Drugs and Violence against Southern Colombian Women: An Analysis from a Decolonial Feminist Perspective

Abstract

Cocalero women in southern Colombia, the largest coca cultivation area and where drug policies took place since the early 2000s, experience rights violations and violence against their bodies and productive resources due to the country’s decades-long “war on drugs”. Because they are peasant and cocalero women, many of them indigenous and Afro-Colombian, they deal with oppressions that are reinforced by military presence and confrontation between different armed groups. The aim of this paper is to reflect on the Decolonial Feminism contributions for an analysis of the situation of Colombian cocalero women who experience the policies of forced eradication of coca crops and the militarization of the territory. In drawing attention to the marginalization and objectification of feminized and racialized bodies, reproduced since the colonization period, Decolonial Feminism enables a specific critical analysis of the “war on drugs” political impacts on women. Cocalero women’s bodies are often conceived as territories where the conflicts and disputes among state, paramilitary and criminal groups occur, reaffirming the power relations established during colonialism.