INTRODUCTION:
Testimonies of Hope from Colombian Women

This report produced by FOR and AFSC gives us a much needed and significant glimpse into the ways women as individuals and as members of collectivities of resistance experience and respond to the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia.

The voices recorded in this report are very important for several reasons. One, they vividly represent the varied attempts carried out throughout Colombia to respond to the armed conflict in non-violent ways. These non-violent responses are as multiple in Colombia as the conflict itself, and include organizations grouped around gender, ethnic, religious, political, and regional interests. Notorious examples recognized nationally and internationally for their outstanding work, are the Popular Women’s Organization (OFP), the Women’s Pacific Route (Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres), the Association of Indigenous Councils of Cauca (ACIN), and the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. The latter two were nominated this year by the AFSC for the Nobel Peace Prize. Incidentally, the work of these Colombian groups would be made even more difficult if they did not have the practical and symbolic support of international peace organizations such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the American Friends Service Committee, and Peace Brigades International.

Second, the testimonies gathered in this report allow us to listen to women as actors and agents of change, not only as victims of violence. The report reminds us that to have a voice is to have agency, and that to be silenced is a symptom, a condition and an outcome of terror. To speak up in the face of fear is a form of power that transforms both victim and aggressor.

Third, these testimonies invite us to reflect on the relationship between violence, gender, and non-violent resistance. Both U.S. and Colombian cultures tend to glamorize violence as cool (and masculine) and devalue non-violence as wimpy (and feminine), as rose-colored and far-fetched as romance novels. The winners of the last presidential elections in both countries reflect such view.

There is much more we need to understand about the consequences of our cultural celebration of the will to win, conquer and control, over the will to cooperate, empathize and understand. Both the OFP and Ruta Pacífica dare speak of tenderness as a principle of action, usually a no-no posture if one intends to be treated seriously in a political context. The centrality of love in a struggle against violence is a sentiment often expressed by the testimonies gathered in this report. It takes guts (some would say “balls”) to use the language of love in a context of war—and to practice it.

Fourth, the women in this report speak with memorable insight about their own living conditions and in so doing challenge us to reflect on our own. To reflect, that is, on the ways in which we are connected, the ways we remain separate, and the reasons we should not remain indifferent. Those of us who live in the U.S. may think of Colombia (or Iraq, for that matter) as a far away place affected by conflicts unrelated to us. We may think the Colombian conflict is exclusively of the making of Colombian people, who are apparently very fond of self-destruction. But our daily actions in the U.S. carry implications. On an individual level, the kind of food, clothes, coffee and news we consume affect the livelihood of people elsewhere. We vote with our pockets and need to acknowledge that power. At a social level, the policies carried out by the U.S. government and its institutions profoundly influence other governments and citizens. We support democracy in principle, but may undermine it in practice (the existence of the School of Americas come to mind, as well as the currently relaxed view of torture, if practiced against our “enemies”).

The voices collected in this report also resonate with my own experience as a Colombian woman, however different we may be in ethnic or social background. I experienced the threat of abduction at nine. I experienced the threat of rape and death at 18. I survived both by nothing more than sheer luck—and, in the latter case, by the surprising sprinter’s speed of my legs. I remained silent, overwhelmed by a profound sense of shame.

For all its personal impact, my experience pales before any and all of the stories lovingly collected here. These are the stories of peasants, displaced urbanites, lawyers and housewives; members of the Afro-Colombian community and of Indigenous groups; young mothers and elderly feminists. Women of many backgrounds united by a common thread: Resistance illuminated by hope (and love).

One may believe that women and men are essentially different (women being more spiritual; men more aggressive), or that any gender difference is purely the outcome of social upbringing (and thus, fundamentally arbitrary). This nature vs. culture debate still persists in academic and political settings. What is most definitely undeniable, however, is that men and women are treated differently—at home, at work, in school, within the family, in the Church and on the streets. Their experience of peace and war thus differs and so does their responses to conflict and threat. They have different resources to confront injustice. Paradoxically, this overall situation of power inequality may support creative alternatives to violence. Alternatives grounded on tactics rather than strategy, lack rather than plenty, cooperation rather than competition, negotiation rather than intimidation. These are the alternatives embraced and illustrated by this report’s testimonies.

