ABSTRACT
Based on interview data and observations primarily from Central America and the Philippines, this article reviews the psychosocial adaptation of women forced to flee their homes due to armed conflict, but who remain in settings of war violence. The pervasive danger and fear in such settings impedes progress toward psychological and social equilibrium. These women experience terror, a spectrum of war-related emotional traumas, gender and family role instabilities, and sexual vulnerabilities. These women may also experience empowerment in the midst of armed conflict through the formation of new communities in which they share the leadership, through filling essential roles within these communities, and through conscientization, in which they both analyze and take action against political and economic oppression and gender subordination.
Emelinda is a middle aged campesina (peasant farmer woman) of El Salvador. She and her immediate family fled Chalatenango 90in late 1985 after the military killed a number of her siblings including her sister, who was also raped and mutilated. Emelinda's family moved into a closed refugee camp outside the capital, San Salvador. Following a few months of camp life they moved onto their own land purchased with a loan from a church. They lived independently on their land for two months until May 23, 1986, when the army came and captured Emelinda's husband. He was injured during the capture, held incommunicado in a clandestine jail, and tortured for twelve days. He was then incarcerated in political prison for crimes unknown to him. During the period her husband was incommunicado, Emelinda and the children remained on their land. Repeatedly the army came to their home and threatened her and her children. Soldiers had already sexually abused a woman nearby, and Emelinda was terrified that she too would become one of their sexual victims. She and her now broken family moved back into the refugee camp.
Fely is a middle aged peasant farmer of the Philippines. She was the elected leader of her village, a Base Christian Community (BCC) in Cotabato Province of Mindanao. On May 12, 1988, following a military-insurgency battle nearby, soldiers entered Fely's village to confront her and the other women. (The men of the village had fled from the soldiers into the surrounding forests and hills, because of their greater risk of being killed. In fact, that same day three men were pulled from their Nipa hut homes in a neighboring village, beaten, and shot to death by soldiers.) Fely was warned that any inhabitants found in her village when the soldiers returned would be killed. The following day, May 13, 1988, the soldiers did return and burned the village to the ground. Fely refused to consider herself helpless. Although displaced, she remained in the region and joined with a local human rights organization to file a formal complaint of human rights violation against the military for its actions.
