ABSTRACT

This chapter utilizes an intersectional analysis to examine the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (PTRC) efforts to capture the gendered dimensions of the internal armed conflict. It uses the term sexual violence because it is consistent with the category within international human rights law that identifies such violations or violent act. Tracing an intersectional method of analysis beyond the defining work by Crenshaw reveals its inextricable connection to a US women-of-color feminist political project and a concept of identity formation that emanates from decades of collaborative praxis. Rurality highlights the need for intersectional analysis. One colloquialism for subversive women, analyzed by Peruvian feminists, was the India-terruca. This term combines the racialized insult of calling a rural woman an India with the slang for a woman terrorist, terruca. The idea of internal colonialism highlights the historical component of the contemporary system of social differentiation in Peru, as well as the vestiges of domination that the nation-state maintains.