Military Intimacies: Peruvian Veterans and Narratives about Sex and Violence

Boesten J.; Gavilán L. · Latin American Research Review (2023) · DOI: 10.1017/lar.2023.18

Resumen

This article explores how sex and violence were part of the everyday making of the soldier in the Peruvian armed forces during the internal armed conflict between 1980 and 2000. In-depth interviews with Peruvian veterans indicate the importance of sex and violence in soldiers' experience of becoming a combatant. The article analyzes the ambiguity in soldiers' narratives about sex and violence, coercion, and consent, and how they are implicated in both receiving and enacting sexualized violence. In particular, authors discuss veterans' accounts of collective experiences of sexualized hazing, abuse of women and girls, porn and prostitution, and references to gang rape. Soldiers, while in the army, experience intimacy through performative practices of sex and violence - which profoundly affect their interactions with one another - and the violence they perpetrate against enemy populations. These military intimacies, encouraged through institutional as well as cultural practices, help explain the prevalence of widespread sexual violence during the conflict. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Latin American Studies Association.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga