This article examines the extent to which mainstreaming intersectionality in the Colombian Truth Commission (CEV) serves the feminist aim of producing social transformations by exposing patriarchal, racialized and class-based structures of oppression. Analysing the mainstreaming of intersectionality as a site of struggle exposes the interlocking dynamics of inequality and ontological impositions that block Indigenous and Afro-descendant women’s full participation at the CEV. Ongoing dialogues with five Indigenous and/or Afro-descendant Colombian activists centrally inform this analysis. All the activists utilize the gender, woman, family and generation approach, which is anchored in the shared cosmological reference points of Indigenous and Afro-descendant women. The peril of mainstreaming intersectionality appears when it is used in a shallow manner that severs a structural intersectional analysis from a political intersectional analysis. The promise of intersectionality can only be realized through a holistic understanding and application of both its structural and political dimensions.
This chapter examines how the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC) reinforces a logic that upholds social hierarchies while also opening new spaces to consider a gender analysis. When the PTRC began its investigation in August 2001, a gender analysis was not included. However, the commission was compelled to integrate the issue of gender into its investigation due to international pressure coupled with funding sources that required a gender component, as well as Peruvian women's and feminist movements' advocacy. This chapter analyzes the struggle for inclusion within the PTRC by focusing on the debate around the meaning of gender, its methodological operationalization, and incorporation into the final report. It shows how the push to document direct human rights violations against women led the PTRC to make a concerted effort to include a gender analysis and to address gender-based violence, specifically sexual violence.
This article probes the conceptual and methodological challenges of engendering transitional justice mechanisms, drawing referentially upon several years of research on Peruvian transitional justice initiatives. Most women affected by the internal armed conflict in Peru (1980-2000) were Quechuaspeaking campesinas, or peasants, who have been commonly reduced to a single story of victimhood. The article asks whether it is possible for state and civil society actors to design and implement transitional justice mechanisms without reifying race, class and gender inequalities through this type of limited representation. To venture an answer in the affirmative would demand a significant broadening of the transitional justice mandate in ways that test the limits of the liberal framework.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.