysis of rape as a weapon of war
uncovers the political dimension of many such acts and has ultimately put sexual violence on the agenda of those institutions concerned with postconflict reconstruction and transitional justice, as in the cases of South Africa, Guatemala and Peru.
Paradoxically, the thesis that rape is a weapon of war can also obscure practices
of wartime sexual violence that do not fit the thesis clear-cut definition. It can
exclude many acts of gendered violence during and after war that emerge from processes of reconciliation, reconstruction and truth seeking. These practices include
opportunistic rape, sexual exploitation and entertainment, rape by neighbors or
even family members and rape in the aftermath of war all acts of sexual violence
that do not fit the accepted rape script in which victim and perpetrator abide by
the logic of two opposing warring camps and their strategic needs.7 Fiona Ross

112 J. Boesten

10

11

Fiona C. Ross, Bearing Witness: Women and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South
Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2003). Ross observes a similar process as Hastings does in the
case of Guatemalan refugees, whereby women can make a claim to being a victim of genderbased violence according to scripted rules of what constitutes sexual violence. For example, a perfect victim excludes any ambiguity (or complexity) about the relation between the perpetrator and
the victim. This made it very difficult to impossible for black South African women to denounce
sexual violence perpetrated on them by members of the African National Congress.
Vesna Nikolic-Ristanovic, Living without Democracy and Peace, Violence Against Women 5(1)
(1999): 6380; Meredeth Turshen, Engendering Relations of State to Society in the Aftermath, in
The Aftermath: Women in Postconflict Transformation, ed. Sheila Meintjes, Anu Pillay and Meredeth
Turshen (London: Zed Books, 2001); Elisabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Women, War and
Peace: The Independent Experts Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Womens
Role in Peace-Building (New York: UN Development Fund for Women, 2002); Madelaine Adelman,
The Military, Militarism, and the Militarization of Domestic Violence, Violence Against Women
9(9) (2003): 11181152; Cheywa Spindel, Elisa Levy and Melissa Connor, With an End in Sight:
Strategies from the UNIFEM Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women (New York: UN
Development Fund for Women, 2004); Donna Pankhurst, ed., Gendered Peace: Womens Struggles
for Post-War Justice and Reconciliation (New York: Routledge, 2007).
I use the term rape to refer to penetration of the body under coercion. I use sexual violence
to refer to a broader range of sexual acts and mutilations. Rape is sexual violence, while sexual
violence is not necessarily rape. In addition, I use the term gender-based violence to refer to
violence against women perpetrated against their bodies because they are women. Apart from
sexual violence, gender-based violence also includes wife battery and other forms of physical and
psychological abuse.
Theidon, supra n 5, makes a strong start in unpacking the complexity of womens experiences in
the Peruvian conflict and explicitly goes beyond hegemonizing assumptions of womens roles. She
also stresses the importance of recognizing these complexities in the construction of memory and
history, as these affect postconflict policies.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

shows, for example, how the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commissions emphasis on an essentialized rape script obscured the systemic oppression
of women by both the apartheid regime and the resistance, and limited womens
testimony to a perfect victim narrative.8 Case studies from the former Yugoslavia,
Israel, Liberia and notably South Africa show that conflict-related sexual violence
stretches beyond rape as a war strategy and, in general, beyond political conflict
itself.9 Assuming that processes of transitional justice look back at conflicts with
the objective of transforming societies toward sustainable peace, it is vital to politicize the violence with which women are persistently threatened and subordinated,
both in war and in peace.10 Additionally, in order to understand the gendered
nature of war, we need to listen to the complex experiences of women beyond any
prewritten assumptions and scripts,11 as well as examine the gendered character
of the behavior of perpetrators of violence.
In this article, I examine the use of rape during the war in Peru. This theoretical
exploration addresses: (1) if and how we can differentiate between motivational
contexts of rape (that is, determine the objectives of the perpetrators as part of
larger sociocultural structures or political motives); (2) how different motivational
contexts result in different interpretations of the relationship between perpetrator
and victim; and (3) how the social and institutional understandings of the relationship between victim and perpetrator determine the responses of all actors involved,
including institutions that are supposed to protect the population. In doing so, I
stress that many rapes are obscured by the social and institutional understandings
attached to much violence perpetrated against the bodies of women. As a result, a

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

113

12

13

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission encountered multiple difficulties in defining
sexual violence and applying this definition. See, Henrquez, supra n 1. In practice, Commission
interviewers sometimes rigidly applied the rules. For a particularly striking case of diverging
interpretations between interviewer and interviewee of what constitutes sexual violence, see, Jelke
Boesten, Marrying the Man Who Raped You: Domesticating War Crimes in Ayacucho, Peru, in
Pankhurst, supra n 9.
Femicide is an increasingly used concept in Latin America and beyond. It denotes the systematic
killing of women because they are women. The majority of these murders are perpetrated by
intimate (ex-)partners. See, Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell, eds., Femicide: The Politics of
Woman Killing (New York: Twayne, 1992). In Peru during January 2009, 23 women were recorded
as killed, while in 2008 the average monthly recorded rate was 15 women. See, Peru Support Group,
Gender and Women in Peru, April 2009, http://www.perusupportgroup.org.uk/pdfs/UpdateExtraGenderWomen[April%202009].pdf (accessed May 2009).

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

majority of victims are neglected and unrecognized by society at large, as well as by

the mechanisms of redress it establishes.12 Testimonies of survivors show, of course,
that they do not forget and that their suffering is continuous. In addition, high
levels of domestic violence and of what is increasingly recognized as femicide13 indicate that Peruvian society has not adequately dealt with violence against women
as a violation of human rights. Therefore, in order to better understand how rape
is differentiated, explained and legitimated in social and institutional life, I unpack
rape regimes during the war. I use the concept rape regime to underline that,
despite the ultimately systematic and political nature of all these forms of abuse,
social and institutional bodies can and will interpret certain rapes as domestic
or otherwise irrelevant to the public sphere. Certain rape regimes for example,
rape in marriage or the contemporarily relevant date rape are often completely
depoliticized. I will show that, despite the political nature of rape in war, many
forms of rape are depoliticized and invisibilized. Thus, in unpacking rape regimes
in wartime Peru, I also explicitly address the link between wartime and peacetime
sexual violence, not to undermine the rape-as-a-war-strategy thesis but to dig
further into the social and institutional underpinnings of such violence.
The growing body of literature examining rape in war leaves several questions
unanswered: Does rape in war have the same social roots as rape in peacetime?
Is rape in the aftermath of war a sequel of that war and, if so, how should it
be explained? Is rape always extraordinary and, if so, who decides its extraordinariness and according to which criteria? Or, since rape in war is a very violent
way to attack individual and communal bodies and therefore extraordinary, is
rape in peacetime ordinary? Such questions have been asked by feminist scholars
with different disciplinary backgrounds, including international relations (Cynthia
Enloe, Cynthia Cockburn), psychology (Nancy Chodorow, Tina Sideris), politics
(Donna Pankhurst, Meredeth Turshen) and anthropology and sociology (Carolyn

Nordstrom, Dubravka Zarkov).

Some of these scholars prefer to speak of continuums of violence to highlight the continuity of gender-based violence in war and
peace. Observing a continuum a continuity and affinity in the use of violence
rather than rupture and exceptionality forces us to examine the underpinning
norms, values and institutional structures that normalize certain violences and
exceptionalize others. An examination of sexual violence against women in war
and peace in Peru shows that the links between these two violences normalized

114 J. Boesten

1) Violence against women is common and widespread in peacetime, thus

peace is not necessarily the right term for the state in which many women live.16
2) If we believe the argument often put forward that war exacerbates existing
violences, then violence against women in wartime merely reflects structural
gender inequality. There is a continuum of violence.17
3) Continuity is also found in domestic violence perpetrated by soldiers/combatants against their own wives, which further blurs the distinction
between war and peace and public and private. In a similar vein, domestic violence increases in the aftermath of war.18
4) There is increasing recognition that the aftermath of war is particularly gendered.19 How postconflict societies deal with gendered violence, and
in particular with rape and rape victims, has an effect on the gender regimes
(re)established in postconflict societies.20
5) The physical event of rape can be the same (for example, penetration under
violent coercion), but circumstances (for example, motivation, context, age,
marital status of the victim) make its meaning, interpretation and legitimation
different.21 This means we need to examine and compare these circumstances
and how they influence meaning.

14

15
16
17

18

19

20
21

For an analysis of processes of normalization of violences that are perceived as extreme in other
contexts, see, Mo Hume, The Myths of Violence: Gender, Community and Conflict in El Salvador,
in Violence: Power, Force and Social Transformation, ed. Ronaldo Munck and Mo Hume, special
issue, Latin American Perspectives 35(5) (2008): 5976. For the active normalization of wartime
violence into peacetime understandings, see, Boesten, supra n 12.
Elizabeth A. Stanko, The Meanings of Violence (London: Routledge, 2003).
Donna Pankhurst, The Sex War and Other Wars: Towards a Feminist Approach to Peace Building,
Development in Practice 13(23) (2003): 154177.
Cynthia Cockburn, The Continuum of Violence: A Gender Perspective on War and Peace, in Sites
of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones, ed. Wenona Giles and Jennifer Hyndman (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2004).
Nikolic-Ristanovic, supra n 9; Adelman, supra n 9; Donna Pankhurst, Gender Issues in Post-War
Contexts: A Review of Analysis and Experience, and Implications for Policies, in Pankhurst, supra
n 9.
Pankhurst, supra n 9; Susie Jacobs, Ruth Jacobson and Jennifer Marchbank, eds., States of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance (London: Zed Books, 2000); Sheila Meintjes, Anu Pillay and
Meredeth Turshen, eds., The Aftermath: Women in Postconflict Transformation (London: Zed Books,
2001).
Pankhurst, supra n 16.
Stanko, supra n 15.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

and perceived as legitimate on the one hand and exceptional and perceived as
reprehensible on the other are stronger than is generally assumed.14 While I
agree with the conceptualization of a continuum of violence, I argue that we also
need to distinguish carefully between violences in different contexts in order to
unpack their distinct meanings, and through this better understand and therefore
challenge these acts.15
These debates about the links between rape in and beyond situations of war
throughout the world are motivated, I suggest, by five main factors:

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

115

Data
The Peruvian case study is relevant to the above factors for a variety of reasons.
Peru has a high number of incidents of physical and sexual violence perpetrated by
intimate partners. A comparative study released by the World Health Organization
in 2005 shows high levels of gender-based violence, comparable to other highprevalence countries such as Ethiopia, Tanzania and Bangladesh.22 Furthermore,
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comision de la Verdad y Reconciliacion,
or CVR), which investigated the events of the war between Shining Path and the
state, highlighted the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war. The majority
of victims of rape were under 30 years of age, had little to no formal education,
spoke an indigenous language as their first language and lived in rural areas, in
particular in the department of Ayacucho.23 These characteristics coincide with
the general picture that the Commission drew of the majority of the victims of
the political violence, and confirms the nature of ethnic divisions in Peru. The
perpetrators of rape were in the majority police and army personnel, meaning
representatives of the state. Other aggressors were also found responsible for acts
of sexual violence, including members of Self-Defense Committees (Comites de
Autodefensa, or CADs).24
In the case of Shining Path, the CVR concluded that the groups use of violence,
including gender-based violence, was based on a different ideology than that
perpetrated by the army and the police. Whereas the sexual violence of the latter
could be called a magnification of existing institutionalized and normative violence
against women, the violence of Shining Path was aimed at countering these existing
patterns. Particularly in the first years, Shining Path imposed strict moral rules
upon communities, whereby adulterers and rapists, for example, were publicly
22

23
24

World Health Organization (WHO), WHO Multi-Country Study of Womens Health and Domestic
Violence against Women: Summary Report of Initial Results on Prevalence, Health Outcomes and
Womens Responses (2005).
CVR Report, supra n 3.
Two types of peasant defense forces operated in Peru, Peasant Defense Forces (Rondas Campesinas)
and Civil Defense Forces (Comites de Defensa Civil). The first were self-organized by peasants in
northern provinces and were largely unarmed. They principally defended themselves against animal
rustling. The second were armed and organized against Shining Path. These were recognized and
supported by the Fujimori government in 1991 as CADs. In the words of the CVR, with no other
actor in the war is the line between perpetrator and victim, hero and villain so thin and porous as
with the CADs. CAD perpetration of sexual violence is an area in need of further research. CVR
Report, supra n 3 at vol. VI, chap. 1.5, p. 437.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

We must seek to understand the different meanings given to rape by individuals,

communities and institutions in order to highlight and problematize the many
obscured, invisible and normalized forms of sexual violence both during war and
after war. Sexual violence should never be ordinary to the victims and survivors
of such acts, and should always be understood as a struggle for domination and
a perpetuation of inequalities. Institutions and actors concerned with transitional
justice need to be aware of this if such processes are to transform postconflict
societies into peaceful ones.

116 J. Boesten

Rape Regimes in the Peruvian War

By distinguishing between rape regimes in the Peruvian war, we can increase our
understanding of rape and highlight in more detail the links between wartime
and peacetime gendered and ethnic social structures with regard to rape and
the tolerance of rape. Such differentiations also show that the search for a single
explanation for the occurrence of sexual violence in war and/or peace an exercise
undertaken by many since the publication of Against Our Will in 197528 is an
25
26

27
28

Pro Derechos Humanos, Warmikuna Yuyariniku: Lecciones para no repetir la historia:

Asociacion
Violencia contra la mujer durante el conflicto armado interno (2005).
This investigation is documented by the CVR and can be found in its archives as Individual
sexual en Huancavelica: Las bases de Manta y Vilca [hereafter Arch. CVR
Investigations: Violacion
Manta y Vilca].
Henrquez, supra n 1; Henrquez and Mantilla, supra n 1.
Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1975). Brownmillers famous and influential book explains rape as an act perpetrated by men

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

and violently punished. Nevertheless, although Shining Path forbade its cadres
from engaging in rape and sexual abuse, there is ample evidence that Shining
Path activity led to forced marriages, forced pregnancies, sexual torture and sexual
slavery.25 However, the distinct outcome of rape regimes perpetrated by the statesponsored armed forces and Shining Path is interesting as it indicates that wartime
rape often reproduces and reinforces existing gendered hierarchies, reflecting longstanding racism and sexism. Therefore, in this article I use the data that exist with
regard to wartime sexual violence perpetrated by the army and the police.
The article is based on data gathered by the CVR, which was established in
2001. The CVR covered the period from 1980, when Shining Path first attacked
a polling station in the Andean highlands, to 2000, when then-President Alberto
Fujimori fled to Japan after allegations (and proof) of corruption and human
rights abuses surfaced. What the CVR uncovered with regard to gender-based and
sexual violence is based on a variety of sources, including interviews with former
soldiers. A case study carried out in two villages where a military base was located,
in Huancavelica Province, is a central source in the investigation of the use of rape
during the conflict.26 Other victims and witnesses gave their accounts in public
hearings. Sociologist Narda Henrquez and lawyer Julissa Mantilla made an initial
analysis and ordering of the evidence gathered, and their work makes possible my
exploration of rape regimes.27 Existing (and in some cases published) transcripts
of interviews and testimonies were used for this article, as were a series of recorded
interviews with perpetrators and survivors, some of which were transcribed for
the purpose of this research. All material was collected by CVR researchers and can
be found in the Commissions archives. The interviews were read as narratives of
personal experiences embedded in the larger social and institutional structures in
which the speaker found him or herself. In addition, I have used journalist Ricardo
Ucedas book, Muerte en el pentagonito: Los cementerios secretos del Ejercito Peruano,
published in 2004, as a source of interviews with involved army personnel. These
accounts reflect the findings of the CVR.

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

117

Rape as a Weapon of War

As mentioned above, that rape serves as a weapon during wars is today widely
recognized. The information we have from Peru confirms that rape, and sexual
violence in general, was indeed used as such.29 This means that rape was sanctioned
from above, although not written in orders, and that rape was used alongside other
forms of violence and intimidation. During the CVRs investigation process and
testimony gathering, few women openly testified about their experiences of sexual
violence, but both men and women referred to the widespread occurrence of rape
in the third person.
Witnesses, including soldiers, spoke of public mass rape as part of incursions
into villages and the imposition of power in those communities. Evidence emerged
that rape and other forms of sexual violence were used as a form of torture and
punishment of captured women.30 These acts, according to witness accounts of
former soldiers, were often strongly encouraged by superiors. Similarly, soldiers
referred to initiation rites whereby killing or mutilation of prisoners was compulsory, and forms of sexual violence could well have been part of these rites.31
Ethnic othering was used to create a hierarchy of raped women, demonstrated in
the language used by soldiers. In their testimonies, soldiers speak of white girls who
were guapa (pretty), indias and cholas who were available to be raped by all and
educated mestiza women who were reserved for capitanes.32 As testimonies show,
soldiers were forced to commit acts of violence as part of their training, which
must have been traumatic and led to continuous cruel and violent behavior on the
part of these initiated soldiers. Violent initiation rites were effective in creating

29
30
31
32

consciously and deliberately to keep all women in a subordinated position and in a state of fear.
As she wrote, all men benefit from this subordination and all men are culpable. Differentiation
between meanings and purposes becomes irrelevant.
Ibid.; CVR Report, supra n 3.
Henrquez, supra n 1; Henrquez and Mantilla, supra n 1; CVR Report, supra n 3.
Henrquez and Mantilla, supra n 1.
Henrquez, supra n 1; Jelke Boesten, Wartime Rape and Peacetime Inequalities in Peru, in Feminism and the Body: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Catherine Kevin (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK:
Cambridge Scholars, 2009). India refers to an Indian woman, while chola is a term for a (young)
woman who is perceived as less Indian because of education or profession (i.e., not peasantry)
and often as sexually available. See, Jelke Boesten, Narrativas de sexo, violencia y disponibilidad:
en Peru,
in Raza, etnicidad y sexualidades: Ciudadana y
Raza, genero y jerarquas de la violacion
multiculturalismo en America Latina, ed. Peter Wade, Fernando Urrea Giraldo and Mara Viveros
Vigoya (Bogota: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2008).

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

impossible task. Differentiation among rape regimes could show us the necessity
of considering multiple levels of cross-disciplinary analysis of wartime rape and its
links to peacetime regimes of sexual violence against women. I have distinguished
three rape regimes, each of which are illustrated by specific examples below: (1) rape
as a weapon of war; (2) rape as consumption; and (3) invisible sexual violence.
Of course, these categories partly overlap. In that sense, this categorization is a
heuristic exercise that might help us to visibilize the invisible, uncover what is
normalized and challenge the line between coercion and consent.

118 J. Boesten

33
34

Theidon, supra n 5; Bulent Diken and Carsten Bagge Laustsen, Becoming Abject: Rape as a Weapon
of War, Body and Society 11(1) (2005): 111128.
de Derechos Humanos (COMISEDH), Chungui: Violencia y trazos
Edilberto Jimenez and Comision
de memoria (Lima: COMISEDH, 2005).

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

spirals of violent behavior and guaranteed the soldiers loyalty to and complicity
in the military enterprise. The force exerted over soldiers does not absolve the
perpetrators of murder, torture and rape. Rather, rape is arguably the ultimate act
of complicity in the subordination and violation of a people. In cases of mutilation,
torture and murder, a perpetrator could claim that he was forced by fear for his own
life. However, in the case of rape, how is fear for ones own life replaced by sexual
arousal? If it is possible to replace sexual arousal for fear, even if the threatening
circumstances have not subsided, then the perpetrators complicity is complete.
As Kimberly Theidon asserts, following Bulent Diken and Carsten Bagge Laustsen,
gang rape foments collective guilt and individual shame.33 No greater complicity
in terror campaigns seems possible. Perhaps this is why gang rape is so effective
for the purpose of male bonding and group loyalty, and perhaps this is also why
just as few perpetrators as victims speak about rape in the first person, at least to
the CVR.
Another form of sexual violence perpetrated by the Peruvian army as an explicit
weapon of war was the capture of women who were subsequently given to others
as war booty. Women were given not only to foot soldiers but also to members of
the peasant CADs, as graphically observed by the Ayacuchan artist, anthropologist
and CVR researcher, Edilberto Jimenez. As part of his reflections on the testimonies
he heard, Jimenez drew the stories in harrowing pictures. One such picture tells
how the victim fled her place of refuge when attacked by a CAD, how she lost
her mother, husband and child during her flight and how she spent weeks in a
military base, where she was abused by soldiers. After several weeks in captivity,
she and others were entregadas, or handed in, to the CAD. These men, civil allies
of the army, could choose a wife from among the captives. The testimoniante was
still married to the man she was given to in 1985 at the time of the interview with
Jimenez.34
Such a war booty strategy is an effective way of dividing communities, as the
women were sometimes members of communities neighboring those of CADs.
By participating in the sexual violence against women perpetrated by soldiers,
CAD members became, as noted above, explicitly complicit in the subordination
of the civil population. This complicity, in turn, enforced loyalty to the military
and furthered the destruction of the existing social fabric of the population. Any
confusion about gender roles in the peasant population as a consequence of the
fighting is, of course, undermined by such violent sexual subordination of women.
Women were assigned particular female roles as reproducers of the community
and providers of food and sex. As such, this strategy of divide and rule not only
weakened communities but also explicitly reinforced gendered hierarchies within
them. The sharing of women as war booty suggests that the infamous abusive

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

119

Rape as Consumption
Accounts of rape by both victims and perpetrators suggest that rape is often
consumed, acted out as a desirable and pursued sexual event, albeit one immersed
in violence and physical domination. Although this might sound evident and
horrific at the same time, I think it is important to separate rape as consumption
from rape as a war strategy because the former is underpinned by a different logic,
one strongly embedded in peacetime, normal gender ideology.
In the rape regimes discussed above, rape becomes one of the violences that
serve objectives of terror, subordination and complicity. The end goal is winning
a war, even if the war is against innocent people or a misconceived enemy, or is
35
36
37

38

39
40

CVR Report, supra n 3 at vol. VI, chap. 1.5; Henrquez, supra n 1.

Henrquez, supra n 1 at 67.
Cynthia H. Enloe, Does Khaki Become You?: The Militarisation of Womens Lives (Boston, MA:
South End Press, 1983); Cynthia H. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of
International Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990); Cynthia Cockburn, The
Space between Us: Negotiating Gender and National Identities in Conflict (London: Zed Books, 1998);
Meredeth Turshen, The Political Economy of Rape: An Analysis of Systematic Rape and Sexual
Abuse of Women During Armed Conflict in Africa, in Victims, Perpetrators or Actors?: Gender,
Armed Conflict and Political Violence, ed. Caroline O.N. Moser and Fiona C. Clark (London: Zed
Books, 2001).
Henrquez and Mantilla, supra n 1; Kimberly Theidon, Entre projimos: El conflicto armado interno
y la poltica de la reconciliacion en el Peru (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2004); Ricardo
Uceda, Muerte en el pentagonito: Los cementerios secretos del Ejercito Peruano (Bogota: Planeta,
2004).
Boesten, 2009, supra n 32.
Theidon, supra n 5.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

behavior of the CADs, referred to in various testimonies,35 was explicitly encouraged by the military.
These rape regimes public mass rape, sexual violence as part of torture and
war booty rape all have the distinctive characteristic of being used as a weapon
of war. Some first-time perpetrators were forced into this violence, but became
accustomed to rape and other cruelties. Narda Henrquez quotes a soldier who
said that soldiers did not need any orders from above anymore (ya no) to detain,
beat and kill people.36 Such testimonies suggest that soldiers had no need to wait
for an order (anymore?) to rape a woman. As authors such as Cynthia Enloe have
observed, male bonding is important in collective acts of violence37 a feature
recognizable in Peruvian soldiers accounts of rape, although not the only one.38
The accounts of rape in the Peruvian conflict show that the group dynamic in these
acts was very important as it could secure loyalty and secrecy through complicity
and served to establish or reinforce hierarchies among military personnel.39 As
Theidon asserts, the ritualistic aspects of gang rape suggest the fomenting of a
lethal fraternity rooted in the bloodied wombs of raped bodies.40 The group
dynamic seems to have an additional function, which can be observed in the
Peruvian context as well as in other contexts: the use of womens bodies to satisfy
sexual desire. Rape is not only about strategy or even about violence; it can also be
about sexual consumption.

120 J. Boesten

He had me as his wife, I served him as his wife for one week, in the evenings they came
to look for me saying go and denounce us! And he took me to his bed, every night
of the week they forced me to have sex with him, I had to cook and serve him; they
imprisoned me in the kitchen and in that room.44

Her five children were with her in captivity for the whole period.
Other testimonies tell of the parties women were forced to participate in, where
drink and food were supplied in exchange for sex. One father recounted how his
daughter got used to the troops, even after having a baby as a result, and suggested
that girls of his community were lured with food, alcohol and pornographic
videos.45 Testimonies of young women forced to attend these parties suggest a
rather more violent and fearful setting. For example, in 1984, aged 15, Sonia came
back to her village, Manta, after having spent time in Perus capital, Lima. During
her testimony to the CVR, she recalled that, like all new arrivals, she had to register
41
42

43

44
45

Enloe, 1990, supra n 37.

