ABSTRACT
Despite a proliferation of scholarship on armed conflict and violence, Colombia and Mexico have been underexplored in studies of mass atrocities. However, systemic and grave violence in both contexts suggests a need to correct this empirical blind spot. This chapter contributes to the field by focusing on those individuals who have previously associated with the groups that commit these atrocities. Public, private, and third-sector actors posit a “lack of values” and “dysfunctional families” as the root cause for men’s involvement in non-state armed groups (NSAGs) in Colombia and Mexico. Leveraging an abductive study design, we took these emic claims seriously and investigated gendered understandings of family roles among former members of NSAGs and their families as well as explored the relationship of these understandings to decisions to participate in these groups. We draw from a combined 39 months of ethnographic fieldwork, social census activities, formal and informal interviews in Mexico and Colombia, as well as feminist and anthropological theory on masculinity and violence to develop the concept of moral sonhood through the presentation of our tripartite findings. First, participants do not lack “values” (and those of their families, specifically, their mothers). Second, the shared understandings of what it takes to fulfill filial obligations and duties in these contexts at least partially explain decisions to participate in NSAGs. Third, these reciprocal relations of care can transform to relations of harm when the son is effectively bound to dangerous activities and places.
