Beyond Revolutionaries, Victims, and Heroic Mothers. Reproductive Politics in War and Peace in Colombia

During the 2016 peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), reproductive policies in this guerrilla group became a site of contestation in producing new discourses about peace, gender, and nation. This dissertation addresses this controversy and explores the implications of reproductive politics in war and peace among ex-combatant women. The data for this project was collected through archival research and a multi-sited ethnography in Caquetá-Colombia. It discusses the role of contraception in the transformation of the FARC from a grassroots guerrilla movement to a revolutionary army and analyzes the multiple discourses produced about contraception, abortion, and motherhood to advance meanings of the peace agreement. Furthermore, it studies the experiences of motherhood/mothering in the midst of war and in the aftermath of war by analyzing the experiences of women who demobilized before the peace agreement through an individual reintegration program and who demobilized collectively as a result of the agreement. This contrast highlights the different possibilities for reproductive and social justice advanced by programs designed around creating individualized citizens under the premises of meritocracy, responsibility, and entrepreneurship versus those of collective community building.