Rape by the security forces threatens all women, but four elements characterize women who face greater risk of actual attack: race, social class, occupation and the explosive mix of gender and armed insurgency particular to the Shining Path and its female cadre. These elements combine to put certain women—poor, brown-skinned (chola in the Peruvian racial argot), young and belonging to certain suspect groups like students or teachers' unions—at greater risk.
During our investigation, we discovered no situation in which wealthy or white women reported such sexual assaults. Almost all the women who told us they had been raped by security forces were lower middle class to poor mestizas (mixed white and Indian) and cholas. For example, Ruth139 was detained by the police during a routine document check of city bus passengers in Lima in 1991. Ruth, a mestiza, believes she was detained for two reasons: her lower middle class appearance and her student identification card from National University of San Marcos, Peru's largest university. The government frequently accuses universities of being centers for guerrilla activity, although the great majority of students have no connection with the insurgents. Ruth says she was blindfolded, beaten and threatened with death shortly after exiting the city bus. In the police station, where the beating continued, the police said, "These are the senderistas that give us the coup de grace."
The police comment to Ruth about the coup de grace (death blow) indicates the explosive gender twist to Peru's internal conflict. The Shining Path is unique among armed insurgencies for the high number of women in its ranks, particularly in leadership positions. Often, women take part in the assassination squads that the guerrillas send to kill local authorities, government officials and police and military officers, and give the coup de grace during public executions.
For Peruvian society, this violation of gender stereotypes—not peace-loving girls, but women who kill—provokes an intense fear of and anger against women suspected of participating in armed actions. In the press, female senderistas are frequently described as monsters, killing machines and crazed automatons. These fears also are incorporated into special police training courses, which claim that women are more dangerous, fierce andbloodthirsty than men. One 1990 National Police training manual describes "female subversives" as more determined and dangerous than men, [they have] extreme conduct . . . [and are] very severe."140
The rape of female militants detained by police and soldiers has been so common that the Shining Path incorporated the risk into its training for young women recruits. Women militants are told to expect to be raped and exhorted to consider it a political test that transforms them into more perfect cadres.141
Rape also tends to be perpetuated down Peru's race and class ladder or within a racial group. In other words, whites rape cholas, not the other way around, or mestizos rape mestizas. In most cases, women identified as chola or Indian receive the most brutal treatment. Mestizo or criollo (white) police officers tend to rape mestiza or chola detainees. We have documented several cases where a light-skinned officer demanded to rape first, and was followed by his darker-skinned subordinates in order of rank.
139 All names withheld by Human Rights Watch unless otherwise indicated.
140 VI Curso Superior de Guerra Política y Seguridad del Estado: Participación de la Mujer en la Subversión y en las Fuerzas Antisubversivas, (Surquillo: National Police Criminalistic Institute, 1990), p. 15.
141 Interview, Miguel, Castro Castro prison, February 1991.
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