The joy of the militancy: happiness and the pursuit of revolutionary struggle

Pleasure as an element of revolutionary struggle has been overlooked in scholarly accounts about women's participation in guerrilla and politico-military organizations. In contexts of ongoing armed confrontation and transition from war to peace, it is also a taboo because it contravenes official accounts that expect narratives of repentance and the search for forgiveness from the ex-combatants. Furthermore, women's joy in revolutionary struggle brings into question traditional views about women's violence. In this article, I look at how happiness and joy are narrated in the stories of being members of guerrilla organizations built by Colombian female ex-combatants. I argue that in women's narrations images of poverty, scarcity, pain and the death of comrades, are accompanied by statements about the happiness of pursuing the revolutionary dream, and the joy of being a female insurgent. Women's narratives about the joy of the militancy are built around three main elements: the group as a place of affection; the guerrilla experience as a place for learning new skills and where they were recognized and valued, and the pleasure of pursuing a just cause. I discuss the narratives of women who joined guerrilla organizations in the 1970s and 1980s and laid down weapons between 1989 and 1994 in the framework of bilateral peace agreements.