Anamaria Trujillo

ANAMARIA TRUJILLO, then a graduate student at University of California, Davis, California, was approved funding in September 2023 to aid research on “Making and Unmaking Gender During War and Peace; An Ethnography of Demobilized Women in Colombia,” supervised by Dr. James Smith. Funding supported one year of fieldwork in Medellín. While there, the grantee interacted with over sixty female ex-combatants who surrendered their weapons in the peace agreement signed between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government in 2016. The time there allowed the grantee to interact with “signatories” (a word used to refer to ex-combatants who signed the agreement) in different spaces and times of their social reincorporation. The main fieldwork sites were the Women’s Peace Market (a store owned by female ex-combatants), MEDEPAZ (an ex-combatants’ collective run by female signatories that assists elderly, disabled, and ex-FARC single mothers), and monthly demobilized female combatants’ events organized by Colombia’s government reincorporation agency. During fieldwork the grantee collected ten life histories of signatories, around forty interviews of ex-combatants, thirteen of UN personnel and government officials, and fourteen of civilians in the city. These interactions confirmed the hypothesis that “learning about reintegrated women’s experiences can improve researchers’ understanding of their participation in war, the transformative impact of war on women and society, and the ways in which women’s post-conflict peacebuilding practices are reshaping social norms in Colombia.”