For example, prostitution flourishes in most peacekeeping areas, socioeconomic inequality being
one of the main facilitators of the industry. See, Paul Higate, Revealing the Soldier: Peacekeeping
and Prostitution, American Sexuality 1(5) (2003); Paul Higate, Peacekeepers, Masculinities and
Sexual Exploitation, Men and Masculinities 10(1) (2007): 99119.
Henrquez and Mantilla, supra n 1; Henrquez, supra n 1; Uceda, supra n 38. See also the various
testimonies from Manta and Vilca, Huancavelica, in Arch. CVR Manta y Vilca, supra n 26 at Annex
52, discussed in more detail in Boesten, supra n 12. Prostitution is here understood as providing
sex in exchange for money, goods or even physical safety. The line between coercion and consent is
more than dubious, of course.
Arch. CVR Manta y Vilca, supra n 26 at Annex 33, testimony 300556.
Archives of the CVR, testimony 314025 [hereinafter Arch. CVR]; Arch. CVR Manta y Vilca, supra
n 26 at Annex 7.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

otherwise unjustly fought. However, many rape regimes during wartime do not
serve that end goal. The consumption of female bodies is often justified with a
discourse that claims that men (hardworking soldiers!) need sex and that women
are commodities that can (and should) be used. This form of argument has buy-in
from male military organizations throughout the world. Of course, not all armed
forces allow rape and not all soldiers rape, but militaries certainly sanction and
often facilitate the availability of local prostitutes, as is common in the immediate
surroundings of military bases around the world.41 The availability of women
for commercial sex is often eased by the political and, in particular, economic
inequality between the military and the communities where bases are located.42
An actual war against the host population makes the women available for sex
beyond commercial sex, in other words beyond the voluntary offer of sex for
payment.
In Peru, no evidence exists of organized, voluntary prostitution for soldiers
during the war. However, many women were forced to prostitute themselves.43
Forced prostitution often included the provision of a range of services associated
with womens roles, such as providing food. According to womens testimonies to
the CVR, women were imprisoned for weeks, sometimes with their children, and
forced to be the wife of a military officer. On military bases, captured women
often had to cook for their rapists, as one woman testified:

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

121

So some [erred], perhaps because of liquor or because of the temptation that women
presented, or temptation of so many things . . . Sometimes there were minor errors and
I would give them (the soldiers) simple punishments.49

According to this colonel, rape and abuse are minor errors that do not really
deserve punishment. By saying the temptation of women, he shifts the blame for
any wrongdoing to the supposed seductive capacities of women.
Although the community or the military may have been able to dismiss such
events as minor mistakes that do not really deserve any further consideration, this
type of consumption of sex as a result of the natural sex drives of militarized men
tells us much about the relation between wartime rape regimes and peacetime
rape. The idea that men cannot control their natural sex drive and deserve to
satisfy their desires is, of course, not unique to wartime. Nevertheless, wartime
opportunity in combination with magnified masculinities exacerbates soldiers
natural consumption of forced sex. As the adjective forced indicates, this type of
rape regime is not only about sex, nor only about masculinity. Politics and violence
play a role, if only in the availability of opportunity.
If we only consider the weapon-of-war thesis, however, how could we understand
the continuous rape of a woman who has already been tortured to death?50 Or
46
47
48
49
50

Arch. CVR Manta y Vilca, supra n 26 at Annex 52.

For more detail on this particular case, see, Boesten, supra n 12.
Ibid.
Interview with Colonel Raul Pinto Ramos, who was stationed in Manta in 1985. Arch. CVR Manta
y Vilca, supra n 26 at Annex 44.
Arch. CVR, testimony 100168. Also discussed in Henrquez and Mantilla, supra n 1.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

at the base and was intimidated while doing so.46 Later, she was called to the base
perhaps once or twice a month, together with several other girls, to attend to the
military leaders. The girls would be locked in a room, where there would be music
and alcohol. Often, their mothers waited outside. When the soldiers had drunk
enough, they would start to feel up the girls. In Sonias account of the events, some
of the girls escaped when the soldiers became touchy, but other girls, in her words,
those [who came from the village and] were more humble . . . more submissive,
stayed and would be assaulted. As a result of the consumption of alcohol and the
repeated demand for such services, community members, including fathers, could
claim that girls got used to the troops, although everything suggests that women
such as Sonia were deeply traumatized by the experience.47
Sometimes young women or their families denounced this type of rape to the
military commander. This could lead to an offer of marriage. Until 1997, the
law stipulated that a rapist would be exempt from prosecution if he married his
victim, while the victim and her family would keep their honor intact. While few
such marriages were actually executed, many such promises were made, creating
a situation in which raped women had to have sex with their husband-to-be until
they left the base.48 In other reported rape cases, soldiers could be reprimanded
for their conduct. As one colonel explained:

122 J. Boesten

51
52

53

54

55

Uceda, supra n 38.

The fact that the main protagonist of the scandal was a woman, Lynndie England, does not
undo the analysis of public sexual violence as masculinist and misogynist. As several authors have
observed, Englands behavior and subsequent reactions to her protagonism observed the script
of exaggerated military, heteronormative masculinities and US power status or new imperial
masculinity. See, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Invisible Empire: Visual Culture, Embodied Spectacle, and
Abu Ghraib, Radical History Review 95 (2006): 2144.
Lindsey Feitz and Joane Nagel, The Militarization of Gender and Sexuality in the Iraq War,
in Women in the Military and in Armed Conflict, ed. Helena Carreiras and Gerhard Kummel
(Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2008).
Joanna Bourke, Torture as Pornography, Guardian, 7 May 2004; Jean Braudillard, Pornography
of War, Cultural Politics 1(1) (2005): 2326. For further elaboration, see, Jelke Boesten, Rape as
Entertainment: Pornography and the Collective Consumption of Violent Sex in Wartime (paper
presented at the International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, 1114 June 2009).
Henrquez, supra n 1; Boesten, 2009, supra n 32.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

the rape of almost dead women, literally at the edge of their graves?51 What
happens to groups of men who torture and kill together, and who, when the object
of intimidation has died, continue to rape? Testimonies of soldiers suggest that
there were many cases in which groups of soldiers cheerfully watched each other
rape women who were dead or were certainly going to die. These rapes were not
underpinned by the necessity of torture or intimidation, but were acted out as
entertainment or spectacle, and certainly promoted male bonding. Men watched
each other, creating images of sexual torture and repeating these actions in front of
each other, and, in doing so, collectively created and consumed extremely violent
pornography.
This acting out of sexual violence is not unique to Peru. Several authors have
reflected on the emergence of images of sexual torture from the Iraqi prison, Abu
Ghraib.52 Lindsey Feitz and Joane Nagel write that the images suggest a high entertainment factor in the sexual torture of Iraqi prisoners that follows known scripts
of racial superiority, military hierarchy and misogyny.53 Joanna Bourke, like Jean
Baudrillard, interprets such images as glorifications of violence, as carnivalesque
and as a highly pornographic power out of control.54 Whereas the discussed Peruvian excesses were not recorded in any known way, the testimonies recounting
these events suggest similar dynamics whereby peer pressure, violence and complete power over others turned into collectively experienced sexual excitement and
become entertainment and spectacle. How the relationship between violence and
sex turns into a collective consumption of torture porn, both in war and peace, is
a question in need of further research.
Of course, even if the consumption of sex, or violent pornography, was facilitated
by the war without being an explicit objective of war, it has political consequences.
The frequent consumption of forced sex and violence not only reinforced a gendered and racialized subordination of the targeted communities but also served
to establish and reinforce hierarchies among soldiers. For example, captains had
first choice, and would choose the best women, often the whitest and the better
educated ones.55 Officers and captains had girls in their quarters for several weeks,
supposedly enamorandolas, courting them, as mythologized by Alonso Cueto in

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

123

Invisible Sexual Violence

Based on extensive fieldwork, Theidon convincingly shows that the victim
perpetrator relationship is often far more blurred than the binary concept implies.58
In most wars, the relationship is not clear-cut, and the breakdown of the existing
social order opens the way for a variety of shadowy activities.59 The data from
Peru suggest that existing local tensions, conflicts and even domestic problems can
escalate into physical violence. Henrquez and Mantilla show that gender-based
violence in the home, as well as in the community, often escalated in war-torn
areas.60 Existing disputes were enlarged, new conflicts emerged and, sometimes,
labels and loyalties shifted. Gendered forms of manipulation and torture were
deployed not only by the formal combatants but also by communities to define loyalties. Womens bodies were often used as battlegrounds on which these
loyalties were redefined. Nevertheless, these battles, by virtue of their location in
the community or household, are rarely visible as elements in or dimensions of
political conflict. Rape already an ambiguously treated form of violence in wars
is even less visible at the community or household level, where it is perpetrated by
neighbors, acquaintances and husbands.
Another form of invisible sexual violence in the Peru conflict was the violence
that took place in those contexts that allowed for a redefinition of rape into
something more benign or even participatory. An example is instances where
56

57
58

59

60

Alonso Cueto, La hora azul (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2005). In this prizewinning novel, Cueto tells the
story of a sons search for his fathers rape victim. According to the story, the father, a commander
in the Peruvian army during the 1980s, had not only raped a prisoner but also held her in his
quarters for weeks, courting her, falling in love with her, fathering a child and finally releasing her.
The fathers infatuation becomes the sons, and the violence with which this woman is pursued is
normalized. For further elaboration, see, Boesten, 2008, supra n 32.
Boesten, 2009, supra n 32.
Theidon, supra n 5; Theidon, supra n 38; Kimberly Theidon, How We Learned to Kill Our

Brother?: Memory, Morality and Reconciliation in Peru, Bulletin de lInstitut Francais des Etudes
Andines 29(3) (2000): 539554; Kimberly Theidon, Justice in Transition: The Micropolitics of Reconciliation in Postwar Peru, Journal of Conflict Resolution 50(3) (2006): 433457. See also, Wendy
Coxshall, Rebuilding Disrupted Relations: Widowhood, Narrative, and Silence in a Contemporary Community in Ayacucho, Peru (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 2004); Caroline Yezer,
Anxious Citizenship: Insecurity, Apocalypse and War Memories in Perus Andes (PhD diss., Duke
University, 2007).
Carolyn Nordstrom, Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the TwentyFirst Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004); Turshen, supra n 37; CVR Report,
supra n 3.
Henrqez and Mantilla, supra n 1; Henrquez, supra n 1.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

his 2005 novel, La hora azul.56 Foot soldiers could not reproduce such practices,
but, as several soldiers told the CVR, they would rape passing cholitas while on
patrol.57 Although the opportunities for these events were created by the war, the
objectives of many acts of sexual violence were not the strategic subordination of
a people but individual and collective consumption of torture porn. The extent
to which such consumption is linked to racist desires for sexual dominance, for a
male conspiracy against (racially different) women, is thus a question relevant to
both wartime and peacetime.

124 J. Boesten

61
62
63
64
65
66
67

Theidon, supra n 5; Theidon, supra n 38.

Henrquez and Mantilla, supra n 1.
Theidon, supra n 5.
A good example is the promise to be married to the rapist, suggesting that guilt is as fluid as is
victimhood. See, Boesten, supra n 12.
Anonymous, A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in a Conquered City (London: Virago, 2005).
Boesten, supra n 12.
Prosecutor v. Jean Paul Akayesu, Case No. 96-4, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1996).

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

women used their sexuality as a transactional asset in exchange for protection

and/or information,61 or consented to multiple rapes because of a lack of other
survival strategies or to limit the damage inflicted on them or their communities.
For example, one soldier recalls how he and his fellow soldiers convinced a new
prisoner to have sex with all of them and says that she accepted. They even went
to buy beer in order to organize a party with her, until their superior said they
could not have her as she was to be formally interrogated.62 Assuming the soldier is
telling the truth, does consent given in such circumstances make rape less coercive?
Is it possible to discern if a woman voluntarily gave her body to a combatant in
exchange for information, hope or protection, or if she did so involuntarily? Should
we disentangle such instances? Are these questions about invisible rape or about
invisible female agency?
I am not sure if it is necessary to map the extent to which women used their
sexuality, in which cases they were given something in exchange after being raped
or when they gave consent, albeit in extremely violent circumstances. I do think
it is important to note, however, that apart from being victims, women could and
would use a whole range of strategies, including their sexual bodies, if this was
necessary for their and their families survival.63 Although such agency exists in
extremely limited and oppressive circumstances, and cannot and did not prevent
the massive rape of womens bodies, it did allow for the blurring of the boundary
between coercion and consent and seriously complicates the idea of womens
victimhood. After all, within the existing normative sociocultural framework with
regard to gender and sexuality in Peru, a raped womans trivial participation in
deciding the circumstances in which she was raped may confirm her complicity to
the perpetrators, possibly to the community and likely to the victim herself.64
In a similar vein, some women committed to one soldier in the hope that this
would prevent further gang rape a strategy famously described by an anonymous
German diary writer after the Russians entered Berlin in 1945.65 Peruvian testimonies also show that some raped girls were subsequently promised to be married
to their rapists, as doing so could avoid further abuse from soldiers and possible
abuse from the community as a consequence of having been raped, which could
be interpreted as having prostituted oneself or having betrayed the community.66
Any feminist would argue that all such cases correspond to the definition of rape.
Even international legislation has come a long way to define rape as any physical
invasion of a sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances which
are coercive,67 leaving much space for the broad definition of coercion. However,

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

125

My husband abused me, he said, how was it, what did they do to you, and when he
got drunk he insulted me: Ah . . . they [the soldier-rapists] were better than I was.71

In such circumstances, it is not surprising that many women never told their
husbands about their experiences during the war.
A last form of invisible sexual violence in this context is the high incidence of
family and partner violence in the aftermath of war. Again, this is not a Peruvian
anomaly compared to other regions and wars. Nevertheless, Peru provides a valuable case study. Several explanations have been offered for increased gender-based
violence in the aftermath of war: the return or permanence in communities of
ex-combatants who do not easily shed their exaggerated masculinities;72 trauma
and alcoholism;73 and the situation of uncertainty and social change where men
increasingly feel insecure about their position. As one commentator observes, the
threat that women must pose to men economically, socially, politically can be the
only reason for the pervasiveness of violence against women.74
In the Andes, women and men give somewhat different explanations, although
explanations not that far removed from those above. A group of women in
68

69
70

71
72
73
74

Mercedes Crisostomo, Tan buena era mi mam`a . . . , in Para no olvidar: Testimonios sobre la
violencia en el Per`u, ed. Jorge Bracamonte, Beatriz Duda and Gonzalo Portocarrero (Lima: Red para
` 2003); Henrquez, supra n 1.
el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Peru,
Jelke Boesten, Pushing Back the Boundaries: Social Policy, Domestic Violence and Womens
Organisations in Peru, Journal of Latin American Studies 38(2) (2006): 355378.
Forty-seven percent of rural women have experienced sexual violence perpetrated by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and 69 percent have experienced nonsexual physical violence. Ana
Guezmes, Nancy Palomino and Miguel Ramos, Violencia sexual y fsica contra las mujeres en el Peru:
Estudio multicentrico de la OMS sobre la violencia de pareja y la salud de las mujeres (Lima: Centro
de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristan, 2002). See also, WHO, supra n 22.
Crisostomo, supra n 68 at 135.
Spindel, Levy and Connor, supra n 9; Rehn and Johnson Sirleaf, supra n 9; Turshen, supra n 9.
Centro para la Promocion y Desarrollo Poblacional, Diagnostico del desplazamiento en Ayacucho
19931997: Heroes sin nombre (1997); Pankhurst, supra n 9.
Anu Pillay, cited in Pankhurst, supra n 9 at 33.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

in Peru and elsewhere, including contemporary Britain and the US, rape victims
are frequently submitted to an interrogation in which the thin line between coercion and consent and between innocence and complicity is questioned. Such lines
of interrogation are not limited to peacetime rape, and were similarly employed
against many young Andean women during the 1980s and 1990s. As a result of the
ever-present suspicion that as a woman one must be complicit in ones own abuse,
few women speak up about their experiences.
Women who testified before the CVR sometimes spoke of the abuse they suffered
from their husbands.68 Women told of ordinary domestic beatings, for example
when they did not conform to expected female behavior.69 We do not know if the
domestic violence included sexual violence, especially as rape in marriage is often
not considered to be rape, but the study about partner violence carried out by
Ana Guezmes, Nancy Palomino and Miguel Ramos suggests that sexual violence
perpetrated by partners is generally high.70 Sometimes violent domestic conflict
was linked to previous sexual torture, as one senora told the CVR:

126 J. Boesten

75
76
77
78
79

Personal interview with Nelly Mejia, DEPROMUNA, San Miguel, Peru, 10 April 2006.
Ibid.
de Derechos
No es solo mi problema, es de todo mi pueblo, documentary film (Ayacucho: Comision
Humanos, 2003).
Community leader and elder.
y Desarrollo PoblaDifundiendo la verdad, documentary film (Ayacucho: Centro de Promocion
cional, 2004).

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

San Miguel, in La Mar, Ayacucho, are of the opinion that increased violence in
families is the result of mutual trauma and, in some cases, from the alcoholism that
may results from such experiences.75 According to this group, organized under the
name Defensora y Promocion de la Mujer, el Nino y Adolescente (DEPROMUNA),
wives and mothers can be as violent as husbands and fathers, and children generally
bear the brunt of this. Together with provincial nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), the organization provides group therapy to couples. DEPROMUNA also
observes that children born as a result of rape grow up in much violence, as their
mothers often have difficulty with the children and new partners of the mothers
often blame the women for the rape that led to childbirth.76
Several women from the village of Llusita, an area in Ayacucho deeply affected by
the political violence, and where the use of rape by soldiers and CADs was rife, are
now confronting the continuous intimate violence perpetrated against them. In a
documentary made by the Comision de Derechos Humanos (COMISEDH), these
women tell of the wartime rape of single women as well as married women and
how sexual violence was still present among them. CAD members, once welcomed
and desired by communities, also learned how to rape. As a result, these witnesses
claim, women and girls continue to suffer abuse.77 The women argue that, today,
men are again in charge of newly installed institutions for justice, but they do not
care about violence perpetrated against women. They dont pay attention to us, the
women claim. Before the war, the women from Llusita argue, no violence against
women occurred as the varayoc78 would not permit it. Although such longing for
a peaceful past is not necessarily grounded in prewar reality, their claims do refer
to a contemporary reality in which there is little institutional support in cases of
family violence. They also suggest that the violence the women suffer today, in
the aftermath of war, is a sequel of that war. A documentary made by another
NGO, Centro de Promocion y Desarrollo Poblacional (CEPRODEP), in rural areas
in Ayacucho suggests that existing social structures have disappeared while new
structures are still in development, which sometimes generates further conflict or
sustains tensions.79
While these documentaries are a step toward more visibility (although the audience is likely to be small), most sexual violence is still referred to as happening to
anonymous groups of women. In one of the CEPRODEP videos, two young girls
speak about having been raped in the contemporary, peaceful era. One girl was
raped by a friend, in a case of date rape, and the other girl was frequently raped
by her father until she gave birth to his child. The womens faces and voices are

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

127

obscured in the film, as too much visibility would further jeopardize their safety.
For the victims, most rapes are better off invisible.

Implications

80

Henrquez, supra n 1.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

Our understanding of sexual violence in war has greatly benefited from the analysis
of rape as a weapon of war. This conceptualization has highlighted the strategic use
of sexual violence, top-down complicity and the importance of womens bodies and
gendered hierarchy in the imagination of self and enemy. However, the weapon-ofwar thesis also suggests a clear-cut distinction between perpetrator and victim, an
instrumental purpose directed at winning a war and, consequently, a strategy for
combating such practices. Rape in war has become a single issue to be addressed in
truth commissions, in war crime tribunals and by civil society and UN campaigns.
While all this has helped highlight a pervasive and important phenomenon in
need of eradication, it also reinforces the idea of a rape script that survivors should
appeal to, which limits our understanding of the gendered dimension of warfare.
It has created uncomfortable situations in which narrow interpretations of rape
victimization have led to the recognition of only limited cases, excluding many
others or forcing women to fit the story. The link between such victimization and
potential reparations, recognition or asylum status makes this a potentially murky
business.
By unpacking different rape regimes in wartime, and explicitly linking these
practices to peacetime gender inequality and violence against women, this article
suggests that we need to broaden our understanding of the use of sexual violence in
war. Sexual violence does not only serve strategic purposes imposed and cultivated
from above; it is also acted out as entertainment and consumed for individual and
group pleasure and used as a tool to maintain or produce hierarchies among and
between combatant and enemy and to settle domestic or community disputes.
While wartime opportunity and impunity facilitate these practices, clear links
to peacetime sexism and racism are evident. For example, explicit wartime rape
regimes often allude to domestic duties, to the responsibility of motherhood and to
class, ethnic and racial hierarchies.80 Some womens choice of words to explain what
had happened to them in captivity, serving as a soldiers wife, painfully associates
violent subordination by armed men with submission at home. Likewise, the idea
that women are largely to blame for the sexual excesses of men, grounded in the
idea that men cannot control their sex drive and women are seducers who trigger
male desire, is a common idea in both war and peace. Such ideas make it legitimate
for men to use women as they see fit and, when facilitated by war, turn women
not only into prostitutes but also into disposable beings on whose bodies any form
of mutilation is allowed. Of course, perceptions of racial difference facilitate the
dehumanization of women in general, just as they help the dehumanization of the
male enemy.

128 J. Boesten

81

See, for example, Carol Cohn, Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals, Signs
12(4) (1987): 687718; Jane L. Parpart and Marysia Zalewski, eds., Rethinking the Man Question:
Sex, Gender and Violence in International Relations (London: Zed Books, 2008); Enloe, 1983, supra
n 37.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

With this discussion of rape regimes, I do not try to impose a new categorization
of rape in war, but instead highlight the complexity of sexual violence in both
war and peace. This complexity might lead to two conclusions. First, wartime
sexual violence is not an aberration or an exception but an exacerbation of existing
violences and gender and racial inequalities. The basis of the invisibility of sexual
violence is grounded in peacetime understandings of gendered social relations:
of the social imposition of shame and notions of guilt and of understandings of
complicity of both perpetrator and victim and the nature of male desire and female
seductiveness. The ubiquity of sexual violence beyond the clear perpetratorvictim
binary is not the only factor that proves this point. The consumption of violent sex
in wartime, either through forced prostitution or through the acting out of torture
porn for the entertainment of peers, also underpins such a conclusion.
Second, wars are fundamentally gendered, and sexual violence is often used as a
tool in multiple and overlapping power struggles between men. Sexual violence is
used to impose dominance. The answer to the necessary question of how individual
soldiers become capable of (and find pleasure in) practices of sexual violence needs
to be sought in the cultivation of militarized masculinities that are grounded
in heteronormative and binary ideas of gender roles that are inherently based
on notions of gendered domination. Feminist research in international relations
clearly shows how wars are grounded in ideas about masculinity and, by default,
about femininity.81 Here, the two conclusions come together: we can only combat
rape in war if the gendered nature of warfare is addressed, and we can only address
the gendered nature of war if we recognize its roots in peacetime inequalities and
practices.
The implications are not that we have to dismiss the weapon-of-war thesis, but
that postconflict processes of transitional justice need to incorporate a far more
complex understanding of sexual violence. We need to look at sexual violence
from two seemingly contradictory points of view. On the one hand, to do justice
to survivors and to understand the social roots of such violences, acts of sexual
violence need to be differentiated and given meaning according to circumstances,
relations between perpetrator and victim, motivation of the perpetrator(s) and
agency of the victimized. On the other hand, we need to generalize and repoliticize
all these acts of violence and recognize that they are part of the perpetuation of
inequalities, instead of formulating more rigid scripts about sexual violence in war.
All sexual violence, both in war and so-called peace, should be exceptionalized.
This tension between specificity and generalization reflects the tension between
individual suffering and collective subordination, the unresolved tension between
the personal and the political.
Hence, processes of transitional justice need a more profound gender analysis.
The incorporation of a gender commission that documents atrocities committed

Analyzing Rape Regimes at the Interface of War and Peace in Peru

129

82

Pankhurst, supra n 9; Rehn and Johnson Sirleaf, supra n 9.

International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 4, 2010, 110129

Downloaded from ijtj.oxfordjournals.org at The University of British Colombia Library on January 11, 2011

against women into transitional justice institutions is not enough to address these
tensions. Militarization and demilitarization need to be looked at from a gendered
perspective. Domestic violence and sexual violence need to be addressed as part
of peacebuilding, reparations, justice systems, security regimes and social services
(including education), which should all be looked at from a perspective that
includes an analysis of fundamental inequalities, racism and sexism. While on
paper this is often the case for example, gender mainstreaming is integrated in
the discourse of peacebuilding evidence shows that in practice gender is still
suppositious to most postconflict efforts.82