Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia: Collective Efforts 1032442581, 9781032442587

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Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia

This volume examines how violence and resilience is experienced in urban spaces, and explores the history of a variety of people told from the perspective of the margins. Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia provides critical and empirical examples of individuals and groups who believe in their collective power, reject war and violence, and manifest their resistance through art and activism in ways that rethread the social fabric. This book is the result of extensive fieldwork conducted over ten years in Medellín and Bogotá and it brings into focus the ways that hip hop, poetry, urban art, and the creation of communities and shared experiences bring about new ways to dignify life and inhabit the city. It analyses the contemporary history of Colombia by drawing on the critical perspectives and tools of various disciplines. It also puts into dialogue the diverse and innovative scholarship from the North and the South that addresses inequality, violence, trauma and resilience. Most importantly, it focuses on the challenges that women and young people face today in situations of conflict and post-conflict. This book will be of interest for researchers and students at the under­ graduate and graduate levels, as well as readers interested in issues of human rights and the history of the Americas. Constanza López Baquero is associate professor of Spanish at the University of North Florida. Her research interests include Latin American literatures of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, women writers, autobiography and testimonio, gender and violence, film and documentary, human rights and activism, migrations, and hip hop and youth cultures. She is author of many publications including Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: El testimonio femenino en Colombia (2012)

Routledge Studies in the History of the Americas

33 Recasting the Nation in Twentieth-Century Argentina Edited by Benjamin Bryce and David M. K. Sheinin 34 Social Struggle and Civil Society in Nineteenth Century Cuba Edited by Richard E. Morris 35 An International History of South America in the Era of Military Rule Geared for War Sebastián Hurtado-Torres and Joaquín Fermandois 36 A Plurilingual History of the Portuguese Language in the Luso-Brazilian Empire Luciane Scarato 37 Remaking Indigeneity in the Amazon Christianity, Colonization and the State Esteban Rozo 38 U.S. Public Diplomacy Strategies in Latin America During the Sixties Time for Persuasion Edited by Francisco Rodríguez Jiménez, Lorenzo Delgado Gómez-Escalo­ nilla and Benedetta Calandra 39 Fashioning Society in Eighteenth-Century British Jamaica Chloe Northrop 40 Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia Constanza López Baquero For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-History-of-the-Americas/book-series/RSHAM

Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia Collective Efforts

Constanza López Baquero

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Constanza López Baquero The right of Constanza López Baquero to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-44258-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-44259-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-37126-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267 Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Collective Efforts, Spatial Realities

vii

ix

1

Preliminary Words 1

Theoretical Framework 2

Historical Context: Colombia in the Era of Uribismo 6

Collective Efforts 10

Operación Orión, Comuna 13, and Hip Hop 10

Acts of Memory 11

Women’s Bodies as Territory 11

Art and Protest: Youth Resistance 13

1

Collective Efforts: Hip Hop Against the Conflict

20

Hip Hop in Colombia 20

Hip Hop in Medellín 22

Comuna 13, Medellín 25

Hip Hop in Comuna 13 30

From a Place of Fear to “The Place to Go” 39

2

Poetry of the Land: Shaping the Urban Spaces with Art, Hip

Hop and Agriculture Challenging the New Authority 48

Dignity Means Searching for the Disappeared 49

Aka and Agroarte Colombia: Joining Art and Agriculture 54

A Cemetery as a Place of Recovery 62

48

vi Contents 3

City, Give Me Your Song!: Women Against Violence and

Feminicide

78

Defining Gender-Based Violence and Feminicide 78

Artistic Representations Against Gender-Based Violence and

Feminicide 79

Trauma, Corporeality, and Transformation in the Poetry of

Marta Quiñónez 83

Life and Death of Women in the City 90

Education, Political Action, and Accountability 97

4

Reworking the Trauma of the Capital in Film and Music

105

The Capital City as the Spectacle of Violence 105

Escaping Reality in Un tal Alonso Quijano (2020) 111

The Student Movement 115

Protests and Punks 118

5

Creating Feminist and Depatriarchalized Spaces: Murals, Rap,

and Ethics

129

Feminism, Community, and Collective Care 129

Murals Depicting Female Thought 131

Corpo AITUE: Solving Everyday Problems 137

Diana Avella, Feminism in Hip Hop 139

A Girl from the Barrio 144

Conclusions: To the Dream of an Empowered Motherland

157

Index

162

Figures

0.1 An anonymous work of public art in Medellín near Parque Norte proclaiming “El ESMAD violó aquí” (“ESMAD raped here”). 1.1 Orión nunca más, a mural in Comuna 13 (Medellín) commissioned by Casa Kolacho. This artwork no longer exists. 1.2 A la memoria, a mural in Comuna 13 dedicated to the rappers who were assassinated between 2009 and 2011. Art commissioned by Casa Kolacho. 1.3 Todos somos inmigrantes, a mural in Comuna 13 (Medellín) by Jomag Ariza. 2.1 Inside Cementerio Parroquial La América in Medellín. 2.2 The angel statue near the entrance to Cementerio Parroquial La América, with paintings of elephants representing memory on the left and images of rap, agriculture, and peace on the right. 2.3 On an interior wall of Cementerio Parroquial La América, a painting of hands sewing, representing women who have weaved the territory. An image of Comuna 13 rests on the weaver’s arms. 2.4 A mural in the façade of Cementerio Parroquial La América honoring the wisdom of black women ancestors. 2.5 A mural in Cementerio Parroquial La América representing the connection between women and nature. 2.6 A mural in Cementerio Parroquial La América portraying Hermey Mejia, who was disappeared and whose body is believed to be in La Escombrera. 2.7 La Escombrera, a mural by Warze in Cementerio Parroquial La América. 3.1 Stencil graffiti and sketches by the Red Feminista Antimilitarista on their previous headquarters in Medellín’s City Center. 3.2 “No mas feminicidios,” an anonymous graffiti in Medellín’s city center.

14 35

39 40 62

63

64 66 67

69 70 98 99

viii

List of illustrations

4.1 Enlarged image of a newspaper article about the assassinations of Luis Carlos Galán, Bernardo Jaramillo, and Carlos Pizarro as part of the exhibit “Resisto Luego Existo” at Centro de Memoria Paz y Reconciliación in Bogotá. 4.2 A wall with photographs of places of memory established by activists, victims’ families, and defenders of human rights, as part of the exhibit “Resisto Luego Existo” at Centro de Memoria Paz y Reconciliación in Bogotá. 4.3 Wall representing common slogans in Colombian protests as part of the exhibit “Resisto Luego Existo” at Centro de Memoria Paz y Reconciliación in Bogotá. 5.1 Renacer de la UP (Renewal of the UP, 2014), a mural by Guayra Puka in Bogotá. 5.2 Mujeres por la Paz (Women for Peace, 2013), a mural by Guayra Puka in Bogotá.

108

109

123 134 136

Acknowledgments

Dedico este libro a todas las personas que he conocido en Medellín y Bogotá desde 2013. Marta Lucía Quiñónez, tu poesía me llegó y me tocó el alma, luego vino tu amistad. Gracias por todos estos años de cariño. Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez, El Aka, toda mi admiración y agradeci­ miento. Gracias por compartir tu historia, por tu amistad y tiempo. Este libro no existiría sin ti. José David Medina, Medina THE Barrio, por abrirme las puertas de tu corazón y ponerme en contacto con tanta gente. Jeison Castaño, Jeihhco, por mostrarme la Comuna por primera vez y otras veces más, y por siempre recibirme en Casa Kolacho con cariño. Diana Avella y su hijo, Juan Diego, quienes me abrazaron y me dieron una comida maravillosa. Aprecio su amabilidad y fuerza. Gnomo, quien compartió su historia conmigo y tocó mi corazón. Pienso en él ti a menudo, es eres talentoso y humilde, gracias infinitas. Gracias también a Kronos, mi respeto por su tu talento. Agradezco el tiempo y las palabras de Guayra Puka. Gracias por com­ partir tu arte e historias. Don José Javier, doña Nury, don Óscar, doña Rosaadela, doña Luz, gra­ cias por recordar a sus hijos y compartir sus historias conmigo. Este libro está sobre todo dedicado a su memoria. Gracias a Libia Stella Gómez y Desarme Rock Social por toda su generosidad. Dayro Hidalgo, Kabala, y Esteban Agudelo, Chavo, por los recorridos y por la amistad. Gracias a Mara Soul, Jke, Sandra Grisales, Patricia Llanos, Lucía Vargas, Andrea Tráfico, don Carlos Castaño “el bueno,” ESK Esk-lones, Julieth Cortés, Juliana Marín y Jomag. A mi familia: Clayton, gracias por todo el amor y la paciencia, por ser mi lector y mi mayor apoyo. Camila, “my cheerleader,” quien me ayudó con el mayor reto, corregir las letras de las canciones. Maximiliano, quien me sigue enterneciendo con su amor y sonrisa. A mis queridas tías, quienes me acompañaron a conocer tantos sitios y personas. En su casa he encontrado

x

Acknowledgments

siempre refugio y esta vez no fue la excepción, ya que allí terminé de escribir este libro. A Michael quien con talento y mirada artística preparó las imágenes de este libro. Galia, mi amiga y apoyo, gracias por ser mi compañera de escritura, y por animarme siempre. I dedicate this book to all the people I have met in Medellín and Bogotá since 2013. Marta Lucía Quiñónez, your poetry reached me and touched my soul, then your friendship came. Thanks for all these years of love. Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramirez, El Aka, all my admiration and gratitude. Thank you for sharing your story, for your friendship and time. This book would not exist without you. José David Medina, Medina THE Barrio, for opening the doors of his heart and putting me in contact with so many people. Jeison Castaño, Jeihhco for showing me the Comuna for the first time, and other times, and for always welcoming me at Casa Kolacho with affection. Diana Avella and her son, Juan Diego, who embraced me and fed me a wonderful meal. I appreciate your kindness and strength. Gnomo, who shared his story with me and touched my heart. I think of you often, you are talented and humble, thank you infinitely. Thanks also to Kronos, my repect for your talent. I appreciate Guayra Puka’s time and words. Thanks for sharing your art and stories. Mr. José Javier, Ms. Nury, Mr. Óscar, Ms. Rosaadela, Ms. Luz, thank you for sharing the stories of your children with me. This book is above all dedicated to their memory. Libia Stella Gómez and Desarme Rock Social, thank you for your generosity. Dayro Hidalgo, Kabala, and Esteban Agudelo, Chavo, for all the tours and for the friendship. Thanks to Mara Soul, Jke, Sandra Grisales, Patricia Llanos, Lucía Vargas, Andrea Tráfico, don Carlos Castaño “el bueno,” ESK Esk-lones, Julieth Cortés, Juliana Marín and Jomag. To my family: Clayton, thank you for all the love and patience, for being my reader and my greatest support. Camila, my cheerleader, who helped with the greatest challenge, correcting song lyrics. Maximiliano, who con­ tinues to charm me with his love and smile. To my dear aunts who accom­ panied me to see so many places and people. I have always found refuge in your home, and this time was no exception, since that is where I finished writing this book. To Michael who prepared the images for this book with talent and an artistic eye. Galia, my friend and support, thanks for being my writing companion. Your encouragement means the world.

Introduction Collective Efforts, Spatial Realities

Preliminary Words The present study arises from my research on the relationship between trauma narratives, human rights, and the power of the collective. In 2012, I published a book titled Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: El testimonio femenino en Colombia (1985–2000) (Trauma, Memory and Body: Women’s Testimonio in Colombia (1985–2000))1 in which I analyzed the situation of women in the Colombian armed conflict, focusing on the years of turmoil at the end of the twentieth century. I concluded that, on the one hand, women were the main victims, and on the other, they were leading the way towards peace. However, I was left with the question of what had become of the children and youth who were born and raised in the midst of so much violence and precariousness. Through my research, I came across the hip hop movement in Medellín and Bogotá and discovered networks of young people working to effect change in their communities. I contacted some of the most important MCs and gestores culturales (cultural managers)2 in Medellín, such as Medina THE Barrio from Sociedad FB7, Jeihhco from C15, and El Jke from Crew Peli­ grosos. Likewise, I met with female rappers from Bogotá, including Diana Avella and Lucía Vargas. Through these conversations, I learned about other artists and organizations of young people that have also taken the lead on urgent matters affecting their cities: poverty, inequality, state oppression, vio­ lence against women, feminicide, environmental damage, etc. They have done so while facing, first, the dangers of the armed conflict, and later new threats of organized armed violence against those who denounce violations and demand justice following the signing of the peace accords in 2016. Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia: Collective Efforts is the result of numerous visits to Medellín and Bogotá since 2013 to interview artists, community leaders, and academics, and the ongoing conversations I have maintained at a distance with these brave and visionary leaders. This book charts a journey through geographies marked by violence, where communities seek justice and fight with performative actions of non-violence to confront state and structural violence, as well as oblivion. With this study, I seek to raise awareness of how young people who have grown up in DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267-1

2

Introduction

a nation at war with itself are using collective artistic and political action to articulate paths forward for their communities and for Colombia.

Theoretical Framework As a Latin Americanist, I understand land dispossession to be at the center of all arguments; from colonial usurpation of indigenous territories and the uprooting of African peoples to present-day neoliberal practices that dis­ place populations and oblige them to migrate. As a feminist scholar, the body occupies an essential place in my research and teaching reflection. The body is the place of knowledge, it is theory and practice. As Cherríe Moraga has argued, “The body—that site which houses the intuitive, the unspoken, the viscera of our being—this is the revolutionary promise of ‘theory in the flesh;’ for it is both the expression of evolving political consciousness and the creator of consciousness, itself” (xxiv). For decolonial and commu­ nitarian feminists, the body is a territory that has been usurped and violated, but at the same time, a territory that resists, empowers, shows, and con­ fronts the other, it is a body that is also capable of joy.3 Colombia’s missing, violated, and mistreated need to be understood from a perspective of cor­ poreality because suffering is processed and narrated in the body. Both territories and bodies are sites of unequal contention between oppres­ sors and oppressed. In the Latin American context, both have had to endure historical and systematic wounds. For this reason, decolonial feminists insist on reassessing the history of coloniality in Latin America to better understand the violence of the present. As Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso explains it, Feminism, together with decolonial commitment, takes on the task of reinterpreting history in a critical key to modernity, not only because of its androcentrism and misogyny, as classical feminist epistemology has done, but also given its intrinsically racist and Eurocentric character. (144, my translation) In Latin America, capitalism and neoliberalism have been successful despite the damage that they cause to both the land and its peoples. In the United States and Europe, democracy and markets go hand in hand, but in Latin America capitalism has been an extension of colonial authoritarian regimes. In Colombia, extractivism has been masked as progress and, in its dizzying race to modernity, the country has done irreparable ecological and human damage. This situation has affected particularly indigenous and Afro-des­ cendants, peasants from rural areas, and the poor in the cities. Decolonial feminists criticize this logic of development and advocate for a feminism that, “is nourished by the theoretical contributions of the analysis of colo­ niality and racism—no longer as a phenomenon but as an intrinsic episteme to modernity and its liberating projects” (Espinosa Miñoso 146, my translation).

Introduction

3

Since the times of Independence, Latin America has looked towards Europe, and later the United States, for frameworks of reference, rather than searching inside for autochthonous knowledge. Decolonial feminism ques­ tions this practice, proposing a feminism from the South that becomes an accomplice and feeds on the movements of autonomous communities that carry out processes of decolonization and restitution of lost genealogies, that points to the possibility of other meanings of life in community and re–elaborates the horizons of utopia known and universally endorsed. (Espinosa Miñoso 146, my translation) In fact, Communitarian feminism, a theory and practice contributed by Latin American indigenous thinkers, regards the territory as a social fabric where living outside patriarchal capitalist logic is possible. Through practice and theory, indigenous communities have enabled practices of Buen Vivir, which, as Arturo Escobar explains, means “Good Life or collective well­ being.” It is a “holistic, de-economized view of social life” in which reci­ procity plays a significant role, in other words, we take care of the land so that it takes care of us. Escobar defines Buen Vivir as an option to devel­ opment that allows for the collective construction of a new way of inhabit­ ing Earth. Buen Vivir “makes possible the subordination of economic objectives to ecological criteria, human dignity, and social justice” (455). In Colombia, many communities have understood that privileging individual rights as promoted by capitalism is unsustainable. On the contrary, imagin­ ing “communality” and “being able” allows them to create together. By connecting each other through art, for example, they reterritorialize the spaces that have been marked by violence. For Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, the community is an epistemic environment of group knowledge. She argues that one cannot separate manual labor from intellectual labor. By creating with your hands and brains—sowing and reaping, carving wood, recycling, and weaving, doing street practices such as graffiti, vigils, accompanying social movements, etc.—one nurtures both the academic and the theoretical reflection (Centro Experimental Oído Salvaje). Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia shows that collectives in Medellín and Bogotá contribute to knowledge through their cultural production. By utilizing art, popular education, and communication as tools of resistance, they trans­ form adversity, promote the ethics of peace and human rights, rethread the social fabric, and strengthen democracy. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concepts of deterritorialization and territorialization cross all over my work because in the territory is pre­ cisely where social and power relations are at interplay. Furthermore, those relationships are the ones that come together to form the territory (Porto-Gonçalves 179). Anke Schwarz and Monica Streule describe terri­ tory as “the site and stake of everyday social struggle” (12). Ramírez,

4

Introduction

Patiño and Gómez further define territory not as a space that is physical and static but rather shaped by its “territoriality”—an ever-changing process with porous qualities such as “heterogeneity, simultaneity, movement, variation, and conflict” (12, my translation). They explain: The city as a territory ought to be studied from the exercises of terri­ toriality that constitute it, which arise from the multiple sources of ter­ ritorial expression: public, private, community, civil or armed actors, and subjects with multiple identities and belongings; historical heritages and cultural memories; material structures, organization and spatial configuration; global, regional and local conjunctures and trends. Although all these simultaneously mark the territory, some achieve greater or lesser degrees of expression and consolidation and definition of territorial practices and spatial relationships. Hence, conflicts, powers, subversions and resistance become characteristic of all territor­ ial constructions. (12–13, my translation) Art collectives in Medellín and Bogotá understand these concepts well; they take over the physical space and practice democracy at the grassroots level. They are aware of their ability to transform and intervene in their territories and use art as an emancipatory practice. Their sense of territoriality is con­ stantly changing, just as the way in which they mark and read the territories where they produce knowledge, shape their identities, and dream of their future. The authors describe this symbiotic relationship between the place these cultural actors occupy and the way in which they re-inhabit and resignify those spaces: The territory acquires its own meaning, as a socialized, cultured space, by the diverse expressions, appropriations and cultural, social, political, and economic defenses that are made of it; and in turn it acquires this meaning in the various readings that are made of it, by being registered in memory, valued and imagined in multiple ways, ritualized or mythologized, constituting itself in a mental map and symbolic marker. In addition to intrinsically incorporating the necessary spatial substrate of all human relationships, the territory is a sign whose meaning is constructed from two places: from the socio-cultural codes in which it is registered and from the codes of those who interpret it. (16, my translation) For these authors, the territory is not only marked by those who coexist in it but also by its history (30). In Latin America, history is closely associated with the violence of groups that exert their force in the territory, and also plan, devise, and reinterpret territoriality. In some parts of Colombia, illegal groups have managed the territory in place of the State, functioning as the

Introduction

5

authority and the law. From left-wing guerrillas to right-wing paramilitary groups and vigilantes, they have filled spaces with meanings and invisible frontiers. In all the research about the armed conflict in Colombia, experts agree that its causes have been land possession and precarious democracy. This has been clearly explained in ¡Basta ya! Colombia: Memorias de guerra y dignidad (¡Basta ya! Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity)4 by the Grupo de Memoria Histórica, a report that serves as a vital source of information not only to visibilize the armed conflict but to explain its dimensions. However, until the moment that it was first published in 2012, the government and a great part of the population had denied that an armed conflict existed. The analogy of the two Colombias is helpful to understand the apartheid faced by a large portion of the population: It is a war that many Colombians do not see and do not feel; it is a war that does not threaten them. The war is seen through the lens of the media, a war which others suffer and enables thousands of people to live under the illusion that the country enjoys a full and prosperous democracy, and at the same time prevents them from understanding the extreme importance which every political decision, position, or nego­ tiation has for those who suffer from it. (28) Despite the visibilization efforts of activists, human rights groups, commis­ sions of truth, and other entities, mainstream society continues to question the reality of the violence that affects marginalized urban and rural areas, com­ munity leaders, women, peasants, Afro-descendants, and indigenous peoples.5 In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler proposes that violence is a matter of semantics. This has been evident in the United States during the Black Lives Matter protests, in which millions of Americans participated.6 These demonstrations were deemed either “peaceful or violent,” depending on one’s political perspective. As The Washington Post’s journalists Scott Radnitz and Yuan Hsiao explain, perceptions of the right to protest in the United States today depend on the political party affiliation with and pat­ terns of media consumption. Prominent Republicans, for example, “depicted the movement as threatening, using terms like ‘thugs,’ ‘mobs’ and even ‘acts of domestic terror.’ Conservative media outlets … disproportionately showed footage of property destruction and theft to support the narrative that the protests were out of control.” Butler explains that this perception of portrayed chaos serves states as “justification to defend society against this violent threat. When what follows is imprisonment, injury, or killing, the violence in the scene emerges as state violence” (4). In Latin America, state violence has been a tool of control in numerous situations, including the dictatorships in the Southern Cone and the Central American civil wars. Although Colombia has been considered a long-standing democratic

6

Introduction

country, state repression came in waves during the second half of the twen­ tieth century and continues to the present time. In the name of security, the country has justified all kinds of human rights violations including forced disappearance, forced displacement, and persecution of opponents. In Latin America, forced disappearance has been a systematic practice since the 1970s. While such violence aims to obliterate the bodies of those who are regarded as disposable, those who disappeared acquire a corpor­ ality, which is manifested through their mothers and family members who claim them. The disappeared in Latin America become more present through the photographs that their family members carry in marches and the echoes of those voices who ask, “¿Dónde están?” (Where are they?), and demand, “Los queremos vivos” (We want them alive)—a continental chorus of mothers and family members who “aggressively pursue” justice. Butler argues that: Nonviolence is perhaps best described as a practice of resistance that becomes possible, if not mandatory, precisely at the moment when doing violence seems most justified and obvious. In this way, it can be understood as a practice that not only stops a violent act, or a violent process, but requires a form of sustained action, sometimes aggressively pursued … we can think of nonviolence not simply the absence of vio­ lence, or as the act of refraining from committing violence, but as a sustained commitment, even a way of rerouting aggression for the pur­ poses of affirming ideals of equality and freedom. (27) In Colombia victims have had a sustained commitment to peace that is linked to the defense of their bodies and territories. Through actions of memory and resistance, they have begun to rebuild their communities. In recent years, the peace accord has allowed them to hope and to believe that change is possible in the country. However, new forms of violence and divisions among the population have put at risk everything that has been achieved.