Colombia is a country of great contrasts and striking internal divisions, most notably among rural and urban settings, the wealthy minority and the impoverished majority, and its well-defined geographic regions. This plural Colombia suffers from a war that is multi-layered and multi-dimensional (more a compound of conflicts than a single war). A fifty-year “protracted” war between the army and the insurgency exists side by side a so-called “war on drugs,” which in practice targets peasants, animals and land. These conflicts produce a war on civilians—not to mention the ecosystem—who are caught between drug lords, army, paramilitaries, guerrillas, and opportunistic criminals. To paraphrase Uribe Alarcón and Pècaut, Colombia as a whole is being “held hostage” by forces of multiple and overlapping violence.

The statistics speak eloquently. From 1992 to 1999 there were 5,181 kidnappings in Colombia, the highest amount in the world. Fifty to seventy assassinations were reported daily in 2003; 16,797 were killed in 2002 alone. As of 2003, Colombia had three million internally displaced persons, the majority of whom are women and children.

Many of the women interviewed for this report mention being “displaced.” This is a verb and noun of rare usage in the U.S. context—one would not casually drop in daily conversation—and it is therefore hard to translate it in its full force. In Colombia talk of the “displaced” has entered the daily lexicon in the same way that the “disposable” (a homeless person) did over two decades ago. A displaced person is forced to leave behind her land, her family, her roots, her source of income, and seek refuge in an inhospitable city that sees her as a burden. More often than not she has suffered the violence of war first hand, witnessed loved ones being harrased or killed, and will face, as a displaced woman, a much higher chance of being sexually abused than those not displaced.

Like most contemporary wars across the world, our Colombian multi-layered version is an armed conflict between men. This may be self-evident but its implications are powerful. Women are typically neither the main perpretators nor the direct targets in the Colombian armed conflict. They are often seen as an extension of the enemy, and damaged so to hurt the men behind them. Many times women are the surviving victims left to take care of shattered families from which male members have been taken.

In this context, the violence faced by women is not only inflicted by the machetes, guns, and landmines of the “enemy.” It is also carried out by “friendly” fire, so to speak, in the woman’s daily life. This is the normalized violence exercised without the weapons of war, and manifested in abusive marital relations, implicit or explicit threats of rape, absence of education opportunities, lack of sexual education, and in the general expectation that her right place is the kitchen and the bedroom.

Our Colombian daily discourse is pregnant (pun intended) with gendered aggression. Discourse may be “just” talk—but war makes it literal. For example, growing up I often heard statements such as Las leyes, como las mujeres, se hicieron para violarlas (Law, like women, is made to be raped) and En caso de violación, relájese y disfrute (in case of rape, relax and enjoy). These are meant to be witty statements, oozing with the leg-pulling (mamagallismo) dark humor that we so much love, and a certain disdain for laws and state authority. But they also speak blatantly of women’s assumed nature as a less human “Other,” and therefore, as something that is intrinsically less sacred and more rapable—like the “enemy.”

Violence against women is manifested in language and in action, in public and in private. It is not caused by armed conflict but war does exacerbate it, at all levels, in the family, on the streets, and in the battleground. Because it precedes war, gendered violence may continue after war—unless it is directly addressed by individual and collective initiatives such as those exemplified in this report.

Because violence is practiced in language and in action, it requires to be addressed and deconstructed at both levels. We need to examine the ways we speak about men and women; the qualities we associate with feminine and masculine dispositions; and the strategies we use to fight injustice or repel aggression. Such examination needs to take place individually, locally, nationally and internationally. What is happening in Colombia is intimately related to U.S. policies and initiatives. The future of either place requires self-examination and awareness of collective responsibility. Organizations such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Friends Service Committee enthusiastically embrace such commitment to international responsibility and local action. Their initiatives need to be recognized, celebrated and emulated.

Elizabeth Lozano is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and director of the Latin American Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago.