Abstract
This article presents testimonies from former combatant women incarcerated for treason to examine how they represent themselves as complex victims and survivors of gender-based violence during Peru’s internal armed conflict (1980–2000). To this day, nationalist narratives and political discourses position these women as absent from society, denying them not only existence but the possibility to claim victimhood and redress. By including censored voices from complex victims/perpetrators and self-representations that register the labors of memory, this study disputes the normalization and acceptance of torture against women identified as Indigenous, campesinas, and insurgents. The author contends that the narration of ex-combatant herstories of war visibilizes the insufficiency of Peru’s legal system to address cases of human rights violations, opens spaces from which imprisoned women question victim/perpetrator binaries, and complicates memory politics in Peru.