Historical Context: Colombia in the Era of Uribismo On November 30, 2016, the Colombian Congress ratified the peace accord between the government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), the largest guerrilla group on the continent. Significant advances were made through a peace process that was exemplary to the world, but that peace was obtained in the midst of great local controversies. After over fifty years of armed conflict and four years of negotiations, the two parties came to a final agreement that was sent to the voters for ratifi­ cation on October 2. The ballot had a simple yes-or-no question: “¿Apoya usted el Acuerdo Final para la Terminación del Conflicto y la Construcción de una Paz Estable y Duradera?” (Do you support the Final Agreement for

Introduction

7

the Termination of the Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Last­ ing Peace?). With a low turnout, Colombians rejected the peace accord by a minuscule percentage. President Juan Manuel Santos was unable to convince voters in major cities to support the process, leaving the other half of the voting population, for whom peace was of utmost importance, at a complete loss. The eventual approval of the peace agreement, despite the outcome of the referendum, was a relief for many, but the lack of support and distrust by a large segment of Colombian society only increased. The opposition to the peace accord and discontent with its passage is due in large part to the ongoing influence in Colombian politics of ex-president Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), whose political movement is known as Uribismo. Not unlike Trumpism in the U.S., Uribismo is a populist current whose fol­ lowers adore and swear allegiance to the former leader. Uribismo is more than a political point of view but rather is a social and cultural force that has further divided Colombia, making enemies out of old friends, pitting family members against each other, and portraying those who do not uncritically follow, think, and act in the Uribismo way as people who have no love for Colombia or even worse, as communist guerrilleros. Uribismo has invaded every aspect of Colombian society, from the privacy of the home to the pulpit, and wields influence throughout all institutions public and private. Uribe’s political career began in the department of Antioquia where he held various offices, including governor (1995–1998). He became president of Colombia in 2002 with the promise of ending violence and corruption. In 2004, he modified the constitution to obtain a second presidential term. In 2009, he attempted a third term, which was rejected by the Constitutional Court. However, his power did not deteriorate. In 2010, Santos, who had been minister of defense during Uribe’s presidency, was elected with his blessing. The friendship ended soon after when Santos decided to join in agreements with the FARC, Uribe’s sworn enemy. After two terms in office, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016, and having been successful at implementing the peace agreement, Santos’ legacy was once again challenged by Uribismo. In 2018, Colombians elected Uribe’s handpicked candidate, Ivan Duque, a president who undermined peace efforts with his lack of commitment to the accords. Prior to serving as president, Uribe had implemented questionable security policies during his tenure as governor of Antioquia. Foremost among these was Convivir, a sort of neighborhood watch aimed at deterring guerrilla activities, through which civilian vigilante groups turned on neighbors and those implicated suffered severe punishments including threats and death. Convivir spread to other areas of Colombia and was linked to paramilitar­ ism. In 1998 Amnesty International condemned elements within Convivir: [T]here is increasing evidence that Convivir groups in some areas of the country are no longer confined to tasks of intelligence gathering but have become offensive structures participating in joint operations with

8

Introduction the Colombian army. There is also strong evidence that Convivir groups have been responsible for human rights violations against civi­ lian populations. (17)7

Throughout his political career, Uribe has maintained relationships with non-state actors and implemented security policies that have been deemed serious human rights violations and have affected civilians dis­ proportionately. Widely documented in the U.S. National Security Archives, Uribe also had alliances with the Medellín Drug Cartel during the 1980s and 1990s. As president, he made use of ties to paramilitary groups. Investiga­ tions into those links are ongoing, but bringing him to justice so far has been nearly impossible. The former president has been able to evade justice since the witnesses against him are threatened into silence, go into exile, or turn up dead.8 His many supporters believe that any accusations against him are false claims made by those who want to discredit their “eternal pre­ sident,” as he has been called. They feel their opinions are validated, in part, by the support the U.S. has extended to Uribe through Plan Colombia, signed into law by the Clinton administration in 2000 during the presidency of Uribe’s predecessor, Andrés Pastrana (1998–2002), and expanded by the Bush administration while Uribe was in office. The policy, as Nick Miroff reported, escalated the war: With U.S. backing, the Colombian government launched a scorchedearth counteroffensive against the FARC’s rural stronghold after Pre­ sident Álvaro Uribe was elected in 2002. Government troops were often followed by right-wing militias that targeted suspected rebel sympathi­ zers and massacred civilians. More Colombians were driven from their homes during the first stages of Plan Colombia than at any other time in the half-century conflict. (“‘Plan Colombia’”) In 2009, Bush honored Uribe with the Medal of Freedom, regardless of the fact that during his tenure—first as governor and later as president— Colombia saw the highest numbers of human rights violations in its history. His war against guerrillas unquestionably reduced their power but at a high cost for civilians. Violence and terror had long been used as weapons of control, but under Uribe, the scale of such abuses increased dramatically. Between 1996 and 2005 one person was forcibly disappeared every two hours (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica Hasta encontrarlos 24). One particularly horrific aspect of Uribe’s mechanisms of control were the so-called “false positives.” In his second term (2006–2010), Uribe’s govern­ ment devised a system of rewards for the Armed Forces to increase the number of guerrillas killed in combat. In order to obtain these benefits, the military began recruiting young people from marginalized neighborhoods

Introduction

9

and deceiving them with job offers that would take them away from their homes and families. Once relocated, they were murdered, dressed in guer­ rilla uniforms, photographed, and presented as casualties in combat. The victims, who became known as “false positives,” were buried in clandestine graves where their relatives could not find them (156). In February 2021 the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, JEP) repor­ ted 6,402 cases of false positives between 2002 and 2008, but family mem­ bers affirm that there are more than 12,000.9 This number must be added to the total of forced disappearances in the context of the conflict, which according to the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica is at least 80,000 between 1970 and 2018.10 Furthermore, the Colombian state together with multinational corpora­ tions has joined right-wing paramilitary groups to suppress unionization and protests, and to secure lands controlled by insurgent groups. These alliances have turned territories where marginalized people live into what Ulrich Oslender calls “geographies of terror,” depriving the population of their right to their territories and using fear as a weapon of domination. David Whyte has argued that state neoliberal policies have given carte blanche to corporations to accelerate production and cause environmental damage and death. In Colombia, these politics have been linked to forced displacement, forced disappearance, massacres, feminicide, and other crimes against humanity. For this reason, “[t]aking institutional violence seriously means challenging the legitimate right of both police and private corporations to commit violence with impunity” (5). In Colombia, this demand should also question paramilitarism as the illegal arm of the state, an action that “leg­ ally” challenges the constitution. On paper, the armed conflict has ended and the country has enacted pro­ gressive laws to protect women and victims of the conflict. In actuality, Colombia is a place where young people have very few opportunities, and where the most atrocious human rights violations continue to happen in silence and with the complicity of the state. Colombia has the highest number of forced disappearances in the continent and is ranked second worldwide in its level of forced displacement. Community leaders and women are killed in great numbers, deaths which are seldom investigated and for which perpetrators rarely face justice. Following the peace accord, the Colombian state has revealed its weakness, unable to take control over the territories left by the FARC. The void is being filled by a variety of armed groups, including ex-right-wing paramilitaries, ex-left-wing guerril­ leros, common criminals, and youth who continue to be recruited into the ranks of these groups—a hydra made up of heads from diverse armies, per­ haps more monstrous than any of the evils of the past. With peace came more silence, less international attention, and more deaths of community leaders and activists. To make matters worse, the third decade of the twenty-first century brought with it new challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people felt more isolated than ever. The Duque

10

Introduction

administration was uninterested in implementing the peace accord or addres­ sing violence against activists. The media was taken over by interest groups who have caused reporters to blame insecurity on Venezuelan immigrants, and the COVID-19 mismanagement on young people from poor neighborhoods who gathered to have parties. In the midst of this despair, new victims of forced displacement were reported, particularly due to the great ecological damages brought about by industrial mining, agriculture, and dams. Given the institutional chaos, young people, women, minority groups, victims and survivors of the war have come together all over Colombia to collectively confront violence and destitution. During the Estallido Social, which translates literally as “social explosion,” people took to the streets from April to July 2021 to denounce inequality and the country’s silent war against its people.11 This prompted the election of the first left-wing pre­ sident, Gustavo Petro Urrego, on August 7, 2022, amid many controversies. His electoral success brought a lot of hope to the most marginalized people in the country, while the wealthy classes watched his rise with disbelief. It was, without a doubt, one of the most severe blows to Uribismo.

Collective Efforts In considering the intersections between territory, violence, and trauma, Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia focuses on five case studies. These examples consider collective action in cultural production as mechanisms for reclaiming space, as acts of memory, and as a way to counter hegemonies of violence in Colombia. Operación Orión, Comuna 13, and Hip Hop When I began my research for this project, José David Medina “Medina THE Barrio” was my first contact and has since become a dear friend. Through him, and later through Jeihhco, I learned about Comuna 13, a marginalized area of Medellín that has been considered one of the most dangerous in the city. Since at least the 1940s, Comuna 13 has been home to many victims of forced displacement, a squatter settlement of rural peoples who had to abandon their lands. By the end of the century, the area had become impassable to the state, as guerrillas and other armed groups had used the Comuna as a stronghold and operated there as the authority. Upon taking office, Uribe concentrated on his security agenda, launching Operación Orión in 2002 to remove these armed groups and take control of Comuna 13. This was the first military operation in the history of Colombia to be dispatched to an urban area, and the civilian cost was enormous. As hip hop artist and activist Aka stated in an interview in 2021, “If Guernica was the experiment before the Spanish Civil War, Orión was the pilot pro­ ject of Uribe’s Seguridad Democrática policy that was later implemented all over Colombia.” Operación Orión made evident the lethal alliances between

Introduction

11

state forces and right-wing paramilitary groups, an association whose scope continues to be investigated by the Comisión de la Verdad.12 The Comuna, however, is also a place of artists, like Jeihhco, Aka, and many more, whose commitment to nonviolence is indefatigable. This devotion arose as a result of Operación Orión, and other military operations in the Comuna, whose victims, to this day, have not received justice. The first chapter of this book, “Collective Efforts: Hip Hop Against the Conflict,” examines the evolu­ tion of hip hop in Medellín and the historical and political events that have shaped the movement in Comuna 13, arguing that this genre has reappro­ priated the history of the Comuna, providing a cohesive testimonial discourse that confronts official accounts of the Comuna and its peoples. Acts of Memory During the COVID-19 pandemic, Medina kept me informed on events and publications. It was through him that, in 2021, I met Aka, a community leader from Comuna 13 who brings together rap and agriculture to bridge the generation gaps between young and old and thus bring change to the community. Aka is one of the leaders of Agroarte Colombia, a collective that generates meaningful actions of memory and resistance including Cuerpos Gramaticales (Grammatical Bodies), performances that aim to narrate the stories of violence exerted against the bodies and the territory through theater, dance, weaving, writing, and sowing the body. Agroarte has also created Galería Viva (Live Gallery), an artistic gallery located in Cementerio Parroquial La América in Comuna 13, which consists of murals, graffiti, and gardens of memory to mourn the victims of the conflict. After the pandemic, I attended a variety of events at Cementerio La America, where I met women who belonged to Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad (Women Walking for Truth). On these occasions, the women came together to ritualize and memorialize death alongside artists and neighbors. Those acts of memory draw attention to both the dead and the missing, since some victims are buried in the cemetery and others, because they were forcibly disappeared, are not. The second chapter, “Poetry of the Land: Shaping the Urban Spaces with Art, Hip Hop and Agriculture,” examines, on the one hand, the constant struggle to find the disappeared faced by Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad, and, on the other, the community-led projects coordinated by Aka, arguing that they are not only artistic and political actions but also real possibilities of governance. These perfor­ mances serve as a symbolic reparation to victims of state crimes. Women’s Bodies as Territory The armed conflict has disproportionately affected specific groups: women, children, youth, LGBT groups, Afro-Colombians, and indigenous popula­ tions. In situations of forced displacement, however, the burden falls

12

Introduction

primarily on women, who make up over 50 percent of the nine million vic­ tims. As caretakers, women have taken responsibility for the children, the elderly, and entire communities.13 As stated in a report by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, their situation is more vulnerable because, on the one hand, they endure multiple and overlapping discrimination and violence, and on the other, they are the least prepared in psychological terms for the challenges they face in their new environments (Una nación despla­ zada 232). To this violation of their rights, there is an added structural form of vic­ timization, gender-based violence, that affects women and girls in private and public settings. Furthermore, women who are community leaders are often threatened, harassed, and killed. As Ginny Bouvier explains: Gender–based violence both reflects and perpetuates structural inequal­ ities and its pervasiveness is only beginning to be recognized. The full magnitude of the problem is not known.… High levels of impunity discourage women from coming forward to denounce violence.… The institutional capacity for addressing sexual violence is likewise inade­ quate. Those who seek medical support or report abuse to authorities risk further abuse and degrading treatment by medical practitioners and police, who often lack training in established protocols. Sexual violence against males and gender-based violence more broadly has received little attention from the academic community, the policy-making community, or from the wider public. (8) Gender-based violence and feminicide have been weapons used against female bodies within the context of the armed conflict and in its aftermath. La Red Feminista Antimilitarista (The Feminist Antimilitarist Network) has been keeping count of all feminicides reported in Colombia since 2017. In 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 630 feminicides were reported, followed by 622 in 2021, and 619 in 2022, and the counting continues. In decolonial and communitarian feminist theory, the bodies of women are considered part of the territory. Geographers would agree that bodies not only inhabit space but make part of it. Therefore, violence against them can be mapped. In Seeking Spatial Justice, Edward Soja argues that “Every­ thing is connected to everything else … but not just in a flat horizontal ecosystem or biosphere. These connections also extend vertically through a socially produced layering of bounded geographical scales extending from the planet to the body” (54). Given this interconnection, the bodies of women in Colombia—marked by gender-based violence, and its most extreme form, feminicide—make up part of the national cartography. Chapter 3, “City, Give Me Your Song!: Women Against Violence and Feminicide,” examines feminicidal violence in the context of a militarized society and the impunity that continues to reign despite the enactment of

Introduction

13

laws that seek to prevent and condemn these crimes. It discusses the efforts of women to visibilize feminicide and the killing of community leaders. Violence against marginalized bodies is evident in the testimonial poetry of Marta Lucía Quiñónez, whom I first met in 2014 and who has become a close friend and collaborator in various projects. Her personal story, narrated through her poetry, demonstrates the vulnerability of girls, women, and black bodies. Some of her most recent poetry addresses gender-based violence. According to the author, these poems are urgent and never-ending because the bodies of women continue to be targeted. This chapter also discusses the impact of the work of La Red Feminista Antimilitarista in the areas of popular education, communication, and political performance in the public space to raise awareness about violence against women in Medellín. Art and Protest: Youth Resistance In recent years, state repression has also affected young Colombians in par­ ticular. From November 21, 2019, until February 21, 2020, many young people joined a multitudinous national strike called El Paro Nacional, in which the population expressed general discontent with the Duque admin­ istration, denounced breaches in the peace accord of 2016, and the murder of indigenous and community leaders. President Duque dispatched a branch of the Colombian military police, Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios, better known by its acronym, ESMAD, which, in attacking the protestors, killed Dylan Cruz, a young student from Bogotá. Despite the outrage caused by this murder, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic dissipated the protests. When the Estallido Social broke out the following year, the administration reacted with force. The violent repression carried out by the ESMAD resulted in the confirmed deaths of more than eighty protesters.14 Within the context of the protests, women were raped, hundreds were disappeared, and many more have been detained illegally and tortured. Given the circumstances of youth in marginal neighborhoods and the pre­ carious situation of women, and the threat of new forms of violence, the chal­ lenges for young people in Colombia are many. Nevertheless, they have utilized their bodies as a site of resistance. They have painted their faces and bodies with the colors of the Colombian flag, highlighting red which, as Colombians learn in school, signifies the blood of our libertadores, our nineteenth-century freedom fighters. Youth use art and graffiti, chants, and dance to reject Uribismo, and to demand that their lives are valued equally. However, as Butler has argued, their claim against being injured or killed is not always registered. And one reason for this is that their lives are not considered worthy of grief, or grievable. The reasons for this are many, and they include racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia, misogyny, and the sys­ tematic disregard for the poor and the dispossessed. (28)

14

Introduction

Figure 0.1 An anonymous work of public art in Medellín near Parque Norte pro­ claiming “El ESMAD violó aquí” (“ESMAD raped here”). Photograph taken by the author on June 24, 2023.

Chapters 4 and 5 both seek to counter this tendency by examining cultural production by youth in Bogotá. Chapter 4, “Reworking the Trauma of the Capital in Film and Music” centers on Un tal Alonso Quijano (A Certain Alonso Quijano 2020), produced by students from Universidad Nacional in Bogotá. The film combines litera­ ture with punk music while revealing the ongoing trauma of generations as the inheritance of young people today. My study takes into account the his­ torical events that remain in the collective memory and have shaped the lives of Bogotanos from the 1940s until the present time. It discusses the university as a space of state and structural violence where youth are suspects and tar­ gets. It also analyzes the role of memory in the film and music score, focusing on how the use of literary and musical language allows the characters in the film to approach an understanding of their situation. Language in the film is not direct but rather the characters appropriate other forms of expression to represent the damage and deterioration of society. Chapter 5, “Creating Feminist and Depatriarchalized Spaces: Murals, Rap, and Ethics,” examines the cultural production and activism of community activist Guayra Puka Arias Florián and rapper Diana Avella, artists known nationally and internationally for their commitment to nonviolence. The first part reflects on the work of Arias Florián, an artist and community activist whose murals can be found throughout Bogotá. Working together with groups of women and youth, Guayra’s art is an open space of communication, negotiation, and political action. She is also one of the founders of Colectivo Aitue, an organization in the

Introduction

15

southern part of Bogotá that works with vulnerable populations. The second part of Chapter 5 emphasizes the importance of rap production that addresses political violence and gender inequality, as well as the community projects that Avella leads. In studying the historical circumstances and cultural production explored in these five chapters, Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia travels through diverse contested territories where communities seek to reclaim spatial justice. Emphasizing theories of trauma, violence, decolonial and communitarian feminism, and urban geography, my study explores artistic expressions that reappropriate the historical discourse while denouncing violations of human rights. Furthermore, it brings into focus concrete and innovative projects that create new ways to dignify life and inhabit the city. Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia is a reflection on violence and resilience and how both play out in the urban territory. It is the history of many people told from the perspective of the margins. It provides critical and empirical examples of specific urban efforts of people who resist and believe in their collective power, people who reject war and violence, who manifest themselves in their “juntanza”—a word often used by communitarian and decolonial feminists that means joining many together—to rethread the social fabric. Finally, Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia is a tribute to people who believe that art is transformational, and who, despite the challenges, have been able to bring about social change and to assume governance over their territories.

Notes 1 Testimonio is a controversial and restrictive literary genre. In my previous work, I have argued that its definition needs to be expanded since its production, par­ ticularly women’s testimonio, is enormous. For this reason, I have proposed that testimonio should take into account not only the traditional subaltern oral nar­ ratives, but also artistic and visual expressions, including theater, narrative cinema, documentary, graffiti, street demonstrations, YouTube videos, social media pages, and any other type of occupation of public spaces where private and personal pain is inserted (López Baquero 164). 2 Gestión cultural (cultural management) is a profession that was developed in the 1980s and 1990s in Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean and in which many universities in those geographical areas offer undergraduate and graduate degrees. The role of a gestor cultural is to promote art and culture and to serve as a liaison between artists and private and public institutions. Many of the gestores culturales I have met work with grassroots organizations and enable cultural projects that thrive with very little means. 3 Decolonial feminism and Communitarian feminism are political theories and areas of praxis from the South that revise and redefine Abya Yala’s history from a gendered perspective (Abya Yala is the name given to Latin America before the conquest and means “land in full maturity” in Guna language). For a more detailed explanation, see Ochy Curiel’s presentation “Aportes y propuestas del feminismo decolonial de Abya Yala,” delivered at the Universitat de València in 2018. Decolonial feminism

16

4 5

6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14

Introduction understands colonialism as the root of all oppressions, and Communitarian feminism believes that patriarchalism, particularly from the colony—but even before the colony—is the deepest cause of subjugation of women and land. The report was first published in Spanish in 2012 and was later translated into English in 2016. All quotes in this chapter come from the English version. The Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica published on YouTube a doc­ umentary based on the ¡Basta ya! report, titled No hubo tiempo para la tristeza (There was no time for sadness). It reflects upon the 50 years of armed conflict, focusing on the survivors and highlighting their inability to mourn. The doc­ umentary attributes this reality to the continuous and simultaneous acts of vio­ lence in Colombia that do not allow people to empathize, commiserate, nor even reflect critically on the abnormality that has afflicted generations of Colombians. It is estimated that in June 2020 about 15 to 26 million Americans participated in the marches, making BLM the largest movement in the country’s history (Buchanan, Bui and Patel). Although the Convivir were created in 1995 during the tenure of president Daniel Samper Pizano, Uribe’s utilization of vigilante groups in Antioquia left a lot of questions about his ties with paramilitaries. Samper has denied his links with the illegal groups and has stated to the Comisión de la Verdad that his government did not create them, but rather only regularized them. However, he has blamed himself for not supervising the group’s operations in Antioquia. See María Kamila Correa’s article “Me equivoqué en no seguir más de cerca las Convivir de Antioquia y Córdoba: Samper” published by W Radio on November 24, 2021. For his part, Uribe defended the use of Convivir but emphatically denied wrongdoing, as he told the members of the commission on August 16, 2021. See “Álvaro Uribe ante la Comisión de la Verdad - Parte 1.” The Comisión de la Verdad has also collected and archived on their website documents declassified by the government of the United States regarding Convivir and paramilitary groups linked to Uribe. See the reports on the charges against Uribe by Adriaan Anselma and John Otis. See Julián Ríos Monroy’s article “En medio de polémica, JEP acelera proceso de ‘falsos positivos’” published by El Tiempo, and the report by the JEP from Feb­ ruary 18, 2021, “La JEP hace pública la estrategia de priorización dentro del Caso 03, conocido como el de falsos positivos.” I discuss the “false positives” scandal in more detail in Chapter 4. See Desaparición Forzada: Balance de la contribución del CNMH al esclar­ ecimiento histórico by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. The protests were motivated as well by Duque’s tributary reform, his mismanagement of public health, and the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, among other failed policies. The Comisión de la Verdad (Truth Commission) was created to investigate and clarify war crimes as part of the 2016 Peace Accord. The report “Gender and the Role of Women in Colombia’s Peace Process” by Virginia M. Bouvier makes evident that this violence continues even after the peace agreement. The Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (Indepaz) has published the list in on its website (“Listado de las 80 víctimas”).

Works Cited Aka (Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez). Personal interview. 17 April 2021. “Álvaro Uribe ante la Comisión de la Verdad - Parte 1.” YouTube, uploaded by Comisión de la Verdad, 16 August 2021, www.youtube.com/live/GLLxwuX0Jt0? feature=share. Accessed 17 July 2023.

Introduction

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Amnesty International. “1998 UN Commission on Human Rights - Building on Past Achievements.” Amnesty International, 1 January 1998, www.amnesty.org/en/ documents/ior41/001/1998/en. Accessed 17 July 2023. Angarita Cañas, Pablo Emilio. Seguridad democrática: Lo invisible de un régimen político y económico. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores, 2011. Anselma, Adriaan. “The Four Proven War Crimes that Have Uribe Against the Wall.” Colombia Reports, 17 April 2017, www.colombiareports.com/4-war-crim es-uribe-wall/. Accessed 17 July 2023. Bouvier, Virginia M. Gender and the Role of Women in Colombia’s Peace Process. United States Institute of Peace and UN Women, 2016, www.usip.org/sites/default/ files/Gender-and-the-Role-of-Women-in-Colombia-s-Peace-Process-English.pdf. Accessed 17 July 2023. Buchanan, Larry, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History.” The New York Times, 3 July 2020, www.nytim es.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. Accessed 17 July 2023. Butler, Judith. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. London: Verso, 2021. Centro Experimental Oído Salvaje. “Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui dialoga con Oído Sal­ vaje.” Vimeo, uploaded by Centro Experimental Oído Salvaje, 9 July 2012, www. vimeo.com/45483129. Accessed 27 May 2021. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Desaparición Forzada: Balance de la con­ tribución del CNMH al esclarecimiento histórico. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2018, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/micrositios/bala nces-jep/desaparicion.html. Accessed 17 July 2023. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Hasta encontrarlos. El drama de la desa­ parición forzada en Colombia. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2016, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/hasta-encontrarlos-el-drama-de-la-desaparici on-forzada-en-colombia. Accessed 17 July 2023. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. “No hubo tiempo para la tristeza.” YouTube, uploaded by Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 27 November 2013, www. youtu.be/das2Pipwp2w. Accessed 17 July 2023. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Una nación desplazada: Informe nacional del desplazamiento forzado en Colombia. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2015, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/micrositios/desplazamien toForzado. Accessed 17 July 2023. “Comisión de la verdad aborda el Estatuto de Seguridad en gobierno de Julio César Turbay.” YouTube, uploaded by El Tiempo, 29 July 2020, www.youtube.com/ live/shawrP5Ssec?feature=share. Accessed 17 July 2023. Comisión de la Verdad. “Orígenes paramilitarismo y vínculos con las fuerzas de segur­ idad (1979–2009): Anexo de documentos desclasificados de Estados Unidos.” www. archivo.comisiondelaverdad.co/origenes-paramilitarismo-y-vinculos-con-las-fuerzas­ de-seguridad-(1979–2009)-anexo-de-documentos-desclasificados-de-estados-unidos. Accessed 17 July 2023. Correa, María Kamila. “Me equivoqué en no seguir más de cerca las Convivir de Anti­ oquia y Córdoba: Samper.” W Radio, 24 November 2021, www.wradio.com.co/2021/ 11/25/me-equivoque-en-no-seguir-mas-de-cerca-las-convivir-de-antioquia-y-cordoba­ samper/. Accessed 17 July 2023.

18

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Curiel, Ochy. “Aportes y propuestas del feminismo decolonial de Abya Yala.” YouTube, uploaded by Alianza Solidaridad, 19 November 2018, www.youtu.be/PgTe cEnnPAo. Accessed 17 July 2023. Echeverría Ramírez, María Clara, Análida Rincón Patiño, and Lina Marcela Gon­ zález Gómez. Ciudad de territorialidades: Polémicas de Medellín. Medellín: Centro de Estudios del Habitat Popular, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2000, www.repositorio.unal.edu.co/handle/unal/70030. Accessed 17 July 2023. Escobar, Arturo. “Degrowth, Postdevelopment, and Transitions: A Preliminary Conversation.” Sustain Science 10, 2015, pp. 451–462, doi:10.1007/s11625–11015– 0297–0295. Accessed 17 July 2023. Espinosa Miñoso, Yuderkys. “De por qué es necesario un feminismo descolonial: diferenciación, dominación co-constitutiva de la modernidad occidental y el fin de la política de identidad.” Revista Solar, 12(1), 2016, pp. 141–171. Grupo de Memoria Histórica. Basta Ya! Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity. Bogotá, Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2016, www.centrodememoriahistor ica.gov.co/descargas/informes2016/basta-ya-ingles/BASTA-YA-ingles.pdf. Accessed 17 July 2023. Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP). “La JEP hace pública la estrategia de prioriza­ ción dentro del Caso 03, conocido como el de falsos positivos.” 18 February 2021, www.jep.gov.co/Sala-de-Prensa/Paginas/La-JEP-hace-p%C3%BAblica-la-estrategia­ de-priorizaci%C3%B3n-dentro-del-Caso-03,-conocido-como-el-de-falsos-positivos. aspx. Accessed 8 September 2023. “Listado de las 80 víctimas de violencia homicida en el marco del paro nacional al 23 de julio.” Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (INDEPAZ). 23 July 2021, www.indepaz.org.co/victimas-de-violencia-homicida-en-el-marco-del-paro-na cional. Accessed 24 July 2023. López Baquero, Constanza María. Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: El testimonio feme­ nino en Colombia (1985–2000). Tempe, Arizona: Asociación Internacional de Lit­ eratura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica, 2012. Miroff, Nick. “‘Plan Colombia’: How Washington Learned to Love Latin American Intervention Again.” The Washington Post, 18 September 2016, www.washingtonpost. com/world/the_americas/plan-colombia-how-washington-learned-to-love-latin-americ an-intervention-again/2016/09/18/ddaeae1c-3199–3194ea3–8d0f-69ee1cbda589_story. html. Accessed 17 July 2023. Moraga, Cherrie, and Gloria Anzaldúa. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2015. Oslender, Ulrich. “Another History of Violence: The Production of ‘Geographies of Terror’ in Colombia’s Pacific Coast Region.” Latin American Perspectives, 35(5), 2008, pp. 77–102. www.jstor.org/stable/27648121. Accessed 10 October 2022. Otis, John. “Colombia’s Ex-President Uribe Is Put Under House Arrest, Catches Coronavirus.” National Public Radio, 5 August 2020, www.npr.org/2020/08/05/ 899273712/colombias-ex-president-uribe-is-put-under-house-arrest-catches-coronav irus. Accessed 17 July 2023. Porto-Gonçalves, Carlos Walter. “A reinvenção dos territórios: a experiência latino­ americana e caribenha.” In Los desafíos de las emancipaciones en un contexto militarizado, edited by Ana Esther Ceceña, Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericao de Ciencias Sociales, 2006, pp. 151–197. Radnitz, Scott, and Yuan Hsiao. “Are Black Lives Matter Protesters Peaceful or Vio­ lent? Depends on Whom You Ask.” The Washington Post, 24 August 2020, www.

Introduction

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washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/24/are-black-lives-matter-protesters-peaceful­ or-violent-depends-whom-you-ask. Accessed 17 July 2023. Red Feminista Antimilitarista. Paren la guerra contra las mujeres, 2nd edition. Medellín: Editores Publicidad, 2022, www.redfeministaantimilitarista.org/noveda des/item/revista-paren-la-guerra-contra-las-mujeres. Accessed 17 July 2023. Ríos Monroy, Julián. “En medio de polémica, JEP acelera proceso de ‘falsos positivos’.” El Tiempo, 21 Februay 2021, www.eltiempo.com/justicia/jep-colombia/falsos-positi vos-jep-revelo-que-victimas-podrian-ser-el-triple-controversia-con-uribismo-568407. Accessed 17 July 2023. Schwarz, Anke, and Monika Streule. “Introduction to the Special Issue ‘Contested Urban Territories: Decolonized Perspectives.’” Geographica Helvetica, 75(1), 2020, doi:10.5194/gh-75-11-2020. Accessed 17 July 2023. Soja, Edward W. Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Un tal Alonso Quijano. Directed by Libia Stella Gómez, performances by Álvaro Rodríguez, Manuel José Sierra, Brenda Quiñónez, and Felipe Ríos, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2020. Whyte, David. “Challenging the Legitimate Right to Violence.” Criminal Justice Matters, 98, 2014, pp. 4–5, www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/cjm/article/ challenging-legitimate-right-violence. Accessed 17 July 2023.

1

Collective Efforts Hip Hop Against the Conflict

Hip Hop in Colombia Music is characteristic of Colombia. When you arrive in any city or town, it welcomes you. You cannot miss it, as it’s anywhere you go: on the streets, in the malls, buses, and taxis, blasting out of restaurants, grocery stores, and your neighbor’s house, all, as Pilar Riaño has noted, “without seeming to create any conflict or bother anyone” (“Remembering” 253). Years ago, you would be greeted by vallenato, the typical music of the Caribbean region, Valledupar. Nowadays, reggaeton has taken over. This omnipresent music, however, is not all just background noise. If you ride the city bus, most likely you will encounter—apart from multiple street vendors who will put candy on your lap hoping you will buy—street artists making their way through the crowd. Many are rappers whose lyrics report on the situation of the comunas where they live. With their microphone and portable ampli­ fiers, they describe the marginalization of many people in their communities, and the indifference of an impervious city that oppresses them. This chapter discusses the history of hip hop in Colombia, and particu­ larly in Medellín, focusing on the impact that this cultural production has had in neighborhoods where poverty, lack of opportunity and violence have affected entire communities. It examines the recent history of Comuna 13, a place transformed by the hip hop movement, and the processes that continue to be successful in transforming the lives of many young people in the city. In Colombia, youth cultural production, particularly music, presents us with a complex testimonial discourse. Colombian children and youth have been the most marginalized voices in the conflict since they have been thrown into the local and national war without decision-making power. Nonetheless, it is precisely these young people who have found a voice in dealing with the situation through music.1 They join native rhythms such as vallenato and cumbia with rap, punk, reggae and heavy metal, among other genres, to give a historical account and to reconstruct memory. Their music reaches others and builds bridges that bring communities closer together. Riaño has examined the place of memory in the neighborhoods of Medellín where violence has been starkly experienced. She argues that DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267-2

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people deal with trauma by marking the places of pain and claiming them as their own. Music in these places is paramount because it has the ability “to recall past events and to describe collective feelings and social memories … [it] is the key tool for activating youth’s remembering because music has the power to take one back in time and place” (Remembering 283). Music is an embodied practice that allows young people to make visible their collective pain, and to recognize and connect with each other through their shared experience of woundedness. Through music, they address the system that oppresses them and create a collective memory. As Christopher Dennis has stated: “Music is a powerful and influential medium largely because the body itself becomes an integral part of the performance through which the nation and national identities are evoked” (149). Within the broad range of cultural production in Colombia, this analysis focuses on hip hop because, as Arlene Tickner has expressed, “[m]usic is a key vehicle of translocal exchange that carries shared meanings and identities across territorial boundaries in ways denied to other commodities.” Hip hop culture, as she explains, “epitomizes this condition” (121) by transcending physical, cultural, social, and generational boundaries. It has thrived for over five decades and has been produced all over the world in many languages.2 This cultural production has endured because of its ability to transform without losing its own essence. In other words, hip hop acquires different meanings in different places and is enri­ ched with local flavors and local knowledge. It can change language, jargon, and social context, but as Tickner affirms, regardless of location hip hop will always communicate “the shared experience of marginality, understood as racial and ethnic discrimination, poverty, violence, and hardship” (128). These conditions are irrefutably found throughout Colombia and to a greater extent in the marginal neighborhoods of Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali. These cities have been affected by the migration of displaced groups and by extreme violence—thousands of young people are victims of both gangs and state forces and are exposed to the criminality of drug trafficking, para­ military groups, and urban militias.3 Hip hop in this environment emerges as a transformative option. Hip hop was born in the 1970s in an environment of socio-economic cul­ tural tension, on the streets of the Bronx in New York, where Afro-Amer­ ican, Afro-Caribbean communities and Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants converged. For Tricia Rose a key to understanding the emer­ gence of hip hop is the process of North American de-industrialization: Hip hop is a cultural form that attempts to negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally truncated opportunity, and oppression within the cultural imperatives of African American and Caribbean history, identity, and community. It is the tension between the cultural fractures produced by postindustrial oppression and the binding ties of black cultural expres­ sivity that sets the critical frame for the development of hip hop. (21)

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Collective Efforts

In Colombia, hip hop has also grown at a time of crisis that has imposed drastic changes on society and the Colombian way of life. The policies of crude neoliberalism have left many on the sidelines and have exacerbated the phenomenon of forced displacement that has been devastating to society at large. On the one hand, the abandonment of ancestral lands, destined today for commercial agriculture and mining, has altered the lives of many and caused immeasurable ecological damage. On the other, the overpopulation of the cities has created a social imbalance that forces rural people, who have been dispossessed, to confront the harsh urban realities including dis­ crimination, unemployment, and indigence. Prominent among this popula­ tion are victims of violent conflict, in particular women. Almost half of the displaced in Colombia are women who have suffered the death, dis­ appearance, and kidnapping of their husbands and loved ones, many of whom have had to relocate to the cities with their children. This forced migration has intensified from the 1990s until today, leaving the most vul­ nerable in a state of misery.4 According to a report by Unidad de Víctimas, as of 2019, there were almost eight million reported displaced persons in the country, and in 2020, 70,865 new victims were reported.5 To make matters worse, since 2014 the massive migration of Venezuelan refugees has placed greater strain on the cities. As a music born of marginality and crisis, hip hop is a natural expression of the conditions lived by many on the margins of Colombia’s cities, and the expansion of hip hop during this era is there­ fore not surprising. Hip hop comes to Colombia, like many other musical genres, through the media, particularly music videos, and the migration of Colombians to the United States. In the documentary Resistencia hip hop in Colombia (2002), Dr. Ganja, from the group Asilo 38, comments that this itinerant music arrived to conquer the Colombian Pacific with the young stowaways from the port of Buenaventura who left for the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. When they returned, they brought with them hip hop music and dance. Christopher Dennis adds that this same process happened in the ports of the Colombian Caribbean, while in the interior, in cities like Medellín and Bogotá where more affluent people live, the back-and-forth travels of young people to the United States to visit family put them in contact with this artistic movement (22).

Hip Hop in Medellín There is not a place in Colombia where hip hop proliferates more than in the poor neighborhoods of Medellín. These are places that became famous in recent narco-literature and narco-art, where once upon a time, sicarios or child-assassins, murdered each other for the control of drug zones. Here, where poverty and lack of opportunity abound, and where swarms of paramilitary groups and illegal gangs, locally known as combos, continue to promote war and extort protection monies, hip hop emerges as an

Collective Efforts

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alternative. This cultural production denounces impunity, takes a stand against oblivion, and commits itself to peace. In Medellín, hip hop arrived precisely in the years in which the city was considered one of the most dangerous places in the world. At first, youth were fascinated by the new steps of breakdance and many gathered near Biblioteca Piloto to practice them.6 Henry Antonio Arteaga Ospina (Jke)7 explains that a couple of brothers, known as the ‘Constantinos’ from the United States, settled in the central-western area of the city. They are credited with the arrival of the first steps of hip hop dance, videos, and costumes that are typical of the dance. (Arteaga Ospina 8, my translation) Through the rough movements of breakdance, young people found a way to empower themselves while letting go of their rage on the dance floor. As Bboy El Negro has stated, “with hip hop, we stomp over everything that is going on” (Feiling, my translation). For young Paisas 8 in poor neighbor­ hoods, breakdancing was an alternative of easy access because, as hip hop cultural activist Jeihhco states, “all you need is a cardboard and a floor!” (“Graffitour”).9 With B-boying/B-girling came the beats of rap from the United States, which they tried to intepret and adjust to local rhythms. In my 2014 interview with him, Jeihhco explains that they became rappers by listening to lyrics in English, but once rap from Spain arrived in Colombia the linguistic possibilities of the Spanish language took their production to a new level. Medellín was perhaps particularly well prepared to embrace hip hop, as the city, and the Antioquia region more broadly, have a tradition of oral versification called la trova, in which los trovadores improvise a call­ and-response stanza in octosyllabic verses. Improvisation is, thus, a part of Paisa culture and social interaction that has been further explored in rap flow. According to Jeihhco, DJing, and graffiti came later, since the tools needed for their production are expensive. As they battled oppression and invisibility, hip hop groups in the comunas became aware of their place in history. They learned that hip hop went beyond music and dance, that it was a way of living: B-boying, graffiti and later rap in Medellín served its practitioners as the only means to protect themselves and demonstrate against the violence that engulfed the city, when thousands of young people, mostly men, were murdered in poor neighborhoods and others joined the world of drug trafficking as instruments of war. To the rhythm of dance, rap, and graffiti, hundreds of young people established a position through their artistic practice that became a channel of expression and a plat­ form for educational and sociocultural organizational experiences. (Arteaga Ospina 9, my translation)

24

Collective Efforts

Young people grew tired of the violence and lack of opportunity that surrounded them and learned from punk collectives that they needed to have a Do-It-Yourself attitude. Hoppers shared what they had and what they had learned, and the acronym that in English, some say, stands for Rhythm And Poetry, became in Medellín, Revolución Artística Popular (Popular Artistic Revolution). In the early 2000s, new technologies provided hoppers the opportunity to build home recording studios, where rappers were able to record music and video clips which they used to gain audiences nationally and internationally (Arteaga Ospina 27). Hoppers in Medellín took over public spaces, organized concerts, formed schools, developed independent hip hop publications, and promoted themselves through social media. They also lobbied to obtain sponsorship from private and public entities, and since 2004, have gained access to public support from the city’s mayor’s office (31, my translation). Although such official backing has been helpful, the hip hop movement in Medellín owes its success mainly to the effort of collective action. Jeihhco affirms that the hip hop community in Medellín is a family. Regardless of differences and arguments, they all participate in the same events, concerts, etc., and view hip hop as a common space that must be an asset, not a liability, for the city. As Jeihhco explained in my inter­ view with him in 2014: “The hip hop movement in Medellín has under­ stood that it cannot be another problem for a city that has already turned to shit.” Part of this vision involves a collective decision to create music that defies the stereotype of hip hop promoting or celebrating illi­ cit behavior: “The groups that sang to the ghetto and to criminality stopped doing it. They talk about the street, they talk about drugs, but will not justify violence.” Despite the fact that in recent years hip hop has become an important movement in the city, it continues to be, like all testimonial narratives, a genre of the subaltern. Hip hop thrives in marginalized areas where eco­ nomic success is very difficult. In addition, the main topic in rap lyrics is the violence suffered by these communities, thus providing witness to a reality that many do not want to hear. As Tickner explains: “rap lyrics tend to describe life on the outskirts of the global economy, where exile, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, brutality, and violence constitute the daily landscape” (135). Thus, the cultural production of hip hop in Medellín is testimonial and not just a way to rewrite history but to appropriate it. Hip hop is a praxis of memory. It takes a stand against the forces that oppress the youth of the barrios and steal their future. This effort to bring awareness and to demand justice was carried out initially in the midst of an armed conflict that affected the country for over half a century, and later in the violence of a disputed peace, which is made worse by being invisible.

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Comuna 13, Medellín Comuna is not the equivalent of commune nor is it a synonym of barrio. Rather, it is a political and administrative term. The city of Medellín is divided into 16 comunas, and each is divided into barrios. Despite being a general designation that applies to all parts of the city, “comuna” has long been associated with violent neighborhoods and shanty towns. In more affluent comunas such as Comuna 14, El Poblado, which is divided into 14 neighborhoods, when asked where they live, rather than specify barrio Cas­ tropol or Manila, people will respond, “in El Poblado,” as a way to flaunt their status. No one will dare say “Comuna 14,” not only due to the stigma the word carries but also due to a lack of awareness that they indeed also live in a “comuna.” In contrast, in the case of Comuna 13, people who have been chastised for living there, have reclaimed their territory, and take pride in their comuna and its barrios. There are nineteen official barrios in Comuna 13, occupying an area of 74km2 and, as of 2020, its population count was 140,750.10 The Comuna starts in barrio San Javier, the last stop in the Metro de Medellín B line, which connects to the Metrocable, a cable car system that communicates the valley with the mountain. San Javier is a bustling place of thriving busi­ nesses, restaurants, and cafeterias. At the Metro Station, you find buses or colectivos that will take you up the hills to the many barrios that make up the comuna. Walking is also an option, but as an outsider, one always needs to be accompanied by a local. It is not only a matter of security—in fact, nowadays the Comuna, around San Javier, Veinte de Julio and nearby bar­ rios, is to some extent a secure place for tourists—but practicality, as with­ out a guide, you risk getting lost in the labyrinthic streets and stairways that lead up to other barrios. The Comuna’s official history dates back to the nineteenth century, when barrio El Salado was established. The name refers to the mines of salt (sal) that existed in the area. According to Ricardo Aricapa, the first dwellers dedicated themselves to the production of pottery since the area’s soil is rich in red clay (207). Recent efforts to rewrite the traditionally whitewashed history of Antioquia emphasize that the first settlers in El Salado were run­ away slaves, who originally worked the clay (Kabala “Colortour”). Also, the barrio served as a rest stop for merchants and arrieros, the famous cattle drivers that traveled between Medellín and the old capital, Santa Fe de Antioquia (207). The second barrio, San Javier, was founded in the middle of the XX century as an extension of the more affluent neighborhood, La América, and was connected to Medellín by the electric tranvía (211). During the 1940s and 1950s, La Violencia, as the period of civil war between 1948 and 1958 is denominated, brought thousands of forcibly displaced people to Medellín. The comunas located on the hills began to grow as squatter settlements were built, with houses one on top of the other, and with overlapping stairs that communicate one hill to the next without city

26

Collective Efforts

planning or authority. This situation continued as the armed conflict wor­ sened during the 1980s up to the first decade of the twenty-first century, displacing millions more. People in marginalized comunas in Medellín have had to carry the stigma of displacement and violence, and this has contributed to the stereotype that those who reside in these places are dangerous. Youth, in particular, are sus­ pected of belonging to criminal organizations. As Gonzalo Sánchez G, the former coordinator of the Historical Memory Group, observes: “Both inside and outside the margins of the Comuna, it is the youth who have suffered to a greater extent not only social stigmatization but also stigmatization from official institutions” (Grupo de Memoria Histórica 17, my translation). This situation can be attributed, on the one hand, to the legacy of drug vio­ lence and sicariato, a topic explored in narco-literature, art, and film, and exploited to exhaustion in recent narco-TV series. It is a narrative that suits city administrators who have little control over the territory, and has a lot of resonance in the United States because it serves well their War on Drugs poli­ cies. On the other, the presence of illegal groups such as militias and left-wing guerrillas, which settled in the territory to fill the void of authority, has justified state violence against people, by accusing them of either being guerrillas, militiamen, or their collaborators (Grupo de Memoria Histórica 71). However, stereotypes aside, the scholarship that addresses violence in these neighborhoods has demonstrated that many of these places have stra­ tegic locations that different armed groups want to control. Comuna 13, for example, is a prime location that communicates the valley with ports on the Atlantic coast. This means that all trade, legal and illegal, enters and leaves Medellín through Comuna 13. Therefore, whoever controls this area, con­ trols the economy of the city (Jeihhco “Graffitour”). Furthermore, the proximity of the zone to the pipeline Medellín-Cartago makes it attractive to groups who benefit by illegally extracting oil from that infrastructure. The publication by Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, La huella invisible de la guerra. Desplazamiento Forzado en la Comuna 13 (The Invi­ sible Trace of the War. Forced Displacement in Comuna 13, 2016) has demonstrated that throughout the years, many groups have contested the territory’s control, taking advantage of the “[p]ower vacuum generated by the precarious presence of the State and its institutions” (13, my translation). The report states that during the 1980s and 1990s, the authorities focused their resources on other comunas in the northwestern part of the city, where the groups that served Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel were located (55). This abandonment of Comuna 13 allowed the establishment of groups outside the law that were in charge of the general administration of the territory and fought to keep control of it: The peripheral character of this area for society and the State contrasts with the centrality of the same for the armed actors. It is a cycle that has been repeated for decades: first, the militias expelled common

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27

criminals, then militias were confronted and evicted by the guerrillas, and at the same time they were fought and removed from the area by the paramilitaries. Currently, there are combos or bands, which count among their members individuals with diverse profiles, including paramilitaries, reinserted guerrillas, criminals, and gang members. (14, my translation) In the late 1990s, right-wing paramilitary groups began to settle in the area, but their presence was not strongly felt until 2002. As in other parts of the country, units of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) announced their presence with threats that appeared in the form of graffiti and soon turned into acts of extreme cruelty. Apocalyptic announcements such as, “There will be a black Saturday and a Sunday of tears!” (25, my transla­ tion), which appeared in barrio El Salado, became a way of communication and discipline. The impending sense of danger had immediate and longlasting effects on the population, who have been victims of crimes against humanity. Furthermore, the complicity between the state and paramilitary groups has left profound wounds in the Comuna. These crimes continue to be investigated today, but justice remains far from being reached. In 2002, state forces, which for the most part had been distant from Comuna 13, ordered eleven military operations aimed to disband the guer­ rillas. Operación Mariscal on May 21 and Orión on October 16—the second one ordered as part of the recently elected president, Álvaro Uribe’s sig­ nature policy of Seguridad Democrática—were brutal attacks on civilians and brought about what has been called the “urbanization of war.” State agencies, which included more than a thousand members of the military and the police, in conjunction with eight-hundred paramilitary men, launched an attack with snipers and Black Hawk helicopters from the hilltops, while simultaneously moving up the mountains with armored tanks, trapping inhabitants in the middle of the action. In the aftermath, paramilitary groups remained in control of the area, and as a result, today, the popula­ tion of the Comuna 13 demands justice for hundreds of victims of homicide, extrajudicial execution, torture, arbitrary arrest, and forced disappearance. In 2008, during investigations into paramilitary activities, the AUC leader and mafia boss, Don Berna, head of Envigado’s Office,11 declared that the bodies of the disappeared were buried in La Escombrera, a mountain made of debris from the city’s construction sites. He also implicated high com­ mand officers, including former army general Mario Montoya and former general of the National Police, Leonardo Gallego (282–83). In August 2020, The Special Jurisdiction for Peace, JEP by its Spanish acronym, an entity created to prosecute and punish war crimes as part of the peace accords of 2016, ordered an investigation into the mass graves of Comuna 13, La Escombrera, and La Arenera. Working in conjunction with Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas12 and Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad,13 The JEP sealed the area to search for 435 bodies of victims who

28

Collective Efforts

allegedly disappeared from Comuna 13 between 1978 and 2016. Further­ more, between 2002 and 2003 alone, about 183 cases were reported (“En la comuna”). The greatest challenge for the court is to find remains in the 41,500 cubic meters of soil they plan to remove. In 2014, another initiative by Corporación Jurídica Libertad ordered the removal of 24,000 cubic meters, but no remains were found (Álvarez Correa). However, the possi­ bility of finding those missing offers hope to the community. As the rapper and community leader, Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez, Aka, has stated, “Dignity is searching for our dead, even if we do not find them” (“Serenata a la Memoria,” my translation).14 Spanish scholar José A. Sánchez has stated that visibility is a condition of existence. Forced disappearance is the final link in the chain of invisibiliza­ tion that marginalized people must endure. Forced disappearance, as San­ chez explains, “operates with exclusion and is also a symptom of it.” This has been evident in Comuna 13, given the historical exclusion to which its residents have been subjected: Exclusion from the sphere of appearance is a mode of passive dis­ appearance, a state of invisibility characteristic of the dispossessed, of the marginal, of those who are not given any social value. Exclusion from the sphere of appearing is a consequence of the preceding, but transposed to the political sphere: it is the operation that deprives of rights those who do not matter, but also that deprives of a voice those who challenge the order of the perceivable and the sayable. Forced dis­ appearance is the most radical form of exclusion. (“Presence and Disappearance” 6) Moreover, forced disappearance is a mechanism of control that affects not only individuals and their families but also entire communities. In Comuna 13, fear of becoming a “desaparecido” regulated people’s behaviors: it told people where and how to walk, with whom to interact, and when to enter or leave their own homes. Fear became part of their daily life. Paramilitary groups used the threat of forced disappearance indiscriminately against those they perceived to be supporters of guerrillas or against those who challenged the status quo. The message was clear: accept our rules if you don’t want to disappear. Sometimes the message came as a rumor, and whoever was named had to leave the Comuna. Therefore, intra-urban forced displacement became another form of silenced exclusion. Human rights lawyer Beatriz Eugenia Sánchez Mojica explains that although this violation of rights did not start with the AUC, it became for them a “stra­ tegic tool” of control. During the first decade of the 2000s, organized armed groups targeted not only individuals but also groups of families, causing what Sánchez Mojica labels as “mass exoduses,” an expression that highlights not only the scope but also the frequency of this brutal practice. She asserts that victims were

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not merely forced to leave their homes and possessions but also were severed from essential human connections: This uprooting, even though the distance separating them from their former homes might not be more than a few kilometers—or even less— also implies the loss of the community where they had been building their lives, depriving them of the relationships that gave meaning to their existence. (93) Victims of intra-urban displacement have been further victimized by Medel­ lín’s authorities, who silence their plight, intentionally blurring the problem with the country’s general forced displacement. This negation has had immense costs for the physical and mental state of the displaced. In testimo­ nial narratives collected by the Grupo de Memoria Histórica, victims of intraurban displacement complained of accumulating debt due to tax and services that had not been paid during the time that they had been away from their properties (168). Some people could not return to their homes because they were destroyed or occupied by others (170). Although the Colombian gov­ ernment enacted Law 1448 of June 10, 2011, “by which measures of care, assistance, and comprehensive reparation are issued to the victims of the internal armed conflict” (“Ley 1448 de 2011,” my translation), victims in general, and intra-urban displaced people in particular, continue to face dis­ crimination and invisibility. As the Grupo de Memoria Histórica points out: [I]ntra-urban forced displacement in a context of high conflict and a critical situation of human rights violations impacts not only the right to life, integrity and freedom, among others, but the right to the city, since the inhabitants are denied the right to housing, access and uses of their social spaces and the right to have a home. This displacement often generates a particular type of exile that has a profound impact on the life of individuals, families and the social fabric. (40–41, my translation) Given the denialist position of the city, it is impossible to know the real numbers of intra-urban displaced people in Medellín. However, a report by the City Human Rights Secretariat registers 73,825 victims between 1997 and 2015 (Alcaldía de Medellín 23). These numbers evidence that forced intra-urban displacement is an ongoing violation that did not stop with the demobilization of the AUC in 2005, but rather, on the contrary, has increased. According to Agencia de Prensa IPC, 44,000 people were dis­ placed between 2012 and 2015. Both demobilized paramilitary and guerrilla members have joined new groups called bandas, combos, and BACRIM (a name coined by ex-president Uribe to denominate criminal bands) which continue to exert control through this practice:

30

Collective Efforts [T]hey use individualised displacement to remove people who represent an actual or potential threat to their hegemony, including teachers, com­ munity leaders and human rights defenders. Likewise, they also impose exile as a sanction on those who defy the norms they have established. This affects people who refuse to submit to extortion and also those who have been identified as criminals, along with their families. (Sánchez Mojica 99)

Violence is a vertical form of communication from those who exert control to those who challenge the norm imposed (community leaders, hip hop artists, women, LGBTQ+, and anyone else who does not conform). How­ ever, this communication is also horizontal, among peers, rival gangs, and other armed groups that fight to maintain power. J. Jairo Bedoya maintains that violence in the city is the lethal inheritance of drug cartels and para­ military rule. Although Medellín promotes itself as a “miracle city” and has won international recognition for innovation and cultural transformation, Bedoya argues that the criminal practices and culture of extortion constitute a “paradox” (401). Sánchez Mojica explains this incongruency through the abysmal inequality that makes Medellín actually two cities, “[o]ne is a small first-world city, in which the inhabitants have effective rights and enjoy a prosperous life. The other is far bigger and its inhabitants barely survive in living conditions of poverty and marginalisation” (87). Even though it is true that the city has been transformed and that today it is a thriving place for tourism, peace for a large part of the population is far from having been achieved. The pact between armed groups denominated Pacto del Fusil (2012), redistributed territories in which those armed groups impose what Bedoya has denominated “protección violenta,” a system of extortion that affects over 80% of the city (403). The paradox reaches its climax when authorities of the city deny the existence of these pacts between organized crime institutions and the extent to which they rely on those arrangements in order to maintain the city prosperous and open for business. Given this bleak picture, people in Comuna 13 have organized themselves to take a stand against violence. Their resolution can be summed up in a famous slogan coined by the hip hop groups in 2002: “En la 13 la violencia no nos vence” (“In the 13 violence doesn’t defeat us”). Working together, people in the Comuna have confronted effacement and denounced impunity. They have bet on peace and reclaimed their right to their territory.

Hip Hop in Comuna 13 The history of Comuna 13 so far into the twenty-first century has been recorded and reported on by local hip hop groups. Furthermore, the youth of the neighborhoods affirm that if one wants to learn the true history of the Comuna, one should listen to this musical genre. Hip hoppers have taken on the responsibility of recounting their own experiences and those of their

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community. Their testimonial discourse emerges from their trauma and is urgent because their survival is at stake. Through the exercise of remembering and narrating, they have become aware of their place in history. They have educated themselves about their marginality in the local and global contexts. They have understood that war is not fair or just, so they have decided to become conscientious objectors. Most importantly they have realized that the only way to confront loss and marginality is by joining together. As Aka has stated, “Juntarnos será nuestra mayor venganza” (“Coming together will be our greatest revenge;” interview March 5, 2021).15 The pride that they feel in their Comuna and barrios has been expressed in songs like “Esta es la 13” (“This is the 13”) by Esk-lones. This pride, however, is always accompanied by the denunciation of social wrongs: ¿Qué han oído de la 13?, que es el barrio más caliente, Mucha publicidad, nos visitó hasta el presidente Las casitas de tabla son llamadas invasión El barrio cambió su nombre por Operación Orión ¿Qué recuerdan de la 13? ¿plomo de arriba pa’ bajo? No recuerdan a su gente, ni el dolor que eso les trajo Pero claro No hablan sino las cosas malas En vez de mostrar artistas muestran cocas de las balas No reflejan las virtudes de la gente emprendedora Publican mejor humor, entrevistan madres que lloran, No es lo que uno quiere ver, solamente lo que le muestran Pero para mi concepto, ese amarillismo apesta Occidente sigue al frente por cultura no caliente Orgulloso de mi barrio en el pasado y presente La Pradera mi barrio, San Jacho, El Socorro Cultura pura y firme desde allá arriba en el morro [What have you heard about the 13? That it is the most dangerous zone? Much publicity, even the president visited us The houses made of boards are called an invasion The neighborhood changed its name to Operation Orion What do you remember about the 13? Bullets from above and below? They do not remember their people or the pain that this brought them But of course, They only speak of the bad things Instead of showing artists, they show empty bullet casings They do not report on the virtues of enterprising people They rather publish jokes or interview mothers who cry, It is not what you want to see, only what they want to show you But to my mind, that sensationalism stinks

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Collective Efforts Occidente16 continues to lead for its peaceful culture Proud of my neighborhood in the past and in the present La Pradera, my neighborhood, San Javier, El Socorro Pure and firm culture from up here on the hills]17

As lyrics such as these demonstrate, the young people from Comuna 13 see themselves as artists and agents of change. The country, however, often views them as criminals, a consequence of the Colombian culture of victim-blaming that has turned civilians targeted by military operations into villains. This narrative of delinquent youth has served city administrators as a subterfuge to hide their inability to address the Comuna’s problems. For the rappers, the media is also guilty of promoting negative images that have clear consequences for them. The stigma of inhabiting the Comuna prevented young people from getting jobs, being accepted into schools, and having relationships with others outside of their communities. For fear of being ostracized, they had to hide where they lived. The song “Amargos Recuerdos” (“Bitter Memories”) by Comando Élite de Ataque reflects this condition: Fuerte inspiración, sobrevivir en aquella tierra Comunas como la 13, sinónimo de Guerra Era difícil estar dentro Y difícil estar fuera me señalaban, me maltrataban, Como si un bandido yo fuera Guardar discreción Que en dónde vivo es un secreto Pensar antes de hablar y disfrutar ante el resto Ya que ante la autoridad el nombrecito era molesto Que si vienes del morro eres un guerrillo como el resto [Strong inspiration to survive in that land Comunas like the 13, synonymous with war It was hard to be inside And hard to be outside They labeled me, they mistreated me, As if I were a bandit Keeping discretion Keeping where I live a secret Thinking before speaking and enjoying myself in front of others Since for the authorities even the name [of the Comuna] was annoying ’cause if you are from the hill, you are a guerrilla like the rest of them] Guilt by association has been a tendency in the Colombian armed conflict, particularly in rural areas where guerrillas and paramilitary groups dispute

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territorial control. Peasants are often blamed for collaborating with the enemy and pay the price with death or dispossession. This situation trans­ formed the Comuna. As the report by the Grupo de Memoria Histórica explains, it “reconfigured the social order, imposing confinement, silence, distrust and fear, and shaping not only the relationships and behaviors of people, but also leaving deep emotional and psychological marks and traces” (173, my translation). According to José David Medina, MC and hip hop community activist, “Amargos Recuerdos” is considered one of the founding songs of the Comuna’s hip hop. It recounts the history of Operación Orión from the perspective of those who lived through the experience and denounces the crimes committed against them (“Serenata a la Memoria”). The video starts with the proverb, “Matar a una persona por defender un ideal no es defen­ der un ideal: es matar a una persona” (“Killing a person for defending an ideal is not defending an ideal: it is killing a person”). This idea not only reflects on the effects of senseless violence, but also places the Colombian armed conflict in a global context since the aphorism has been widely used to reflect on many conflicts and wars.18 The song utilizes a cinematographic language that places us in the middle of the action, illustrating the state of defenselessness that citizens of Comuna 13 were subjected to: Un día normal en nuestra comuna era un día de luto Un día en que 50 contra 50 practican el deporte de brutos Tras las paredes de nuestras casas, intimidados, ocultos Proyectiles perforando, micropor en los muros Desesperadas personas al compás de las balas De derecha a izquierda en apuros A ningún francotirador le importará de un niño el futuro En mis calles tristes me aventuro Se encuentra la muerte expandida en cada esquina Como cuando tú practicas diariamente la misma rutina [A normal day in our comuna was a day of mourning A day when 50 against 50 practice the sport of brutes Behind the walls of our houses, intimidated, hidden Projectiles piercing, micropore tape in the walls Desperate people to the beat of bullets Right to left in distress No sniper will care about the future of a child In my sad streets I venture Death is found spread out in every corner Like when you practice the same routine daily] The representation of the bodies rushing to find cover from aimless bullets reveals the end of security since the walls of their own houses were no longer

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able to protect them. The fear expressed in those verses shows not only the horror of the present time, but also the uncertainty of the future in the figure of the sniper who is cutting it short. Also, the description of the bullet holes in their walls being covered with micropore tape, a material commonly used in Colombian homes, brings us inside their experience.19 “Amargos Recuerdos” not only denounces the atrocities committed but puts the blame on the autho­ rities by comparing their acts of violence to the actions of illegal armed groups. There is no difference between legality and illegality, as they all exert a joint cruelty. There is no justice, only impunity: Mariscal y Orión acertijos indescifrables En las calles cientos de heridos y una lista interminable y como todos saben no han hallado al responsable. miembros de la autoridad con sus verdes trajes a diestra y siniestra disparan, venden sus ideales ideales inestables de una guerra para el mundo portable lo mismo son de asesinos solo que esos son legales [Mariscal and Orion incomprehensible riddles On the streets hundreds injured and an endless list And, as everyone knows, they have not found who is responsible. Agents with their green suits They fire in all directions, they sell their ideals, unstable ideals of a war, that is portable to the world They are murderers like any others only that these are the lawful authorities] The music videos that accompany many of these rap songs are self-managed productions that show images and original footage from the time. Although there is a certain informality with which the videos are put together, particu­ larly regarding the way in which the photojournalistic material is used, hip hop artists appropriate it because it tells their stories. The photos show images of their usurped territory, their dead, and their missing. By reworking those materials and adding conscious lyrics, they are reformulating their own his­ tories and testimonials, and are reclaiming a material that belongs to them. Many of those photographs were taken by photojournalist and human rights advocate Jesús Abad Colorado, who has documented the armed con­ flict in Colombia like no one else.20 In fact, Colorado took one of the most iconic images from the ravages of Operación Orión, showing a girl looking outside her window through the perforation that a bullet had left in the glass.21 The bullet hole became representative of Orión. On my first visit to Comuna 13 in 2013, I was able to photograph the graffiti art piece Orión nunca más (Never Again Orion), which occupied a large wall in the Parque Biblioteca Presbítero José Luis Arroyave.22 The

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graffiti is a testimonial narrative in three parts. The first shows an image of Colorado peeking through a bullet hole, in a tribute to his work and com­ mitment to the people. The following depicts the neighborhoods that extend up the mountain where a helicopter shoots bullets down the hill. The painting corrects the official history, which exonerates the military action by alleging that its aim was to neutralize the guerrilla, and demands recognition for the civilian population who was massacred there. The third painting is a proposal for peace and hope, showing how the neighborhoods are trans­ formed by art where another helicopter shoots paint and color through the Comuna. Since that time, the piece Orión nunca más has been replaced by other graffiti. The memory of it, however, remains in websites and news­ paper articles. Just like rap, graffiti in Comuna 13 is an embodied enactment of memory that serves as a collective response to the official discourse. Forced disappearance as a result of Operación Orión is another topic represented in the art of the Comuna. The song “Desaparecidos” by Comando Elite de Ataque addresses this with both its lyrics and its music video, which is a reenactment of the suffering of the relatives of the dis­ appeared. As José David Medina explains, “The work has names and pic­ tures of real people as a vindication of the permanence of the truth” (“Serenata a la Memoria,” my translation). The music video begins with a young man who walks through the streets of the Comuna searching for his disappeared cousin: “¿No has visto a la muchacha de esta foto?” (“Have you seen the girl in this picture?”), a question that always receives the same answer, “No, no la he visto” (“No, I have not seen her”). Soon, we realize

Figure 1.1 Orión nunca más, a mural in Comuna 13 (Medellín) commissioned by Casa Kolacho. This artwork no longer exists. Photograph taken by the author on December 12, 2013.

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that this is not a personal situation, nor is it an occurrence specifically from the Comuna. People, young and old, male or female, from urban and rural areas disappear in Colombia: El hijo de Doña Elena, el nieto de Pedro Vázquez, el dueño de la cantina Desaparecidos Los jóvenes en los barrios, las gentes de las ciudades, de pueblos y de veredas, Desaparecidos La hija de mi tío, o sea, mi prima, se desapareció a los cementerios, a los hospitales y morgues se visitó Pegando carteles, regando su foto, el tiempo se perdió, tan solo se sabe que Leydi salió y a casa no volvió [Doña Elena’s son, Pedro Vázquez’s grandson, the bar’s owner Desaparecidos The youth in the neighborhoods the people of the cities, of towns and villages, Desaparecidos My uncle’s daughter, that is, my cousin, disappeared We searched in cemeteries, hospitals, and morgues Hanging up posters, circulating her photo, our time was wasted, it is only known that Leydi left and did not return home By mentioning specific people and escalating this to account for groups of more desaparecidos, the song gives us an impression of collectivity, pointing to the drama of the 80,000 forcibly disappeared people in Colombia, and their family members.23 The agony of searching without an answer, with feelings of both hope and hopelessness, is illustrated in the following verses: La familia en un calvario se convirtió tener la esperanza viva es lo mejor y lo peor no se puede vivir en zozobra entre la desesperación Es una búsqueda sin respuesta que devasta la ilusión [The family’s life became an excruciating ordeal having hope alive is the best and the worst you cannot live in anxiety amid despair It’s an unanswered search that devastates hope]

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In the second part of the song, the point of view changes and one of the victims expresses his wishes to see his loved ones, to say goodbye, and to save himself, but he knows well that his time has come. From death, the desaparecido speaks, “Aún no saben dónde estoy / y nunca van a encon­ trarme en esta fosa común” (“They still don’t know where I am / and they’ll never find me in this mass grave”). “Desaparecidos” is a performance of trauma that situates us in the place of the victims and their families. How­ ever, it also addresses those who do not believe in the extent of forced dis­ appearance in the country, confronting those who think that this only happens to “bad people.” The song issues a warning to Colombians, “No piense que porque no le ha pasado a usted, algún día no le pueda pasar” (“Don’t think that because it has not happened to you, one day it will not happen to you”). As music videos became more professionalized, hip hop artists began to show more of the Comuna. The houses, the streets, and the mountains became the background in which the rappers and the community performed their trauma. The song “Aquí estoy bien” (“I’m fine here”) by Esk-lones reflects on the threats of forced displacement that the young hoppers in the Comuna had to endure. The singing voices feel that they are part of the Comuna, “Pero si yo estoy bien, ven / En la calle yo respiro relaja’o, friend” (“But if I’m ok, see? / In the street I breathe easy, friend”) says the chorus and questions “¿Por qué tengo que marcharme?” (“Why do I have to leave?”) This sense of belonging is stated in words and images of friends, neighbors, and children who know the rappers well. They have earned the respect and admiration of the Comuna by singing to and about them. Therefore, their questions try to make sense of the senseless notion that they might have to go: Y por qué me tengo que ir si no tengo el pecado Seguiré dando hip hop para entonar al barrio No no no no Yo me conozco las plazas, los laberintos y la esquina Los haraganes que la espalda a mí me cuidan Ya no tengo salida, aquí mismo me entierran Vivo en la Pradera, un alto de visera, con un flow que deja satisfechos a los raperos y raperas Mas no me canso de formar la guerra con los que piensan Que solo por amenazas me marcharé de mi tierra [And why would I have to go if I have not sinned? I’ll keep making hip hop to sing to the neighborhood No no no no I know the plazas, the labyrinths, and the corner The bums who have my back I have no way out, right here they will bury me

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Collective Efforts I live in La Pradera, a hill of shade, with a flow that satisfies all rappers But I never tire of making war with those who think That only because of threats I will leave my land]

No one was more vulnerable than the young people from the Comuna during the years after the military operations. This was even more true of hip hop artists who had acquired visibility. To confront this violence, artists from the Comuna and from around Medellín met at the ACJ-YMCA.24 Jeihhco recalls that local hoppers received an invitation—a handwritten note posted on the walls—sum­ moning them to the ACJ for a meeting.25 When they arrived, they realized that there were many, about 65 of them, and that they were ready to join together. In those meetings, led by José David Medina and two social workers, they learned about Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Black Panthers, and discussed peaceful forms of resistance. Jeihhco explains that they knew about rapping and breakdancing through MTV, but through these meetings, they understood what hip hop culture stood for. They formed La Red Élite Hip Hop, a collective that worked together to support youth in forms of non-violence and peaceful resolu­ tion of conflicts. They coordinated Revolución sin Muertos (Revolution Without Death), the first hip hop festival in Comuna 13, which was the first time that the hoppers took over a space of violence and turned it into a space of creation. For La Red Élite Hip Hop, culture and education were the only way of transforming the Comuna. Their hope was to offer alternatives to children through art and creation rather than joining an armed group. Unfortunately, new waves of violence affected the processes in Comuna 13, and many hoppers feared death or exile. More than 65 musicians had to abandon their homes after receiving threats and more than a dozen were murdered from 2009 to 2016. The graffiti piece titled A la memoria (To Memory) is a tribute to the rappers murdered between 2009 and 2011: Yhiel, Chelo, Kolacho, El Gordo, and Medina.26 Other artists were murdered in 2012, El Duke, founder of the group CEA and La Garra (Jeihhco “Graffi­ tour”). All of these young men belonged to La Red Élite Hip Hop. However, not death nor even exile has deterred those who survived from continuing to work for a better future. Although the press has reported on these deaths as persecution of rappers in the Comuna, Jeihhco, Aka, and other community leaders believe that hoppers are not targets. Instead, they believe that all youth in the Comuna continue to be vulnerable. However, it cannot be denied that the violence has directly affected the hoppers and pushed back their projects. In an interview with Esk, a member of the group Esk-lones, on December 10, 2013, the young rapper told me that after the murder of Chelo and El Gordo, he had also been forcibly displaced and that after spending some time in Bogotá, he was able to return to Medellín, but not to the Comuna. Despite all this trauma, hip hop in the Comuna continues to be increasingly dynamic and joins the efforts of the community and peace movements to, little by little, undermine the Colombian war.

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Figure 1.2 A la memoria, a mural in Comuna 13 dedicated to the rappers who were assassinated between 2009 and 2011. Art commissioned by Casa Kolacho. Photograph taken by the author on December 12, 2013.

From a Place of Fear to “The Place to Go” To talk about Comuna 13 in Medellín is to discuss a history of marginalization and extreme violence. However, it is also an example of courage and commu­ nity participation. Furthermore, to focus on the history of the Comuna from the beginning of the twenty-first century is to stay in the past, because, as the hoppers themselves say, Comuna 13 is a community in process, a laboratory of art and peaceful practices. The community transformed itself from being com­ pletely invisible to being recognized as one of the successes of Medellín. Official accounts continue to take credit for this renovation, but the community owes its successes to the resilience of its people. Over the years, schools, cultural centers, radio stations, and other insti­ tutions have been formed in the Comuna, some with aid from the Mayor’s Office and private and public enterprises, and others without such support. From the collectives led by youth that have impacted the Comuna the most, the following are noteworthy: Agroarte, Casa de Hip Hop Kolacho, Casa Morada, Somos de Calle, Lluvia de Orión, and Son Batá. The hip hop movement has been pivotal to this transformation. It has provided youth with the opportunity to tell their own history from their own perspective. Through their work, perceptions and narratives about the

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Figure 1.3 Todos somos inmigrantes, a mural in Comuna 13 (Medellín) by Jomag Ariza. Photograph taken by the author on July 3, 2019.

Comuna have changed, leading it to become, gradually and perhaps para­ doxically, a tourist attraction. For over a decade, people from all over the world sign up for the Graffitour, an initiative by local hip hop artists from Casa de Hip Hop Kolacho. During my visits in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019 I participated in these tours, which were transformational but low-key, visiting important places in the Comuna such as the ACJ YMCA, Casa Morada, Parque Biblioteca Presbítero José Luis Arroyave, and the very famous escaleras eléctricas. 27 Part of the experience was to look at art pieces and humble houses decorated with gardens and flowers and painted with self-referential images. Participants ate buñuelos or empanadas made by local people and sold in cafeterias or street corners, and enjoyed a famous homemade icy delight known as cremas, which are made with tro­ pical fruits. The tour ended in the mirador where one could play on a slide overlooking the city. These tours provide a very unique experience because you hear from the artists themselves, their testimonies and perspectives on history, and they show you their own art pieces and collaborations. They offer visitors the opportunity to learn about Medellín, to walk streets that were previously impassable due to the dynamics of the war, to see amazing art, and the stunning views of the mountains and the city. In recent years, the appeal of the Comuna as a tourist attraction has reached proportions that could not have been anticipated a decade ago. The Comuna has become so trendy, and the demand for tours so great, that many groups from outside the Comuna have created their own tours. As I witnessed during my visits in 2022 and 2023, those operation had become massive. Around the escalators, more walls have been painted by national and international artists. Large groups of tourists walk around taking photos, the home where the homemade cremas are sold has been turned into

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a store where people could buy products made by local artists: paintings, postcards, and more. Once you reach the top you are greeted by a perfor­ mance of B-Boys and a variety of rappers. There are many stores that sell all kinds of crafts that are not related to the Comuna’s history, there are bars and even bungee jumping. In fact, tourism has made Comuna 13 a focal point. Nowadays, no one who goes to Medellín leaves without visiting the escalators. However, this has come at a cost. The original idea was to tell the story from the per­ spective of the young people who witnessed it. However, tourism in Comuna 13 has become a capitalist emporium where you can buy and sell anything. Tours not run by local artists provide one commercialized lie after another designed to accommodate tourist demand. Popular culture has made Pablo Escobar a hero. Tourists demand to know about the city of the Capo, and the offer is there whether or not the story is true. The controversies about the effects of tourism in the Comuna are many. On the one hand, passage through the barrio has been obstructed for the people who live there. On the other, memory seems to be mocked once again when the visits that are made are completely decontextualized. This, without counting one of the biggest problems, the role that armed groups play in tourism and how illegality continues to be masked behind the idea of Medellín as trans­ formed from the most dangerous place in the world to a popular destination.28 What cannot be denied is that tourism has put Comuna 13 on the map and that this effort is largely due to young people, like Jeihhco, who believed in themselves and in their stories, and who continue to fight in the midst of many challenges to make their Comuna a livable place. Jeihhco has made Casa de Hip Hop Kolacho an important cultural center where one learns about the Comuna’s history. Named after his friend Héctor Pacheco Mar­ molejo, Kolacho, who was assassinated on August 24, 2009, the center is a home to young people in the Comuna who identify with hip hop culture. They attend workshops, concerts, and cultural events, furthermore, Jeihhco has trained many young people as tour guides, he teaches them the history of the city and the Comuna. He is an example of peaceful resistance and for this reason, he has become a well-known figure in Medellín and in Colombia. While it is true that violence and tragedy have greatly affected Comuna 13 and its hip hop communities, their achievements are astonishing. This cul­ tural production has offered them real alternatives. In Medellín, hip hop is intrinsically linked to the community and the community to hip hop. Young, old, women’s groups, etc., recognize this genre and its capacity to promote change. They believe in its ability to restore memory and demand justice. Through this art, they reterritorialize the spaces of violence within their cities; they create memories and make their struggles visible. They have made their stories, and those of their communities public. Hip hop repre­ sents their identity and commitment. It gives legitimacy to their feelings and provides them with the opportunity to create alternative spaces that they can occupy in a country that marginalizes them.

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Notes 1 The following documentaries illustrate how young Colombians utilize music as a tool to confront the armed conflict: 13 señales de vida (2010) by Proceso de la Cultura Hip Hop de la Comuna 13; Medellín Resiste: Una ciudad transformada por la música (2010) by Antonio Alarcón and Sofía Sánchez; Rebel Music: Americas (2004) by Marie Boti and Malcolm Guy; and Resistencia: Hip–hop in Colombia (2002) by Tom Feiling. 2 On August 11, 2023, the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of hip hop began around the world. The date commemorates the first time a new way of playing records was improvised at a party in the Bronx, NY. 3 To understand the situation of extreme vulnerability in which the youth of the neighborhoods find themselves, see “Contravía capítulo 14: Comuna 13 de Medellín.” 4 The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has commended Colom­ bia for its commitment to support the displaced population (“Las cifras”). However, the situation is far from being resolved. According to news reports, armed groups in the Pacific coast of Colombia have displaced more than eighteen thousand people in 2023, and minority groups and peasants continue to be par­ ticularly affected (“Conflicto armado”). 5 Unidad de Víctimas is an institution created in 2012. It was formed as part of the Victims and Land Restitution Law 1448 of 2011, which dictates comprehensive care, assistance, and reparation measures for victims of the internal armed conflict (“Reseña de la Unidad”). 6 On December 15, 2014, I attended “Ciudad Leyenda” (“City of Legend”), a cul­ tural event organized by Atomikos Krw, a group of B-boys from Medellín. It took place at the Presbítero José Luis Arroyave Restrepo Library Park, located in San Javier, Comuna 13. Hip-hoppers from all over the city joined to celebrate the history of hip hop culture and to offer workshops to children from the Comuna. The breakdance workshop was led by B-boy Julio who spoke about the history of breakdance in the city and taught other breakdancers how to incorporate dif­ ferent steps and rhythms into their routines. For him breakdancing is not an imitation of the North, instead is a form of expression that is enriched by dif­ ferent cultures. B-boy Julio has been an activist of hip hop culture for over 30 years and was recognized for his efforts during this event. 7 Henry Antonio Arteaga Ospina, Jke, is an MC and founder of Crew Peligrosos, an important collective of Hip Hop from Aranjuez, Comuna 4. He is also the director of 4Eskuela, an afterschool program that works with vulnerable children and youth. I interviewed him on July 13, 2015. 8 Paisa is a noun and an adjective that refers informally to people from Antioquia and nearby regions. 9 Jaison Castaño, Jeihhco, is an MC with the hip hop group C15, a community leader and activist, founder of the Graffitour and one of the managers at Casa de Hip Hop Kolacho, a cultural center in Comuna 13. I met him on December 12, 2013. He was my guide in the Graffitour, “a historical, aesthetic and political journey” led by hip hop artists from Comuna 13 of Medellín. I also interviewed him at Casa de Hip Hop Kolacho on July 28, 2014. 10 Although the city identifies nineteen neighborhoods as reported in “Perfil Demo­ gráfico 2016–2020 Comuna 13, San Javier,” the people of Comuna 13 recognize more than thirty. This discrepancy deeply affects the inhabitants of these barrios, because they cannot obtain basic services. 11 Oficina de Envigado (the Envigado Office), is a criminal enterprise founded by Diego Murillo Bejarano (“Don Berna”), who coordinated Operación Orión alongside state agencies. The Office also worked with both the Medellín Drug

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12

13 14

15

16 17 18 19

20

43

Cartel and the AUC paramilitary group (“Oficina de Envigado”). Don Berna has since been extradited to the United States for drug-related crimes. Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (MOVICE), founded in 2005, is a human rights organization that works with over 200 organizations of victims of state crimes, including forced disappearance and displacement, selective assassinations and extrajudicial killings (“History”). Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad is a collective of women and families who are searching for the disappeared in La Escombrera. Chapter 2 explores their strug­ gle to find their loved ones. In an interview with Aka from March 5, 2021, the community leader explained that this aphorism was coined by Fabiola Lalinde (1937–2022), an important figure in Colombia who has been “the voice of those who have been forcibly disappeared by the military.” She is known for having assembled an extensive archive of memory over thirty years. That collection, which has been cataloged by Unesco in the Memory of the World Register, contains the story of her son, Luis Fernando Lalinde, who disappeared in 1984 during the peace talks between the government of Belisario Betancur and various guerrilla groups. He was also the first disappeared person in Colombia to be recognized by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1988 (López Baquero “The Women of Colombia” 343) In an interview on March 5, 2021, Aka told me that this slogan sometimes is not taken well by human rights groups in Colombia because the word venganza implies violence. He clarifies that he does not promote violence but rather union because those in power have tried to keep them apart. For him, this type of retribution involves taking control through peaceful means and believing that communities can collectively imagine a better future. Occidente refers to the area where their neighborhood is located in the western part of the city. Translations of all songs are my own. Alberto G. Palomo observes that this maxim was recited by Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo in Jean Luc Godard’s film Notre Musique (2004). For the community, 2002 was the worst year of their lives, as stated by Rosaadela Tejada, a survivor of these operations, whom I interviewed on August 30, 2021: “2002 was Operación Orión. That was brutal, not wishing it on anyone, because we had to get under the beds, cover ourselves with our mattresses, because the bullets came and went. Supposedly in 2012 [the armed groups] made a non-violent truce, calmed down for a while and then started again. Now, at this moment in Comuna 13, let’s say, where the escalators are and all that, is very calm, but nevertheless the groups continue to exist” (my translation). I visited the photographic exhibit “El Testigo. Memorias del conflicto armado colombiano en el lente y la voz de Jesús Abad Colorado” on December 18, 2018, and again on July 16, 2019. Located at the Claustro de San Agustín in Bogotá, the photographs are exhibited in all the rooms on the second floor. In one, visi­ tors could hear Colorado’s accounts of his experiences taking those photographs. One of the most shocking revelations of the exhibit was that, amid all this destruction, he was all alone in keeping record of the war. His words were also printed in black over the white walls where he reflected about his role as a wit­ ness. The images not only showed the devastation of armed conflict in the many territories of Colombia, but also the dignity of the survivors. See “El Testigo. Memorias del conflicto armado colombiano en el lente y la voz de Jesús Abad Colorado.” His story has also been told in the 2018 documentary El Testigo: Caín y Abel, which follows Colorado as he returns to the places of violence that he had photographed through the years. As of July 2023, the documentary is available on Netflix.

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21 The iconic image of the girl can be seen in the BBC Mundo article “Las con­ movedoras imágenes de Jesús Abad Colorado, el fotógrafo que mejor ha retra­ tado el dolor de la guerra en Colombia.” 22 El Parque Biblioteca Presbítero José Luis Arroyave in San Javier is an important place for the Comuna. Inaugurated in 2006 during the administration of Sergio Fajardo (2004–2007), the library is a place of dynamism, youth and life. The initiative of the mayor’s office to found libraries in the invasion neighborhoods has been celebrated nationally and internationally. However, through graffiti, gardens of memories and breakdance, the hip hop collectives in the Comuna have transformed this space of institutionality into a place of memory and resistance. 23 It is hard to know the real number of desaparecidos in Colombia, but the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica has attempted to arrive at an accurate count. As they explain on their website in the introduction to their publication Desapari­ ción Forzada: Balance de la contribución del CNMH al esclarecimiento histórico: “Ten years ago the figures on forced disappearance in the country were scattered in various institutions and social organizations. One of the tasks of the National Center for Historical Memory (CNMH) was to consolidate them and thus, in 2016, we published the report ‘Hasta encontrarlos: El drama de la desaparición forzada en Colombia’ (‘Until We Find Them: The Drama of Forced Dis­ appearance in Colombia’), which revealed that between 1970 and 2015 there were 60,630 registered forcibly disappeared people in the country. The CNMH’s Memory and Conflict Observatory continued with the investigation and compi­ lation work, and until August 2018 there were 80,000 victims of this scourge reported” (“Lo que sabemos,” my translation). 24 The Youth Christian Association (ACJ by its acronym in Spanish) was founded in Medellín in 1974. It is located in barrio San Javier in Comuna 13. I visited the ACJ for the first time in 2013, and it is very different from the YMCA in the United States today. The ACJ is located in a two-story house where young people can find refuge. The second floor has beds and bathrooms for those in need. On the first floor, there is a kitchen, meeting rooms, and a patio. Young people meet there to work on community gardening, make paper with recycled materials, and play games in an activity they call Jugandi, a word that combines the Spanish verb for playing (jugar) and the name Ghandi. The purpose of this activity is to unlearn unhealthy competition and encourage community building through collaboration. 25 I have listened to Jeihhco retell this story a few times in the Graffitour (2013). He has also mentioned this passage in “Revolución sin Muertos,” a talk he gave for TEDxMedellín in 2012. 26 Andrés Felipe Medina was a rapper from the group Son Batá, not to be confused with José Davis Medina, Medina THE Barrio, rapper and gestor cultural. 27 The escalators together with the Metrocable are important investments in the Comuna that were inaugurated during Alonso Salazar’s mayoral administration (2008–2011). 28 Patrick Naef reflects on the criminal governance of tourism and how it affects the territory that is shared by armed actors, tourist guides and people from all parts of the world, and the implications of such interactions. He states that tourism in Comuna 13 has brought some “socio-economic resources,” but it has also revic­ timized the dwellers of the Comuna. While tourists enjoy security, people from the Comuna continue to fear the effects of a weaponized peace (25).

Works Cited Agencia de Prensa IPC. “Desplazamiento forzado intraurbano en Medellín: en estado crítico.” 18 December 2018, Hacemos Memoria, https://hacemosmemoria.org/ 2018/12/18/desplazamiento-forzado-intraurbano-medellin/. Accessed 17 July 2023.

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Aka (Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez). Personal interview, 5 March 2021. Alarcón, Antonio, and Sofía Sánchez, directors. Medellín Resiste: Una ciudad trans­ formada por la música, Part 1, Shock, 2010. YouTube, uploaded by Antonio Alarcón, 18 June 2010, www.youtu.be/xWyfesKWfTU. Accessed 17 July 2023. Alarcón, Antonio, and Sofía Sánchez, directors. Medellín Resiste: Una ciudad trans­ formada por la música, Part 2, Shock, 2010. YouTube, uploaded by Antonio Alarcón, 18 June 2010, www.youtu.be/qnR09orDpTU. Accessed 17 July 2023. Alcaldía de Medellín. Desplazamiento forzado y desplazamiento forzado intraur­ bano: Contexto y dinámica en Medellín durante el 2014. May 2015, www. medellin.gov.co/irj/go/km/docs/pccdesign/SubportaldelCiudadano_2/PlandeDesa rrollo_0_0_0_0/Informes/Shared%20Content/Documentos/2015/11DFI-Contexto dinamica2014_Mayo2015.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2023. Álvarez Correa, Melissa. “Intervención en La Escombrera busca cerrar una herida en la ciudad.” El Tiempo, 7 September 2020, www.eltiempo.com/colombia/m edellin/nueva-intervencion-en-la-escombrera-tras-la-decision-de-la-jep-536091. Accessed 18 July 2023. Arteaga Ospina, Henry Antonio (Jke). Somos Hip Hop una Experiencia de Resis­ tencia Cultural en Medellín. Medellín: Alcaldía de Medellín, Secretaría de Cultura Ciudadana, 2008. B-boy Julio. Personal interview, 15 Dec. 2014. Boti, Marie, and Malcolm Guy, directors. Rebel Music: Americas. 2004. Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2007. Casa Kolacho. A la memoria. 2013. Comuna 13, Medellín. Casa Kolacho. Orión nunca más. 2013. Comuna 13, Medellín. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Desaparición Forzada: Balance de la con­ tribución del CNMH al esclarecimiento histórico. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2018, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/micrositios/bala nces-jep/desaparicion.html. Accessed 17 July 2023. Comando Élite de Ataque. “Amargos Recuerdos.” YouTube, uploaded by rapme­ dellin13, 21 November 2010, www.youtu.be/PQdg0TGPB8I. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Conflicto armado en Colombia: van más de 18 mil personas desplazadas durante este 2023.” El País, 24 June 2023, www.elpais.com.co/judicial/conflicto-armado-en-colom bia-van-mas-de-18-mil-personas-desplazadas-durante-este-2023–2410.html. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Contravía capítulo 14: Comuna 13 de Medellín.” YouTube, uploaded by Contravía TV, 4 May 2011, www.youtu.be/58nApXSNipE. Accessed 18 July 2023. Dennis, Christopher. Afro–Colombian Hip–Hop: Globalization, Transcultural Music, and Ethnic Identities. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. El Testigo: Caín y Abel. Directed by Kate Horne, performance by Jesús Abad Colorado, Pacha Films, Ronachan Films, and Horne Productions, 2018. “El Testigo. Memorias del conflicto armado colombiano en el lente y la voz de Jesús Abad Colorado.” Universidad Nacional de Colombia, www.patrimoniocultural. bogota.unal.edu.co/el-testigo. Accessed 18 July 2023. “En la comuna 13, hay 435 posibles víctimas de desaparición forzada.” El Tiempo, 9 July 2020, www.eltiempo.com/colombia/medellin/en-la-comuna-13-de-medellin-ha y-435-posibles-victimas-de-desaparicion-forzada-516068. Accessed 18 July 2023. Esk-lones. “Esta es la 13.” YouTube, uploaded by Esk-lones, 11 June 2017, www. youtu.be/37zkKCSDusM. Accessed 18 July 2023.

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Esk-lones. “Aquí estoy bien.” YouTube, uploaded by TheSmokeHouseFilms, 8 October 2011, www.youtu.be/DtmwmhM968w. Accessed 18 July 2023. Feiling, Tom, director. Resistencia: Hip-hop in Colombia. New York, N.Y.: The Cinema Guild, 2002. Grupo de Memoria Histórica. La huella invisible de la guerra. Desplazamiento for­ zado en la Comuna 13. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2011, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/la-huella-invisible-de-la-guerra-desplazam iento-forzado-en-la-comuna-13. Accessed 18 July 2023. “History.” Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (MOVICE), 28 June 2015, www.movimientodevictimas.org/en/historia. Accessed 18 July 2023. Jeihhco (Jeison Castaño). “Graffitour.” Walking tour of Comuna 13, 12 December 2013. Jeihhco (Jeison Castaño). “Revolución sin muertos.” TEDxMedellin, YouTube, uploaded by TEDx Talks, 3 April 2012, www.youtu.be/CjOFGkIu5so. Accessed 18 July 2023. Jeihhco (Jeison Castaño). Personal interview, 28 July 2014. Jke (Henry Antonio Arteaga Ospina). Personal interview, 13 July 2015. Juárez Rodríguez, Javier, Néstor Julián Restrepo Echavarría, and Nora Elena Botero Escobar. “Los movimientos sociales de mujeres y su consolidación como interlocutor y actor político en la construcción de la paz en Medellín, Colombia.” Izquierdas, 34, 2017, pp. 1–24, doi:10.4067/S0718–50492017000300001. Accessed 18 July 2023. Kabala (Dayro Hidalgo). “Colortour.” Walking tour of Comuna 13, 3 July 2019. Kronos, C. “Desaparecidos.” YouTube, uploaded by LOS PR, 16 January 2012, www.youtu.be/YOn4BJ1–NY. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Las cifras que presenta el informe global sobre desplazamiento 2023.” Internal Dis­ placement Monitoring Centre, 11 May 2023, www.internal-displacement.org/media -centres/las-cifras-que-presenta-el-informe-global-sobre-desplazamiento-2023. Acces­ sed 19 July 2023. “Las conmovedoras imágenes de Jesús Abad Colorado, el fotógrafo que mejor ha retratado el dolor de la guerra en Colombia.” BBC Mundo, 26 September 2016, www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-37452970. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Ley 1448 de 2011.” Sistema Único de Información Normativa-Juriscol, www.suin-jur iscol.gov.co/viewDocument.asp?ruta=Leyes/1680697. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Lo que sabemos de los desaparecidos en Colombia.” Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/micrositios/balances-jep/desapa ricion.html. Accessed 18 July 2023. Naef, Patrick. “The Criminal Governance of Tourism: Extortion and Intimacy in Medellín.” Journal of Latin American Studies, 55(2), 2023, pp. 323–348, doi:10.1017/S0022216X23000019. “Oficina de Envigado.” Colombia Reports, 11 January 2018, www.colombiareports. com/oficina-de-envigado. Accessed 18 July 2023. Palomo, Alberto G. “Un director de cine contra ETA: Hablamos con Iñaki Arteta.” Vice, 28 February 2016, www.vice.com/es/article/7b3kxg/director-inaki-arteta -contra-eta-2902. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Perfil Demográfico 2016–2020 Comuna 13, San Javier.” Alcaldía de Medellín, www. medellin.gov.co/irj/go/km/docs/pccdesign/SubportaldelCiudadano_2/PlandeDesarroll o_0_17/IndicadoresyEstadsticas/Shared%20Content/Documentos/ProyeccionPoblaci on2016–2020/Perfil%20Demogr%C3%A1fico%202016%20-%202020%20Comuna% 2013_San%20Javier.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2023.

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Proceso de la Cultura Hip Hop de la Comuna 13. “13 señales de vida.” Part 1. YouTube, uploaded by Jeihhco Caminante, 12 November 2010, www.youtu.be/ MZzVZ8xusxE. Accessed 17 July 2023. Proceso de la Cultura Hip Hop de la Comuna 13. “13 señales de vida.” Part 2. YouTube, uploaded by Jeihhco Caminante, 12 November 2010, www.youtu.be/ wkP0k5cP0_A. Accessed 17 July 2023. “Reseña de la Unidad.” Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas, www.unidadvictimas.gov.co/es/la-unidad/resena-de-la-unidad/126. Acces­ sed 18 July 2023. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. University Press of New England, 1994. Sánchez, José Antonio. “Presencia y desaparición 1.” 18 September 2015. Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, www.hdl.handle.net/20.500.12010/8125. Accessed 18 July 2023. Sánchez, José Antonio. “Presence and Disappearance.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 24(7), 2019, pp. 6–15, doi:10.1080/13528165.2019.1717858. Accessed 18 July 2023. Sánchez Mojica, Beatriz Eugenia. “A Silenced Exodus: Intra-urban Displacement in Medellín.” In The New Refugees: Crime and Forced Displacement in Latin America, edited by David J.Cantor and Serna N.Rodríguez. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2016, pp. 87–108. “Serenata a la Memoria.” Facebook Live, recorded by Niquitown Banda, 16 October 2020, www.facebook.com/niquitown/videos/699343697350169. Accessed 18 July 2023. Tejada, Rosaadela. Personal interview, 30 August 2021. Tickner, Arlene B. “Aquí En El Ghetto: Hip-Hop in Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico.” Latin American Politics and Society, 50(3), 2008, pp. 121–146. www.jstor.org/sta ble/30130878. Accessed 10 September 2023.

2

Poetry of the Land Shaping the Urban Spaces with Art, Hip Hop and Agriculture

Challenging the New Authority The recruitment of youth to fill the ranks of armed groups did not begin or end with Operación Orión. For years, young people in Comuna 13 have been forced to play a role in the war regardless of whether they want to. For many, joining is the only option, and doing so furthermore confers status, because being a pillo has many perks: money, clothes, motorcycles, fame, the prettiest girls, and the false security of carrying a weapon. Those who refuse face curfews, threats, forced displacement, disappearance and fron­ teras invisibles, the imaginary borders that cannot be crossed. Many have lost their lives for stepping on the wrong side. In chapter one, I discussed the recent history of Comuna 13, the imposition of the dynamics of war on youth, how artistic groups, such as the hip hop schools, have been affected, and the situation of community leaders who became targets. Despite the fear, the military operations that took place in 2001 and 2002 had an unexpected effect: the joining of communities that, through acts of resistance, wove a network of political and social participation.1 That mutual history of oppression and the pain and sorrow left by the war bound them together, creating a community that claims the territory as a place of grieving and memory. Solidarity associations took the role of healers and provided care. Collectives of women and youth created new rituals in the form of cathartic actions and protests as the only way to face trauma. Marches, gardening, graffiti, muralism, and photography, were some of the urban languages utilized to express the idea of volition. As Javier Juárez Rodríguez and his coauthors explain, Social movements in Medellín arise out of the need to respond and materialize their disagreement with what is established and imposed, thus consolidating themselves as sources of counterpower due to their capacity for public questioning of the actions and decisions of the dominant actors. (2, my translation)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267-3

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Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez, Aka, a community leader in Comuna 13 and a renowned figure in the hip hop scene of Medellín, summarizes the col­ lective response to the Comuna’s history of violence in simple but compelling terms: “Si la guerra nos mueve, nosotros también nos movemos” (interview February 13, 2021). Translated literally as “If the war moves us, we also can move,” this expression encapsulates the way those in the Comuna have not received the waves of violence passively. “If the war moves us,” means that if the violence makes them behave differently, take different roads to get home, and many times, leave their homes and neighborhoods to never come back; then, “we can also move,” because they could make decisions and act together to confront violence. For Aka, moving is both feeling and standing one’s ground, organizing through collective action, making the crimes against them visible, and seeking ways to inhabit the city in the face of oppression. Col­ lectives in Comuna 13 have taken an active role in choosing life above every­ thing else and claiming peace as a political banner. The exact number of social organizations operating in the Comuna is dif­ ficult to determine, as only official state-sponsored records exist. However, residents estimate that as many as 700 collectives have worked memory and peace in the area.2 The women and youth who have led many of these grassroots organizations have dealt with the pain of the community and have transformed the urban territory through their artistic and cultural practices. This chapter examines the work of two such groups, Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad (Women Walking for Truth) and Agroarte Colombia.3 José A. Sánchez regards “political presence as necessary when it is motivated by love, compassion, and desire for transformation” (6:04–6:20, my translation). These variables can be seen in both groups. They have united against invisibility and have become present through embodied practices, creating alternative narra­ tives that have given them legitimacy. In doing so, they have recovered the spaces of violence and validated the lives of the people they lost. They have worked together to re-imagine “communality,” allowing them to create toge­ ther and reclaim their right to the city.4

Dignity Means Searching for the Disappeared Activism in Comuna 13 began with the women who performed daily acts of hospitality and care, which, in the context of war, became political acts. In my conversations with community leaders, they have consistently mentioned the courage of women, and how they became saviors to many of them. The popular feminist slogan “She Needed a Hero, So That’s What She Became” comes to mind when talking about these women—when no one came to their aid, they took responsibility for their community and became the lea­ ders everyone needed.5 Aka mentioned to me that, as a child, the women saved him from being taken by armed men. I inquired how they saved him and his response left me confused: “with a juice.” My initial reaction was to question this possibility. He explained that when kids were hanging out

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outside, armed groups would come searching to recruit them or punish them. The women would see them coming and ask the kids to come inside to drink a “juguito,” sending the message that those kids were protected by the mothers of the Comuna (interview March 18, 2021). They were vigilant and used any means they had available, as Ana Teresa Bernal, president of Redepaz6 explains it: “Mothers are the result of crime saturation. They have become the mothers of all and have built a form of social motherhood. They have replaced the care of the house for the care of life” (cited in Juárez Rodríguez et al. 8, my translation). Maneuvering within a world order of extreme patriarchal violence that took away their husbands and sons and exerted total control over their bodies under threat of rape or death, women in Comuna 13 challenged all boundaries. With little means, they became the voice of the community. By coming together as women, they built gender models and roles to give meaning to their political activism. In this way, it can be said that women themselves see their political activism as the answer to hegemonic patriarchy that has his­ torically tried to silence them. (Juárez Rodríguez et al. 4, my translation) One example of motherhood as a social and political movement is the organization Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad. Founded in 2001, the group consists of about 180 women and families known for denouncing the disappearance of bodies in La Escombrera, from the very moment the com­ munity became aware of this crime. Through their performances, marches, sit-ins, and other actions of memory, they have become the “counter-power agents and political spokespersons” that do not allow the country to forget (Juárez Rodríguez et al. 4, my translation). The collective meets at the Convento de la Madre Laura,7 a Catholic convent where the women find refuge, receive psychological care, teach and take classes on skills such as baking and dressmaking, and where, in 2013, they founded the Salón Tejiendo Memoria (Weaving Memory Hall), a shared space in which they exhibit their cultural production. Their efforts were recognized in 2015 with the Colombian National Human Rights Award for Collective Processes at the Community Level. Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad has obtained recognition while work­ ing with little means. They carry the pictures of their loved ones on their bodies and march through the Comuna ending their pilgrimage at La Escombrera.8 These pictures have the name of their family members, the form of victimization to which they were subjected, and the date and place where this occurred. At the bottom of each picture, a gold banner displays the logo of the National Institution for Victims, MOVICE (Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas).9 The uniformity of the images communicates a shared identity in suffering and a connection through pain, but also points

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to the community healing that these women experience through the soli­ darity they have found in each other. The group’s employment of black silhouettes representing their missing is another example of their use of simple but iconic imagery. The color and shapes simulate the shadows of the loved ones who still accompany the women in their absence. At the same time, they represent the ghosts of vic­ tims who denounce impunity and demand justice. The messages that the women write in white letters on these silhouettes serve as prayers and pleadings that summon the dead. They also send emotional and painful personal messages that, when displayed in the public space, become political actions: “Son, here I am waiting for you,” “We are still continuing with your search,” “The pain of your families is my pain,” “We are the sun that shines against impunity.” This use of silhouettes, furthermore, expresses a shared trauma and solidarity among women that transcends national borders in Latin Amer­ ica, with its roots in the Siluetazos that the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo organized during the last year of the dictatorship in Argentina. At the III Marcha de Resistencia (the Third March of Resistance) on September 21, 1983, they displayed silhouettes that represented the disappeared bodies of their children. Daniela Lucena explains that these figures were a form of political manifesto in the urban public space that “acted as an instrument of denunciation and visibility of the absent bodies of those tortured by the ferocious machinery of extermination set in motion by state terrorism” (37, my translation). On October 16, 2021, at the commemoration of nineteen years since Operación Orión, I witnessed the women from Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad in action at Cementerio La América in Comuna 13. They carried mirrors on their chests as an invitation to reflect and as a demand that spectators consider our own complicity in the horror of the war.10 As a metaphor for illusion and colonial oppression, the mirror is a common symbol in Latin American culture, with Carlos Fuentes’ El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried Mirror) being a foremost example. In that essay, the author explores our identity as Latin Americans who were fooled by the colonizers who gave us mirrors—objects of little value—in exchange for gold. The mirror conceals the truth of our dispossession, and for the women in Comuna 13, the truth has been buried in a very concrete place, La Escom­ brera. For this reason, the mirror is also a demand to the state to dig up the truth. In recent years, this mission has become more urgent than ever because many of their compañeras have died without justice. “My friends have died of sadness,” Doña Luz Elena Salas told me when I interviewed her on August 25, 2021, suggesting that the women’s emotional suffering had led to physical illness: because of their trauma “they somatize their pain and develop cancer.” Salas herself had arrived at Mujeres Cami­ nando por la Verdad seeking psychological aid after losing her 20-year-old son, who disappeared on January 15, 2007, when paramilitary groups

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recruited him with promises of work. She located his body on November 2, ten months later, at Cementerio Universal.11 Her testimony speaks to the sense of abandonment and solitude that groups like Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad have sought to counter: “We must search for our disappeared by ourselves. The [government] institutions are indifferent, they do not help us, because they say that this happens due to the conflict or because of common crime.” Such a lack of official concern is similarly noted by Aka, who asserts that the greatest injustice of which residents of Comuna 13 accuse the state is apathy, having left them completely alone in their suffering. He emphasizes that no one has come to their aid—not the politicians, nor the institutions, nor the universities. Nobody was there when youth was being sacrificed, when women were crying for their loved ones, or when they had to run for their lives. As Aka explains, “The only thing that came to the Comuna were bullets” (interview, April 17, 2021). The story Salas tells also points to the way that war and crime are entangled with other types of violence. The year after her son’s dis­ appearance, on July 21, 2008, her orphaned grandson was killed when he was only two years old. “His stepfather beat him to death,” she explained, still grappling with the horror of the situation: “Apart from that, the beat­ ings … I don’t want to think that anything else happened.” Her two remaining sons succumbed to drug addiction due to their trauma and lack of opportunities, and Salas herself has had to endure both domestic and insti­ tutional violence, in part as a result of her activism. She has been displaced from Comuna 13 for denouncing the assassinations of young people and the rampant extortion that affects the community. Her last displacement was on November 29, 2018. She lost her home, is unemployed, and struggles to pay rent, living now in a rural area of Medellín, far from everything she loves. Since her life is at risk, she can only return to her Comuna for special events and meetings, when the collective pays for her transportation. Though seemingly extreme, the circumstances that Salas faces are not unique. As the Grupo de Memoria Histórica explains: Most of the people of the Comuna face multiple and simultaneous forms of victimization; some have lost loved ones as a result of assassi­ nations, exiles or forced disappearances, others have suffered severe injuries and physical disabilities as a result of attacks and stray bullets due to the continuous confrontations between gangs and armed groups; many have been victims of the dispossession of their property, others, especially women, have been victims of sexual abuse. (173, my translation) The residents of areas like Comuna 13 live in a continuous cycle of revicti­ mization that targets, in particular, women and young people. Something beyond resilience drives women like Salas. Her courage derives from the understanding that she has nothing else to lose and that she has a

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voice that refuses to be silenced. She tells me that in the beginning, other women questioned her participation in Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad since by the time she joined the group, she had already found the answers she was seeking, having located her son’s body. However, to her, showing up is a responsibility on behalf of others who cannot march, and for those who are sick or have passed, because someone needs to continue searching for justice. Eventually, they came to accept her, and she has become their support: “That’s why I’m there, to also lend them my shoulder when they want to cry, to tell them that I’m with them too, with my broken heart.” Writing as a form of healing has been essential to Salas, who publishes her poems, reflections, and dreams on social media. Her book Palabras de Luz was presented to the Comuna at Cementerio La América on August 15, 2021. When I asked her how she felt about having her words published in a book, she replied with honest joy: You cannot imagine my happiness because that was a gift for me. I wrote my first poem on a piece of paper that I kept with me. I would always ask people at the organizations if they would allow me to share what I wrote. There were times when they paid attention to me. Other times they ignored me. And I still continued. To have a book was like a dream, but the truth is that I never imagined actually having it because I don’t have any resources, and sometimes my situation is very complicated. But when they gave me that beautiful gift, ah, that was happiness! (interview August 25, 2021) Paying tribute to those who have managed to change their communities, despite their daily struggles, is key to maintaining alive the memory of the Comuna. Salas has been recognized for all her efforts in the documentary Palabras de Luz, directed by Pablo Calvo de Castro and Alejandro Alzate Giraldo, which collects her testimony and her experiences as a witness to the conflict in the Comuna.12 Also, her image has been captured by the artist Jomag who painted her in a mural at Cementerio La America, as part of the initiative Galería Viva (Living Gallery) launched by the collective Agroarte Colombia.13 When I inquired about how she felt about being recognized with a book, a film, a mural, and more, Salas responded that she believes her story dignifies the struggle of all the women in the Comuna, and that her voice is the voice of all. She writes about their memories, about the victims and the bodies that disappeared. She emphasizes, however, that her writings are not about death, “but about life, to dignify life” (interview August 25, 2021). The recognition and empowerment of these women validate their suffer­ ing and enhance their work as activists. These initiatives are essential to obtain peace. Through the visual, community leaders and artists redefine the country’s history and rewrite it, thus telling an alternative, different, inclu­ sive Colombia with empowered women and youth. These considerations are fundamental since the mission of popular art is to educate and visibilize in

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order to help overcome the conflict and contribute to the reconfiguration of the country. Undermining the structures of war needs a lot of creativity, tolerance, and the inclusion of all.

Aka and Agroarte Colombia: Joining Art and Agriculture Among the many community leaders and activists working for change in Comuna 13, Aka stands out as a particularly unique figure. He is a very sweet guy who loves his family and his animals. He treats the land with love and feels a lot of nostalgia for the childhood he couldn’t have. He is vegan by conviction. He protects life and firmly believes that no one can defend it through the dynamics of death. Although he is interested in learning the languages of others—the academic language, the institutional language—he chooses to speak with simple words that are full of wisdom. He takes care of his image, and his way of dressing has also been chosen with the reflec­ tion of who he is: a farmer, a rapper, and a community leader. He wears oversized overalls that the women of the neighborhood make for him, a Tshirt, a bandana, a hat to protect himself from the sun, and worn-out sneakers or boots. His comfortable appearance serves him both to sow and to stand on any stage. This makes him look very different from the rest of the Colombians who usually wear brand-name clothes that they buy in shopping malls. Aka is a leader who interacts with people with affection, who makes an effort to greet with a smile those he cares for and governs in his territory. He leads with gratitude and humility and still maintains a bit of innocence. Despite the difficult circumstances from which he emerged, he has attained a degree in Visual Arts from the University of Antioquia and a Master’s in Urban and Environmental Studies from EAFIT University. He also operates in an unusually broad range of areas, as a performance artist, an educator, a community leader, an urban agriculturist, and a singer of hip hop. Those degrees and labels, however, do not capture the feelings that Aka inspires in those around him. The women in the Comuna describe him as an allencompassing presence, tall and strong, like a shade of a great tree who embraces like a blanket. They explain that amid their loss, when their chil­ dren were killed and when they were being buried, Aka approached them, offered his support, accompanied them, and gave them plants as tokens of memory and symbols of hope. They recount how he assumed responsibility for mourning the dead of the Comuna, for solving basic problems for vul­ nerable victims, and for speaking on their behalf in a collective voice. When I asked him why a young person would take on such a role, he responded in a characteristically humble fashion, redirecting my attention to community efforts: It is not only me. There have actually been several of us at different times, with many lessons learned, because those are cases of collective

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mourning. I remember when Morocho, a 16-year-old boy, was assassi­ nated in 2014. We knew him, and the other children since they were eight years old, we watched them grow, and I saw in their eyes, the eyes of my friends who had been murdered. Then another homicide came upon those eyes that I remembered, and I realized that it was not just one, but thousands killed, thousands in pain, and it was the same pain, the shared pain, the pain that generates many disorders and the big question was how to find each other in our grief. So, the answer was empathy, mainly. (“Poetry of the Land”)14 As a young boy Aka was recruited by a local combo and had to run errands for them. It is not easy for him to speak about that part of his life. How­ ever, in 2019 he gave his testimony to the Comisión de la Verdad, revealing some of his personal experiences as a child in the middle of the conflict. In a moving video recording, he states that he grew up being exposed to the language of war and by the age of six, not only had he witnessed shootings in his neighborhood, but had grown accustomed to seeing dead people while playing outside. In his account, he remembers when he reached early ado­ lescence and became a pawn in the game of war. First, militia groups knocked on his door when he was a 13-year-old boy, and “it was the first time I felt a gun to my head” (Comisión de la Verdad). Then, the police, who targeted young people, detained him to interrogate him, trying to col­ lect intelligence against other armed groups. He articulates, Each army that has been assembled in Colombia, whether legal or ille­ gal, has had to do with us and has done us immense damage, and that immense damage, let’s say, are deaths, displacements, threats, those armies have made an indelible mark on the population. (“Poetry of the Land”) He, like many others in the Comuna, heard the screams of those who were taken by the militia or the paramilitaries. They were targeted for belonging to community organizations and had to flee from their homes and abandon their territories: “Shit, we’re really fucking sick: being born with that and having it become normal for us, and seeing that, tragically, we never had a first chance or a second chance” (Comisión de la Verdad). In his 2021 song “Olor a Tiempo” (Scent of time, Aka HipHop Agrario) Aka hints to this part of his youth: Crecí en una aldea en llamas en el año 87,

en un país útil para el olvido construí mis simientes,

nunca mienten las huellas del tiempo, desaparece entre nosotros,

hay otros que tienen el corazón en cenizas, vuelto trozos,

nunca dejé de escuchar sus latidos llamando,

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Poetry of the Land nunca dejé de recordar algo perdido en mí, halando, En la guerra lo único personal es el amor, la muerte se vuelve algo común, ella te vuelve fuerte. Yo tuve suerte, por ello escribo estas letras, que me devuelvan mi niñez que perdí en la guerra, [I grew up in a burning village in the year ’87,

in a country useful for oblivion, I built my seeds,

the traces of time never lie, they disappear between us,

there are others who have their broken hearts turned to ashes,

I never stopped hearing their heartbeats calling,

I never stopped remembering something lost in me, pulling me,

In war the only personal thing is love,

death becomes commonplace, it makes you strong.

I was lucky,

that’s why I write these lyrics,

hoping that they might give me back the childhood that I lost in the war,]

This autobiographical piece depicts the vulnerability of a child who had to endure armed conflict and a hostile world that does not offer protection. He has had to suffer so much loss and fear and has been a witness to the collective torment of those who have lost their loved ones. He writes and sings to make sense of it all. Aka laments that the main feeling of his adolescence was anger, “because you are not important to anyone” (Comisión de la Verdad). However, neither the song nor his testimony before the Comisión de la Verdad are mere com­ plaints about his tragic past. On the contrary, they are an affirmation of the meaning of life and the decisions he made to cling to it despite so much death. One of the most poignant parts of his story is that at age 12 he was convinced that he was going to be murdered before he reached 16. But when he turned 18, and he was still alive, he began to celebrate every birthday: “I was saved in the midst of so much death” (Comisión de la Verdad). Survivors of the conflict left behind so much: their land, their home, their loved ones, but Aka insists that despite the pain, they had a choice to live with the ethics that form his essence: “Each person decides what they want to be made of, and we decided to be made of great dignity” (Comisión de la Verdad). Aka traces the origins of his work, in part, to the efforts of a group of women from the neighborhood who call themselves “Las Doñas.” They formed El Partido de las Doñas (The Ladies’ Party), a socio-political orga­ nization that works at the grassroots level weaving, planting, and joining artistic projects in order to heal together, demand and restore their rights and recognition of their stories. A collective of seven hundred people, Las Doñas were founded in response to the history of forced displacement and violence linked to their territory. With acts of care, such as the

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aforementioned juguito served to protect Aka as a child, they defended the youth against the armed groups. The oldest “Doñas y Doños” (Ma’ams and Sirs)15 arrived during times of La Violencia, as displaced people and built their homes in Comuna 13.16 Although nowadays the Comuna is part of the city, at the time, the mountains were rural, fertile areas, bathed in streams and ravines. They brought their knowledge, their plants, and cus­ toms, and many of them sowed edible gardens, fruits, and vegetables, especially plantains and medicinal herbs. Hanging from balconies and windows, one could see geraniums and the red “novios,” a species favored by the Doñas. Aka explains: With these symbolic acts of planting, they portray a memory that is not important in the great historical memories, but that plant passes from generation to generation. Not just from any generation, it is the genera­ tion of the uprooted, people banished from their territories, people who didn’t pack clothes in their rush to leave, but they grabbed their little plants. These plants that left their territories, from the time of the war in the 40s and 50s, are the same plants they now hang from their balconies as a memory of that moment, but also as a memory that grows, that is being watered, is being replanted—a memory that generates relationships with the other. It basically multiplies by cuttings, by rhizomes. (“Poetry of the Land”) These itinerant plants become part of the local memories that, as Natalie Zemon Davis and Randolph Starn have argued, “are sources for writing the local histories ignored by historians of dynastic monarchy and the nationstate; the private sphere and the practices of everyday life define and con­ serve alternatives to the official memory of public historiography” (5). Through these women Aka discovered gardening and agriculture and learned to appreciate the knowledge and wisdom that those activities pro­ vide. The Doñas taught him how the “politics of everyday life” can be deployed to rethread the territory and open doors for youth who want to stay away from the armed groups that want to recruit them. These women showed Aka how collective work and creation can allow the community to reclaim their right to the space they inhabit. These experiences made him consider the neighborhood as the first territory of action where he could achieve real transformation. The main vehicle for Aka’s work is Agroarte Colombia, a community organization that leads a variety of projects in Comuna 13. Its name is a portmanteau that joins its most meaningful activities: urban agriculture to transform the territory and art as a form of communication. Agroarte was founded as an informal collective in 2002, and during Operación Orión and its aftermath, denounced the actions of paramilitary groups, pointing in particular to the dumping of bodies in La Escombrera. Since then, the col­ lective has worked on providing support and accompaniment to the women

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of the territory who have lost their children to the war. In fact, since becoming an official entity in 2017, they have become the guardians of the local cemetery, Cementerio La America, a place where many of the young victims are buried. The organization is a conglomerate of several projects, and its methodol­ ogies contain meanings that are explained through metaphors. Aka, for example, describes Agroarte as a great community tree whose branches and roots are the methodologies, and performative and advocacy actions for the conservation of memory spaces in the territory. These places are important because they are a memory of the war, and also, of the cultural aspects of the territory”. (“Poetry of the Land”) The collective seeks to develop interdisciplinary knowledge and bring it to other parts of the city so that people can also replicate it with the hopes of obtaining self-governance. Agroarte also emphasizes the inclusion of children and youth as the only way to sensibilize their community. They believe that the future depends on applying a pedagogy for peace and, for this reason, art and hip hop are the tools for engaging the newer generations with the history and memory of the Comuna. Aka acknowledges the fragility and fatigue of memory: on the one hand, he understands that there is a universal trend in which memory gets lost with the new generations, and on the other, he expresses his con­ cern about the Comuna’s inability to impress the significance of memory on young people. From an early age, the children of the Comuna have accom­ panied their mothers to the marches, the protests, and the gatherings, but many times they do not understand why those rituals continue to be important or why they are obliged to carry all this trauma as a burden. Young people feel disconnected from their recent history because what occurred over twenty years ago, in the light of what has happened since, and what continues to happen, is not relevant to them. For this reason, Agroarte seeks to find new languages and forms of expression to bridge the gap of memory and the cultural chasm between young and old. One of their initiatives is Semillas del Futuro (Seeds of the Future), which foments the exchanges between young people and adults who, through gar­ dening in urban spaces, meet to narrate their stories. Aka explains: “Those stories become rap songs, we already have more than three hundred songs written not only by children but also by adults who trace and write the stories of the Comuna” (“Poetry of the Land”). One of the most repre­ sentative songs is “Más amor” (“More Love,” 2020), a production in which Aka joins various artists who have been involved with Semillas del Futuro, including FL Colombia, Metan-o LM, and Ghido Alma. The song starts with a plea to the listener to love more and let go of the rage, a response to what Aka describes as a spiral of revenge in the territory: “With our actions,

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our phrases, and our accompaniment, we can make the following genera­ tions understand our mistakes and at least leave the circle of violence” (“Poetry of the Land”). The following lyrics exemplify these thoughts: Más amor, menos guerra Ponle fin, rabia fuera Más amor, menos guerra Ponle fin, rabia fuera Piensa en el otro que sin el otro no seremos nada Piensa que ese otro siente que amar lo pondrá en picada Aquel rencor que un día sentiste Que se borró cuando viste que lo triste no sólo en tu ser existe ¿Por qué hermano? ¿Por qué nos asesinamos? Porque el otro es diferente y lo así dicho no aceptamos Niños lloran, madres oran, humanos demoran En unirse a dar abrazos no guerras devastadoras Violencia más violencia Decadencia es inclemencia Religión contra ciencia Ateos contra creencia Deseo contra conciencia Desespero, paciencia La paz es la ciencia para la benevolencia Un camino sin armas donde tu destino no sea crecer y ser entrenado para ser asesino, donde tu alma esté limpia y sin dolor y para ello hoy pedimos [More love, less war End it, be done with rage More love, less war End it, be done with rage Think of others for without others we will be nothing Think that they feel that loving will put them into a tailspin That resentment you felt one day was erased when you saw that sadness exists not only in your being Why, my brother? Why do we murder each other? Because others are different and though we say it, we do not accept it Children cry, mothers pray, humans delay in coming together in embraces, not devastating wars Violence more violence

60

Poetry of the Land Decay is a lack of clemency Religion against science Atheists against belief Desire against conscience Despair, patience, Peace is the science for benevolence A path without weapons where your destiny is not growing up and being trained as a killer where your soul is clean and free of pain, and for that today we pray]

The video of the song has several women victims as protagonists. They represent their pain with their black dresses, looking at the photographs and memories of their absent relatives, and praying. A girl dressed in pink looks at the mothers with sadness and goes on to wander around the barrio where she encounters the joy of art, kids playing in teams, and acts of kindness that make her smile. The video represents the barrio with its sad memories, its joy, its creativity, and its hopes for the future. The song lyrics also offer a list of steps to follow in order to become part of the solution: Juntarnos con la sangre, recogidas las heridas saber que somos pueblos alejando las mentiras develar en la JEP los crímenes de estado que el presidente se vaya con su clase al carajo y que las escuelas enseñen poesía para formarse de libres que disfruten de la vida anular las licencias de los canales mentirosos borrar cuentas de Facebook que alimenten el odio oír más la tierra, sembrar maíz, empuñando semillas viejas, custodios con raíz Más pendientes de La Guajira que de Venezuela17 más atentos de hechos de paz que de esta guerra más arte para recordar a líderes asesinados más valor para enfrentar a EPM por Hidroituango18 a las mineras que dañan el amor por esta tierra nuestra mayor venganza será juntarnos en esta era por ello, más amor sembrador en las laderas para que el asfalto no queme vidas mientras semillas nacieran [Joined by blood holding on to our wounds knowing that we are people chasing off lies Unveiling state crimes to the JEP May the president with his social class go to hell

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and let the schools teach poetry to become free people who enjoy life Revoke the licenses of lying channels delete Facebook accounts that fuel hatred Listen more to the land, sow corn, wielding old seeds, protectors of the roots Worry more about La Guajira than Venezuela Be more attentive to acts of peace than to this war more art to remember assassinated leaders more courage to face EPM about Hidroituango to the mining companies that damage the love for this land our greatest revenge will be getting together in this field therefore, more love, sower on the slopes so that the asphalt does not burn lives while seeds are born] (FL Colombia et al.) Aka labels their songs as Agrarian Hip Hop. He reflects that hip hop is from the street, but under the pavement there is dirt. The soil is the essence of the land they occupy because their roots and those of their ancestors are rural. Agrarian Hip Hop is not only an artistic style but also a means of reflection on their history, their memory, and the place they occupy within the territory. It is also a pedagogical tool that lays the foundations of their ethics and transmits them mainly to young people, but, as Aka explains, there is enthusiasm from the community to participate in Agroarte’s initia­ tives that make older people want to rap, and, the young, sow. One of their most famous performative actions is Cuerpos Gramaticales (Grammatical Bodies), a form of political and artistic protest that consists of theatrical performances, dance, weaving, writing, and planting one’s own body. The participants sit on a bed of soil, in a meditation position, with half of their bodies covered by the soil like plants. They decorate themselves with colors and signs and are sometimes accompanied by photographs of their missing loved ones. The first of these stagings took place in La Escombrera in 2014, a place with a great symbolic charge, since it is the largest mass grave in Antioquia. Through this action, the participants lend their own bodies to represent the extreme violence exerted on bodies and territories throughout Colombia. These actions serve as a symbolic repara­ tion for the victims of State crimes. Cuerpos Gramaticales is a militant miseen-scène. José A. Sánchez conceives this type of dissident theatricality as a meeting of bodies that resists the sadness imposed by the hegemonic powers and claims the joy of an interaction based on love and imagination. A theatricality that resists the transforma­ tion of bodies into images or performative schemes, and that makes pos­ sible the generation of poetic spaces, spaces of resonance between bodies. (7:42–8:19, my translation)

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Agroarte has taken this performance to symbolic places within Comuna 13, including Cementerio La América and Parque Biblioteca Presbítero José Luis Arroyave. They have also replicated the action in many cities in Colombia and abroad, where more than 500 people and 150 victims’ organizations have participated (“Acciones simbólicas: Cuerpos gramaticales”). By taking Cuerpos Gramaticales to other geographies, they have found a universal experience of pain and loss. Agroarte has brought to distant places a form of mourning and healing, uniting the local and the global.

A Cemetery as a Place of Recovery Agroarte’s work with Cementerio Parroquial La América has been one of the group’s most impactful projects. Officially the Cementerio Parroquial La América (La América Parish Cemetery), it is known to most residents as Cementerio de La América or Cementerio de San Javier due to its location, on the border between Comuna 12 (La América) and Comuna 13 (San Javier). This liminal space is shared by other important institutions including Parque Biblioteca Presbítero José Luis Arroyave, the Benedikta Zur Nieden educa­ tional institution, and the Ciudadela Universitaria de Occidente (formerly the women’s prison El Buen Pastor) which sit at the border of both comunas but have a closer connection with the San Javier neighborhood. The cemetery is itself a historical place, built by an affluent family in the late nineteenth century. It is the only religious building from that time that still survives in the area. Moreover, according to Albeiro Ospina Zapata, the

Figure 2.1 Inside Cementerio Parroquial La América in Medellín. Photograph taken by the author on October 16, 2021.

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cemetery is one of the most emblematic places in the Comuna since it was a place of pilgrimage for many whose relatives were buried there: The San Javier Cemetery, which is identified by its white oval structure of three levels, with wide and large stairs, is guarded by two angels with their index fingers close to their lips as if indicating a respectful silence for those who are no longer in the world of the living. In the back, there is a concrete pit where they deposit the remains of those who are for­ gotten by their relatives. (43, my translation)19 The stories that remain from the early years of the twentieth century are oral testimonies of washerwomen who laundered the clothes of the rich people of Medellín in the ravines near the cemetery. They would travel to Medellín City Center to pick up and deliver loads of laundry (Grupo de Trabajo). These accounts are important because they trace the history of the working women of the Comuna who supported their families with manual labor. This part of history is represented today on the walls of the cemetery, in murals that rescue the origins of the Comuna and pay tribute to the strength of women. Dressmakers and seamstresses are also recognized in these murals because these women maintained the economy of their house­ hold, weaved ties with other women, and even used their knowledge to make blankets of memory with the names of their loved ones who were

Figure 2.2 The angel statue near the entrance to Cementerio Parroquial La América, with paintings of elephants representing memory on the left and images of rap, agriculture, and peace on the right. Photograph taken by the author on April 9, 2023.

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murdered or disappeared during the years of conflict. With these acts, they have repaired social connections in the barrios. During the period from 2012 to 2014, the cemetery was an invisible fron­ tier, a place where armed groups would enter to kill targets during a wake. People felt a special horror for this place where neither the living nor the dead could be at peace. Agroarte began the reterritorialization of the ceme­ tery and its surrounding areas in 2013 at the nearby Casa Morada, a place for art and creation that manages a local radio station. There, Aka had taken refuge after being threatened and displaced from his home. He spent two years in hiding, during which he decided to grow a garden in the interior patio of Casa Morada. Young people and neighborhood residents would come to plant with him. Then, they decided to plant outside and took over the block, and ultimately crossed the street to reach the cemetery. They meet every Saturday to harvest and replant, and to occupy a new spot. These collective actions of urban gardening soon transformed into artistic projects. Agroarte and members of the community began painting the outer walls of the cemetery and making vertical gardens of memory. These were made up of recycled plastic bottles that were placed one above the other, hanging from the walls, and supported with wire, so they were vertically facing the street. Each one held a plant and carried a special message for a loved one who was no longer present. Working with the community, Agroarte devised a way to take advantage of every space and every corner for the transformation of the cemetery, from a place of fear and sadness to a place of joy. By 2017, the

Figure 2.3 On an interior wall of Cementerio Parroquial La América, a painting of hands sewing, representing women who have weaved the territory. An image of Comuna 13 rests on the weaver’s arms. Photograph taken by the author on October 16, 2021.

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cemetery became the first one of its kind in Latin America—a cemetery painted with memory themes. Paradoxically, the cemetery has become a living, thriving space, with the work of Agroarte leading to what is known today as Galería Viva (Live Gallery), an open-air art gallery located in the cemetery and con­ sisting of murals, graffiti, photographs, gardens of memory, and other art forms that seek to mourn the victims of the conflict. Galería Viva maintains and promotes artistic and gardening events that they call “Rituales Vivos.” Through the exploration of historical themes and the visibilization of community activism, they understand the space of the cemetery as a place of pain but also identify its pedagogical opportunities. The cemetery is not only the place where one learns about the history of the Comuna but also where people are sensitized and a collective identity is created (“Investigación: Galería Viva,” “Rituales Vivos”). While for the Anglo-Saxon world, cemetery gardens are a space for con­ templation and meditation, in Comuna 13, the cemetery is a space for coex­ istence, ideal for social gathering, where people sit on the grass to talk and share. At Cementerio La América, people not only visit because of the shared experience of death and memory but also to weave ties. During celebrations, for example, the community collectively makes a sancocho, each one of them brings an ingredient and they set up a wood stove where they cook.20 They sit around the garden to eat, sing, recite poetry, and be with nature. The gardens of memory are also gardens of regeneration and healing. Agroarte has a nursery there and people from the community grow plants that have specific meanings, such as rue and cedrón, medicinal plants that soothe the spirit and the body. This collective space for creation allows the community to mourn their dead and their overall loss and, at the same time, work on strengthening the power of the barrio. For Aka, “fortalecer el poder barrial” is a way of giving power back to the people of the barrio. He believes that change can only happen at a small scale, working block to block. By transforming the cem­ etery with art and agriculture, the community takes matters into its own hands. They understand their grieving as part of their history. They choose to protect life and celebrate it. Aka explains this as “celebrar la muerte a través de la vida,” an empowerment that comes from acknowledging the dead, understanding their shared history, and celebrating the act of being alive and having a past worth remembering. It is also a way to honor those who did not get a chance to live a full life and those who fight for their memory, and represents a political stance against the armed groups who deemed their lives unworthy and continue to marginalize them. By cele­ brating every life lost, the community both mourns and expresses its agency. These murals that recreate the history of Comuna 13 in Cementerio La América consider not only the recent history of armed conflict but also connect the community’s presence to its origins in the nineteenth century. They pay homage to the first settlers, groups of freed slaves who inaugu­ rated the first music bands. Some of them still exist, like La Banda Paniagua. The paintings acknowledge the musical and artistic history in the comuna,

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Figure 2.4 A mural in the façade of Cementerio Parroquial La América honoring the wisdom of black women ancestors. Photograph taken by the author on July 28, 2023.

honoring the Paniagua as creators of Festival del Porro de Medellín (which is celebrated every November), and as guardians of the sainete tradition, a theatrical piece in one act, that “has existed for more than 150 years.… These plays are accompanied by a standard-bearer, who is usually a child, who receives the legacy of the sainete and is in charge of not letting the tradition die.” These murals trace the rich tradition of Comuna 13 where its inhabitants not only have created a lasting cultural production but have also maintained memory alive: “These antecedents show to this day the pre­ ponderance of culture and the organizational fabric of the territory” (Álvarez Ramírez and Londoño Uribe 57, my translation). The murals also consider the experiences of the community in the second half of the twentieth century, when the population grew as a result of the massive rural displacements during La Violencia. While official history has considered the barrios of Comuna 13 “illegal occupations,” the inhabitants regard themselves not as invaders, but rather as the founders of new com­ munities. They built and defended their neighborhoods through resistance processes and alternative initiatives. They manifested collectively in the ter­ ritorial and cultural appropriation of certain sectors. They organized and managed to provide themselves with services to make their neighborhoods habitable. The murals demonstrate pride in these achievements and the strong culture and identity forged in the barrios, despite the absence of the state. The stories displayed on the walls are essential for the process of recognition of the inhabitants of Comuna 13 as citizens and their inclusion in the city project (Grupo de Trabajo).

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Figure 2.5 A mural in Cementerio Parroquial La América representing the connec­ tion between women and nature. Photograph taken by the author on April 9, 2023.

Since long before the reappropriation of its space by the community, Cementerio La América has been a key site of memory in the community. On the one hand, it is the place where many victims of violence in the neighbor­ hood have ended up, and, in fact, its current configuration has been shaped by the need for burial space created by the violence, since Colombian law does not allow the cremation of victims of violent death. On the other, as the dynamics of the Comuna changed—due to invisible borders and clashes between groups that sometimes suspend peace agreements—it had to be expanded to house more and more young people. These transformations constitute an archi­ tectural trace of the history of the urban conflict (Grupo de Trabajo). Cementerio de la América is also a key place of memory because many deaths took place in its immediate vicinity. This is largely due to its location in an area that has been the frontier between zones controlled by different armed groups. One victim of this situation was the son of Don Óscar Bedoya, who lives in the Antonio Nariño neighborhood, located a few blocks from the cemetery. His house is located at the bottom of two hills, upon each of which a different armed group operated. One day in 2013, the two groups met there and began to shoot at each other. Don Óscar’s son Jhon, who had recently achieved his childhood dream of joining the police force, was crossing the street in front of his house when the firing began. Attempting to save a woman who was nearby, Jhon was killed by a bullet that went through his eye. Jhon Bedoya was buried at Cementerio La América, and Don Óscar himself painted a mural with his son’s image. The portrait is a physical

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extension of the public mourning that Don Óscar carries out on social media, where he addresses messages of love to his son and posts photos of Jhon at various stages of his life: when he was a baby, when he graduated, with his friends, and looking proud in his police uniform. For Don Óscar, therefore, Cementerio la América is a place of life and healing: The cemetery for us is a symbol, it is an incentive for the people. I pass by and I see culture, I see that there are young people drawing and mothers who want to find peace. They come there and say: “I want you to draw my son because he is not dead to me.” They feel that their bodies have died, but their souls continue to accompany them. I wrote a phrase next to the image of my son when I drew him because I did the drawing myself, it says: “The one who leaves does not die, but the one who is forgotten does.” And it is a phrase that has a lot of power. We make a prayer circle for those people who seek or try to mitigate their pain a little. (Bedoya) Don Óscar collaborates with Agroarte and also works with some of his neighbors on his own project, the construction of the Sanctuary of the Divine Child. The shrine is dedicated to the memory of his son and other victims who died with him, and it was built on the place where they were shot. Another young victim represented in those walls is Weimar, a 21-year-old who was murdered in 2017 for crossing an invisible border. I interviewed his mother, Doña Rosaadela Tejada, on August 30, 2021. Like many of the victims of Comuna 13, for Doña Rosa this was not her first loss. In 2002, her first son, Andrés Felipe, who was also 21, and who had recently become a father, was assassinated for refusing to join an armed group whose motto was: “Ponte el camuflado o muere de civil” (“Put on your camouflage or die in civilian clothes”). Since then, Doña Rosa and her family have had to leave Comuna 13 fearing for her other children. When I asked her how she felt about seeing her son painted in a mural, she explained: When they did the first mural—they have done two murals for him—I thought it was very beautiful and it seemed like a way of letting go, but I didn’t get to experience it, I saw the mural when it was already fin­ ished. The first mural didn’t look that much like him. But the second time, the drawing looked exactly like Weimar, and I got to participate in it because they invited me. I even helped paint a part. So, I felt super good. I felt happy because it was a step that I was able to take, a step of letting go, a step of telling him: “Son, despite the distance, despite the fact that I see you at night in the brightest star, even though we’re not together, we can’t touch each other, I’m going to see you here, and it’s as if you were here with me.”

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These examples point to an important difference between the cemetery and other expressions of memory in the Comuna: it is a place for both the community memory and the family memory. This is particularly true in the case of assassinated rappers like Chelo and El Duke, who are honored in murals throughout the Comuna. In contrast to such public memorialization, the murals of those rappers in Cementerio La América belong not only to the community but to the families, allowing them a place to remember them not as heroes of the Comuna but rather simply as loved ones who are missed. Likewise, the decoration of the cemetery is not exclusively for social organizations, but also for the families that visit the graves of their loved ones, wash and care for them with love and decorate them with personal messages, letters, and drawings that they place in the niches. One of the most beautiful and painful works at Cementerio La América is the wall dedicated to La Escombrera by German artist Warze. The mural depicts the mountain, the excavation, and the machinery removing debris. Deeper in the mountain, there are the remains of two bodies next to a stone that says “Aquí no hay nada,” referring to the denial of the government and society in general. “There is nothing here” negates the existence of the mass grave that is the open wound of the Comuna. On the other side of the

Figure 2.6 A mural in Cementerio Parroquial La América portraying Hermey Mejia, who was disappeared and whose body is believed to be in La Escombrera. Photograph taken by the author on April 9, 2023.

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mountain, a father, with a sad face and dressed as a campesino, takes care of the flowers that have sprouted from the dead body of his daughter. She is dressed in white and looks as if she were sleeping because she is too young to be dead. From her dress, roots are growing deep into the base of the mountain, almost reaching the hidden skeletons, as if uniting the pain of a singular family with the collective pain of those who are still searching. La Escombrera is a literal scar in the territory that appears like a gray crust in the middle of the green landscape. It is a physical and metaphorical wound shared by the community. For that reason, their collective trauma is expressed in so many different artistic forms, like an imperative mandate to recreate it in order to never forget. Aka HipHop Agrario and Medina THE Barrio, for example, have together created the song titled “Poesía de Tierra” (“Poetry of the Land,” 2016), which has inspired the title of this chapter. In it, they recreate the history of violence in the Comuna and make reference to La Escombrera: Mientras manos se juntan expuestas al sol la ayuda del abono es don del corazón Aprendiendo solos no se crece en las luchas se deben juntar manos que sean muchas Encuentro mis motivos. No me quiero rendir hacer canción es la memoria del que no quiere huir La siembra de palabras, aromas de Medellín conjuramos el pasado que no queremos repetir

Figure 2.7 La Escombrera, a mural by Warze in Cementerio Parroquial La América. Photograph taken by the author on October 16, 2021.

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Angustias, tiros, gritos, llantos, tantas tragedias aquí

tantas voces no renuncian a cantar al porvenir

[As hands come together exposed to the sun the help of compost is a gift from the heart learning alone we don’t grow in the struggles Many hands must be joined, and let them be plenty I find my motives. I don’t want to give up making a song is the memory of the one who does not want to flee the sowing of words, aromas of Medellín we conjure up the past that we don’t want to repeat Anguish, shots, screams, cries, so many tragedies here so many voices do not give up singing for the future] The song recounts their history but also their present. They report on their role as community leaders, rappers, and agriculturists who bring people together with a common goal to work towards a peaceful present and future. It also expresses respect and admiration for the women, parti­ cularly Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad, who will not rest until they find the truth about their disappeared: Soy yo, somos nosotros, somos semillas de memoria de un rap que germina Soy yo, somos nosotros, raíces que cierran heridas son la luz de nuestras vidas Soy yo, somos nosotros, seguimos nuestro camino a cerrar nuestro destino Soy yo, somos nosotros, buscando en La Escombrera la verdad que se nos niega ¡Dignidad es buscar nuestros muertos, aunque no los encontremos! Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad, Unión entre Comunas, Medellín Buscando en La Escombrera, es necesario hacerlo [It’s me, it’s us, we’re seeds of memory of a rap that germinates It is me, it is us, roots that close wounds are the light of our lives It’s me, it’s us, we continue our way to close our destiny It’s me, it’s us, searching in La Escombrera for the truths that we were denied Dignity is looking for our dead, even if we do not find them! Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad, Unión entre Comunas, Medellín Searching in La Escombrera, it is necessary to do it] In addition, the artists filmed the video in situ at La Escombrera to show their connection to the land where they were born, where they continue to live, where they remember their connection to the dead who are buried there, and where they will sow the seeds that will sprout and carry their message (“Serenata a la Memoria”).

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Partnerships are key to Agroarte. They bring people together to weave the territory and find common grounds and languages. They work to recruit those who can contribute their skills to the community, whether they are psychologists to care for the victims, artists to hold workshops and paint the walls at the cemetery, lawyers, and other professionals. I first met Aka over Zoom in February 2021, and since then, have collaborated with him on a variety of projects, including the translation of song lyrics and doc­ umentaries. At the invitation of Aka and Agroarte, I have traveled to Colombia to participate in events and gatherings that commemorate the anniversary of Operación Orión (October 16) and the Día Nacional de la Memoria y la Solidaridad con las Víctimas (April 9). I have also become part of Grupo de Trabajo “Memorias del silencio” (“Memories of silence”), a working group that aims to attain for Cementerio Parroquial La América an official designation as a place of memory.21 The Colombian Peace Agreement expresses a commitment to recognize and rewrite the history of the country by including voices that have been margin­ alized. However, as of 2023, no law in the country protects places of collec­ tive memory. Assigning the status of “place of memory” to the cemetery would represent recognition that the lives of young people in the community matter, and that they deserve to be remembered and commemorated. It might also be a tool in fighting the city’s plan to build a road that would pass directly through the cemetery grounds, destroying the community’s memory. This recognition would not only be an initiative of great importance for Comuna 13 but also for Colombia, as a pioneering act in a nation that still has not made amends for the damage left by the war. In hopes that a path towards formal protection as a place of memory may be possible in the future, the group has prepared an extensive report about the history of the cemetery and the role of the community in shaping and inhabiting that space. Such an act would be a small step toward repaying the enormous debt that Colombia owes to the communities that have been left alone to deal with the armed groups that operate in the country. In spite of abandonment, deep wounds, broken promises, and daily challenges, those communities have survived, partly due to the efforts of grassroots organizations like Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad and Agroarte Colombia. These organi­ zations have helped the inhabitants of Comuna 13 reclaim their place in the city and realize the role they play in Colombian history. In a country that has so many challenges and where the peace process is so entangled, these collectives stand out for their commitment to transforming their territory and fighting for justice.

Notes 1 Social participation in the Latin American context refers to organized community efforts to demand the betterment of their livelihood: “Participation is understood today as a possibility of configuring new social spaces or as the inclusion of social

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actors in social movements, in governmental and non-governmental organizations, or as a presence in the public sphere to claim situations or demand changes” (“Par­ ticipación social”). In Colombia, there is a tradition of participatory democracy since at least 1958, when the Juntas de Acción Comunal were formed. Those groups involved the people in making decisions and managing resources that benefited the community. Since 1991 social participation is a constitutional right, which allows citizens to demand changes in public policy (Restrepo). Furthermore, social partici­ pation is key to demand justice for human rights violations. For example, according to a 2018 bulletin produced by Medellín’s municipal government, there were over fifty-five youth organizations operating in Comuna 13, including artistic groups, sports clubs, and others (Alcaldía de Medellín). In a 2015 episode (“Medellín’s Missing Bodies”) of the podcast Radio Dispatch by Latin American News Dispatch, Jessica Diaz Hurtado interviewed Luz Elena Galeano, the leader of Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad, and reported on the situation of the forcibly disappeared of Comuna 13. In his famous essay “The Right to the City” (2008), David Harvey explains that this right “[i]s far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the process of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is… one of the most pre­ cious yet most neglected of our human rights.” One of these leaders is Doña Socorro Mosquera, founder of the Asociación de Mujeres de Las Independencias (Las Independencias Women’s Association, AMI). Independencias refers to three adjacent neighborhoods named Inde­ pendencia I, II and III. Doña Socorro has been helping women victims of violence in the neighborhoods for over two decades. She is known for coming out during the military operations, waving white flags as a symbol of peace. She defended the barrio, and for that reason, she was displaced after Operación Orión. Today she has returned to Comuna 13 and manages AMI, an organization that operates on three fronts. The first, Alegría, gathers their efforts in teaching different skills to children, including English classes. They ensure that children are fed and ready to learn. The second, Orientadoras, consists of women listening to other women who act as their advisors. The third, Emprendedoras, offers training to women on different skills, including food preparation. The Red Nacional de Iniciativas Ciudadanas por la Paz y Contra la Guerra (National Network of Citizen Initiatives for Peace and Against War), also known as Redepaz, is a national coalition that works towards a peaceful Colombia where diversity and human rights are respected (“Cónocenos”). Mother Laura Montoya is the first Colombian saint, canonized by Pope Francis in 2013 (“Santa Laura Montoya”). The convent is located in Belencito Corazón, a barrio of Comuna 13, and forms part of a complex of buildings that also includes a church, a sanctuary and an ethnographical museum (Osorio et al.). Sometimes, they display those pictures hanging from a clothesline, as I saw at Medellín’s Museo Casa de la Memoria on October 16, 2022, the twentieth anni­ versary of Operación Orión. The placement of the pictures in public spaces is another Latin American tradition that aims to bring humanity to the immense lists of victims. Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (MOVICE), founded in 2005, is a human rights organization that works with over two hundred organiza­ tions comprised of victims of state crimes, including forced disappearance and displacement, selective assassinations and extrajudicial killings (“History”). In The Implicated Subject, Michel Rothberg explains that being implicated is not the same as being a victim or a perpetrator, but rather means having contributed

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Poetry of the Land with our actions or inactions to produce these forms of victimization: “Impli­ cated subjects occupied positions aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm; they contribute to, inhabit, inherit, or benefit from regimes of domination but do not originate or control such regimes” (1). Jardín Cementerio Universal is located in Comuna 5. It was designed by Pedro Nel Gómez (1899–1984), one of the most important artists, sculptor, and muralists of Colombia. He founded the cemetery to serve a population of low income who could not afford a private burial or people who for reasons of sexual orientation or religious beliefs could not be buried in a Catholic cemetery. Many victims of the armed conflict and disappeared people have been found there (“El Jardín Cementerio Universal”). The trailer is available on YouTube (Calvo de Castro and Alzate Giraldo “Palabras de Luz”). Jomag (Joan Mateo Ariza) is one of the most representative artists of Comuna 13. He has worked on a variety of murals at Cementerio La América and has intervened on the façade three times since 2014. For him, painting the women of the territory is compiling a collective memory. As he explained in my interview with him on August 27, 2021: “We all have our own stories, but in the end, collecting all of them will bring us a little closer to what we call the truth. Col­ lecting all these truths and putting them into conversation is what will lead us to discover our historical memory. The cemetery can portray and describe every­ thing that happens in the territory. In addition, many voices in the community say that the cemetery is not a scary place, they tell us that with the murals, with the color, with everything that happens there, it is a much more pleasant place for the community, a place that people can visit and spend time with their deceased relatives or just gather with others, which is also important.” “Poetry of the Land: Bringing Hip Hop and Agriculture Together” was part of The Justice Sessions series hosted by the University of North Florida on October 28, 2021 (“Fall 2021 Schedule”). At that event I spoke to Aka about the history of Comuna 13 and his experiences growing up in a place devastated by armed con­ flict, his fight to obtain a voice through art and hip hop, the link between hip hop and agriculture, and his vision of community and governance. In Spanish we use don as a word for sir. The Doñas decided to change don to doño because they felt that it is a more equal term to doña. They reasoned that even if they accept men in their group, its leadership by women remains funda­ mental, as reflected by the name “Partido de las Doñas.” In the 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of thousands of rural peoples abandoned their lands and arrived in the cities fleeing partisan violence. In Medellín, the north­ eastern zone was perhaps the one that received the most displaced population, but not the only one. Several areas on the slopes of San Javier that were outside the urban perimeter, such as Belencito, El Salado, Veinte de Julio, Santa Rosa de Lima, Alcázares, La Pradera and Juan XXIII began to be subdivided informally and occupied by displaced persons from the West and the East of Antioquia (Álvarez Ramírez and Londoño Uribe 58). This verse is a commentary on how President Uribe, his political party (el Centro Democrático), and the Colombian media have mobilized public opinion, divert­ ing attention from the damage caused in the most vulnerable areas of Colombia, such as La Guajira, and scaring the people into thinking that any change pro­ posed by the left could turn Colombia into Venezuela. EPM are the initials of Empresas Públicas de Medellín, a public utilities company and owner of the dam project Hidroituango. The costly hydroelectric plant has been mismanaged to the point that the area has flooded, causing environmental damages and the displacement and death of people who lived in the area. For more information, see “Lo que debes saber sobre Hidroituango” on the website of Movimiento Ríos Vivos, a collective that defends the territory surrounding the

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megaproject; and Oswaldo Ordóñez Carmona’s article “Hidroituango, failed engineering, wrong decision-making, or simple ambition?” 19 Scholarship on Cementerio La América is scarce, perhaps because it is a cemetery for people who have been marginalized or because its history of violence has been erased. Among the existing studies, one can find Ricardo Aricapa’s research on El Salado neighborhood, Albeiro Ospina Zapata’s thesis, and the research done by Agroarte Colombia and the Working Group “Memorias del Silencio.” 20 On April 9, 2023, for example, Agroarte commemorated the National Day of Victims by inaugurating a new exhibit consisting of new murals and photo­ graphic installations that pay tribute to the people who, with their daily struggle, have managed to change their communities. Agroarte invited the community, academics, poets, artists, and representatives from Museo Casa de la Memoria, Centro de Memoria Histórica, administrators of the cemetery, and the office of the attorney general in Medellín. They presented a motion to make Comuna 13 a subject of collective reparation. This special event involved a mass for the vic­ tims, a tour of the cemetery, musical performances, rap and poetry readings. Those who attended got to share a vegetarian sancocho made by the Doñas. 21 In “Between Memory and History,” Pierre Nora argues that “Memory attaches itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events” (22). The memories of the recent past and of historical trauma have attached themselves to Cementerio La América, a place that contains the pain, the mourning, but also the pride and joy of a whole community.

Works Cited “Acciones simbólicas: Cuerpos gramaticales.” Agroarte Colombia, www.agroarteco lombia.co/acciones-simbolicas. Accessed 18 July 2023. Aka (Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez). “Poetry of the Land: Bringing Hip Hop and Agri­ culture Together.” YouTube, uploaded by University of North Florida Department of English, 1 November 2021, www.youtu.be/yzsGrZstv0g. Accessed 18 July 2023. Aka (Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez). Personal interview, 13 February 2021. Aka (Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez). Personal interview, 18 March 2021. Aka (Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez). Personal interview, 17 April 2021. Aka HipHop Agrario. “Olor a Tiempo.” 2021. YouTube, uploaded by HipHop Agrario, 19 September 2021, www.youtu.be/feuO5ertZ_0. Accessed 18 July 2023. Aka HipHop Agrario, Medina THE Barrio, and INSURgentes. “Poesía de tierra.” YouTube, uploaded by HipHop Agrario, 1 December 2016, www.youtu.be/ JbCxg173n7Q. Accessed 18 July 2023. Alcaldía de Medellín. Clubes Juveniles 2018. Medellín: Alcaldía de Medellín, Secre­ taría de la Juventud, 2018, www.issuu.com/medellinjoven/docs/anexo___40_ca rtilla_del_programa. Accessed 18 July 2023. Álvarez Ramírez, Luis Fernando (Aka) and Santiago Londoño Uribe. Tejer el territorio: procesos de gobernanza urbana comparados en la producción de bienes comunes en la Comuna 13 de Medellín. Master’s thesis. Medellín, Universidad Eafit, 2021. Bedoya, Óscar. Personal interview, 27 August 2021. Calvo de Castro, Pablo, and Alejandro Alzate Giraldo, directors. Palabras de Luz. LCB Producciones. 2020. Calvo de Castro, Pablo, and Alejandro Alzate Giraldo, directors. “Palabras de Luz ­ Documental. Tráiler Oficial (II).” YouTube, uploaded by LCB Producciones, 15 February 2021, www.youtu.be/gLjSJCZLBlw. Accessed 18 July 2023.

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Comisión de la Verdad. “Aka y Agroarte.” YouTube, uploaded by Comisión de la Verdad, 21 November 2019, www.youtu.be/4HgiL30rNrk. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Cónocenos.” Redepaz (Red Nacional de Iniciativas Ciudadanas por la Paz y contra la Guerra), www.redepaz.org.co/conocenos. Accessed 18 July 2023. Davis, Natalie Zemon, and Randolph Starn. “Introduction.” Memory and CounterMemory, special issue of Representations, 26, 1989, pp. 1–6. https://doi.org/10. 2307/2928519. Accessed 18 May 2023. Diaz Hurtado, Jessica. “Medellín’s Missing Bodies.” Latin American News Dispatch, 28 October 2015, www.latindispatch.com/2015/10/28/podcast-medellins-missing­ bodies. Accessed 18 July 2023. “El Jardín Cementerio Universal dignifica a las víctimas del conflicto armado con estrategias de acompañamiento y memoria.” Alcaldía de Medellín, 26 May 2022, www.medellin.gov.co/es/sala-de-prensa/noticias/el-jardin-cementerio-universal-dig nifica-a-las-victimas-del-conflicto-armado-con-estrategias-de-acompanamiento-y-m emoria. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Fall 2021 Schedule.” The Justice Sessions, www.english.domains.unf.edu/justiceses sions/fall-2021-schedule. Accessed 18 July 2023. FL Colombia, Aka HipHop Agrario, Metan-o LM, and Ghido Alma. “Más Amor.” YouTube, uploaded by HipHop Agrario, 4 March 2020, www.youtu.be/x6Eby toIYoQ. Accessed 18 July 2023. Fuentes, Carlos. El Espejo Enterrado. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992. Grupo de Memoria Histórica. La huella invisible de la guerra. Desplazamiento for­ zado en la Comuna 13. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2011, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/la-huella-invisible-de-la-guerra-desplazam iento-forzado-en-la-comuna-13. Accessed 18 July 2023. Grupo de Trabajo. Memorias del Silencio. Contexto histórico: Cementerio Parro­ quial La América. Unpublished report. Harvey, David. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review, 53, 2008, pp. 23–40, www.newleftreview.org/issues/ii53/articles/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city. Accessed 18 July 2023. “History.” Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (MOVICE), 28 June 2015, https://movimientodevictimas.org/en/historia. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Investigación: Galería Viva.” Agroarte Colombia, www.agroartecolombia.co/inves tigacion. Accessed 18 July 2023. Jomag (Joan Mateo Ariza). Personal interview, 27 August 2021. Juárez Rodríguez, Javier, Néstor Julián Restrepo Echavarría, and Nora Elena Botero Escobar. “Los movimientos sociales de mujeres y su consolidación como interlocutor y actor político en la construcción de la paz en Medellín, Colombia.” Izquierdas, 34, 2017, pp. 1–24, doi:10.4067/S0718–50492017000300001. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Lo que debes saber sobre Hidroituango.” Movimiento Ríos Vivos, www.riosvi voscolombia.org/no-a-hidroituango/lo-que-debes-saber-sobre-hidroituango. Acces­ sed 18 July 2023. Lucena, Daniela. “Estéticas y políticas festivas en Argentina durante la última dictadura militar y los años 80.” Estudios Avanzados, 18, 2012, pp. 35–46. Universidad de Santiago de Chile. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representa­ tions, 26, 1989, pp. 7–24. doi:10.2307/2928520. Accessed 18 July 2023. Ordóñez Carmona, Oswaldo. “Hidroituango, Failed Engineering, Wrong DecisionMaking, or Simple Ambition?” Periódico UNAL, Universidad Nacional de Colombia,

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4 September 2020, www.periodico.unal.edu.co/articulos/hidroituango-failed-engineer ing-wrong-decision-making-or-simple-ambition. Accessed 18 July 2023. Osorio, María Eugenia, Carmen Sofía Camacho and Luis Carlos Toro Tamayo. “Las joyas del archivo Santa Laura Montoya Upegui (Jericó 1874–Medellín 1949): his­ toria de la recuperación de su acervo documental.” Revista Interamericana de Bibliotecología, 43(1), doi:10.17533/udea.rib.v43n1erf1. Accessed 19 July 2023. Ospina Zapata, Albeiro Alonso. Crónicas en el barrio El Salado Comuna 13, centro occidental de la ciudad de Medellín. Undergraduate thesis. Medellín: Departa­ mento de Antropología Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas, Universidad de Antioquia, 2011, www.iep.udea.edu.co:8180/ADcomuna13/bitstream/123456789/ 48/1/Ospina_2011.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Participación Social.” Freie Universität Berlin, www.lai.fu-berlin.de/es/e-learning/p rojekte/frauen_konzepte/projektseiten/konzeptebereich/rot_partizipacion/contexto/ index.html. Accessed 18 July 2023. Restrepo, Darío I. “La participación social como construcción del interés público entre el Estado y la sociedad.” Nómadas, 3, 1995. www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/ la-participación-social-como-construcción-del/docview/2046766060/se-2. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Rituales Vivos.” Agroarte Colombia, www.agroartecolombia.co/investigacion. Accessed 18 July 2023. Rothberg, Michael. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019. Salas, Luz Elena. Palabras de Luz. Medellín, 2020. Salas, Luz Elena. Personal interview. 25 August 2021. Sánchez, José Antonio. “Presencia y desaparición 1.” 18 September 2015. Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, www.hdl.handle.net/20.500.12010/8125. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Santa Laura Montoya.” Misioneras de María Inmaculada y Santa Catalina de Sena, www.madrelaura.org/santa-laura-montoya-/127/cod21. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Serenata a la Memoria.” Facebook Live, recorded by Niquitown Banda, 16 October 2020, www.facebook.com/niquitown/videos/699343697350169. Accessed 18 July 2023. Tejada, Rosaadela. Personal interview, 30 August 2021. Warze. La Escombrera. 2017. Medellín: Cementerio Parroquial La América.

3

City, Give Me Your Song! Women Against Violence and Feminicide

Defining Gender-Based Violence and Feminicide There is no matter more pressing to address critically than gender-based violence and feminicide. It is not only a human rights violation that concerns half of the world’s population, but the current and future well-being of humanity depends on women’s freedom and safety. In fact, the United Nations has included gender equality as one of its 17 sustainability goals and, in 2000, the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 declared that women needed to be taken into account in peace and security processes in order to achieve stability. Yet, the structural frameworks that permit feminicidal violence continue to promote an epidemic affecting not only women and female bodies but societies in general. Numerous works addressing this issue have been produced in Latin America and in the United States, particularly by U.S.-Mexico border scho­ lars. Feminicidal violence, however, is not a “Mexican” or “Latino” pro­ blem, but rather is a system that prevents women and female bodies around the world from enjoying their right of freedom of movement. As a Latin American scholar, I have chosen to analyze this phenomenon with the aid of recent scholarship from the South, and therefore some terminology must be explained. In 1976, feminist activist Diana E.H. Russell (1938–2020) coined the word “femicide” to refer to the killing of a woman for the sake of her gender. The term has been translated into Spanish as “femicidio” or “feminicidio” but the latter conveys additional meaning in a Latin American context. In the 1990s, Mexican feminist anthropologist Marcela Lagarde (1948–) further defined “feminicidio” not only as the systematic murder of women but also as state crime, revealing the social construct and impunity that surrounds it. She asserts, “[f]eminicide is able to occur because the authorities who are omissive, negligent, or acting in collusion with the assailants perpetrate institutional violence against women by blocking their access to justice and thereby contributing to impunity” (Lagarde xxiii). Feminicidal violence is a scheme that comprehends gender-based violence and feminicide. As Mercedes Olivera has argued, “Although gender-based DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267-4

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violence does not always result in murder, it does increase the possibility of it” (50). Feminicidal violence includes intimate and public, structural and institutional subordination of women. Lagarde insists that it thrives in gender oppression and inequality, and explains that “it flourishes under the hegemony of patriarchal culture that legitimates despotism, authoritarian­ ism, and the cruel sexist–macho, misogynist, homophobic, and lesbophobic treatment reinforced by classism, racism, xenophobia, and other forms of discrimination” (xxi). In recent years, feminist anthropologist Rita Segato has become one of the most influential Latin American theorists. For her, there is a difference between feminicide and a term she has coined, “femigenocide.” The first, according to the author, refers to the murder of women or female bodies by the men with whom they are acquainted, while the second, describes the murder of those female bodies who represent something to the community. Their death is an attack on society, which aims to destroy the moral and the social fabric. Segato explains that the term “femigenocide” has implications that ought to be considered by international law since the genocide of women has been increasing all over the world (“Femigenocidio”). These considerations are particularly important in Colombia where this pattern of violations has been witnessed since the peace accord, a period in which the murder of women in general, and women who are community leaders in particular, has dramatically escalated. Feminicidal violence pro­ liferates in war and its aftermath, as Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano have argued: “Large-scale violence against women often continues in ‘post-conflict’ situations.… Large-scale violence may involve a combina­ tion of every day, arbitrary interpersonal (private) and widespread and sys­ tematic (public) gender-based atrocities” (2–3, emphasis in original). This predicament highlights one of the problems of women’s human rights. Since violence is more visible in times of war, keeping count is more urgent in “peacetime” because, as Catharine MacKinnon has stated, the more violence stays in the private domain “the less human rights are recognized as being violated.” Furthermore, she argues that “the closer a fight comes to home, the more ‘feminized’ the victims become, regardless of their gender, and it is less likely that international human rights will be found to be violated, no matter what was done” (71).

Artistic Representations Against Gender-Based Violence and Feminicide In Colombian patriarchal society, women have been mostly appreciated for their beauty rather than their knowledge. Women have been idealized and at the same time, their voices have been stolen. It is not surprising that the representation of the feminine in high and popular culture has traditionally been a struggle between the symbolic and the desire for possession. Women are pressured by society to maintain an image of youth and beauty; coerced

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and stifled by machismo, and excluded by a racist and class-based social system. The place of women is where the Colombian conservative elites want them to be, and those who dare to challenge the status quo end up dead, imprisoned, exiled, or alone. Melba Escobar’s novel, La casa de la belleza (The House of Beauty, 2015), illustrates the situation of Colombian women well. The novel portrays the life of Karen, a mulata from Cartagena who migrates to Bogotá searching for a better life. Karen finds work at a beauty spa serving women from the highest strata. One of these clients is Claire, the narrator, a woman who has lived most of her life abroad and who becomes Karen’s confidant. The turning point of the story is when Sabrina Guzmán, one of Karen’s clients, is assassinated by her boyfriend, the son of a politician. As a witness, Karen is now a target. The protagonist, alone, has to face powerful enemies, as if her situation was not dire enough, her landlord rapes her. Feeling worthless, Karen finds work as an escort and gets too close to the powerful people that want her silenced. Escobar’s novel depicts a frightful world for women, especially women of color who dare to succeed. The place where this oppression is challenged, however, is through the act of writing. As Luz Bibiana Fuentes has stated: La casa de la belleza is offered as a micro-political exercise whose ethics consists of challenging Colombian society to reconfigure its daily rela­ tionships and its response to gender violence.… The micro-political objective of this story is not to identify the executioner of an isolated crime but to draw attention to our response to gender violence. (223, my translation) There has been a tradition of Colombian women writers who challenge vio­ lence and oppression against their sex. From the seminal work of Albalucía Ángel’s Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón (1975), a historical novel that encompasses the times of La Violencia, starting with the dramatic Bogotazo in 1948 following the assassination of the political leader, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán (discussed in detail in Chapter 4), Gustavo Rojas Pinilla’s dic­ tatorship (1953–1960), and the Frente Nacional (1958–1974), a pacification agreement between the two rival political parties of the time to take turns in the government of the country. Although La Violencia has been the most con­ troversial, manipulated, and fictionalized period in Colombian history, Ángel’s novel is narrated from a different perspective, that of a woman who has wit­ nessed and experienced public and private violence. Along the same line, Laura Restrepo’s novels have examined and ques­ tioned the absurdity of violence in general, but in particular, the place that those who have been marginalized occupy within Colombia. From the groups of people condemned to roam around the national territory in search of their disappeared loved ones, as seen in La multitud errante (A Tale of the Dispossessed, 2001), to her more recent works that depict the indolence

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of Colombian elites, such as her award-winning book Delirio (Delirium, 2004) and Los Divinos (The Divine Boys, 2018), Restrepo has become one of the most provocative voices in Colombian literature today.1 As Carmiña Navia has stated, Restrepo’s investigative and journalistic literary work has become a benchmark for female letters in the country and in the world (19). Her novels are complex explorations of the recent history of violence and include narrative voices that give the impression of a collective body that demands justice. In addition to engaged literature, public art in Colombia has also been a place of resistance and visibilization of gender-based violence, mainly because the streets are a place of rewriting, rereading, and recreating the world. Public space functions as a forum for denunciation and summoning, where change is sought with urgency. It provides a unique political opportunity to debate our history and past injustices and to create new and alternative presents and futures. When transformed into artistic spaces, streets become sites of nego­ tiation where possibilities are multiplied, where situated knowledge allows for the confrontation of ideas. When life is at stake and the future hangs in the balance, public space is where the action takes place, where democracy hap­ pens, and where consequences are explored. One of the most emblematic female figures in the city of Medellín is undoubtedly Torso de mujer, better known as “La Gorda de Botero.” This sculpture, donated to the city by Fernando Botero in 1987, is a landmark, a meeting point, and a source of pride. Despite being an internationally celebrated icon of twentieth-century art, however, the image is subjected to the daily humiliations of a public woman. Naked and defenseless, she is teased by both tourists and locals who touch her intimate parts while posing for photographs. Mauricio Ospina’s artistic intervention “Lipoescultura” (June 7, 2014)2 builds on this tension between Torso de mujer as an exalted work of art and an object of profane mockery. By marking “La Gorda” as one would do to a woman before entering the operating room, Ospina highlights the potential of Botero’s sculpture as a site for reflection and denunciation. “Lipoescul­ tura 2014” shows not only the obsession of our culture to obtain an ideal of feminine beauty that conforms to the canons of contemporary aesthetics but also the consequences of this excessive desire in the country. As Ospina explains, “When carried out on a representative icon of the city, the action seeks to demonstrate that when we try to fit into the molds of cultural homogenization, our identity is at stake, not only in a superficial way.” By framing his criticism through what has become essentially a symbol of Medellín, Ospina furthermore extends it to the city itself. As he explains on his blog, the commodification and mutilation of the female body are carried out as well at the municipal level: One could look beyond the territory of the body’s own individuality to criticize the entire city, as a collective subject that frantically retouches

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City, Give Me Your Song! itself to attract national and foreign visitors. The city’s own official voice expresses concern about the growing trend of so-called sex tour­ ism but takes the lead in offering Medellín as larger-than-life pimps. Administration after administration “performs a surgery” on the city, removing from one place and putting it in the other, to showcase an attractive city to foreign capital, a city made at the request of interna­ tional demands. (my translation)3

Ospina’s intervention and reflection glimpse the metonymy city-woman or nation-woman, both are a source of pride, and both are equally sold and undermined.4 The bodies of women fall within the geography of the country because they have been a space of violence. Feminicidal violence has been rampant during the armed conflict and has been normalized in such a way that even in the post-accord, it continues to affect women and girls all over the country. While the bodies of women were spoils of war during the conflict, they have become a site of discipline and punishment. In recent years, community leaders and Indigenous and Afro-Colombian women have become targets of the Colom­ bian army and illegal armed groups. In the Comunas of Medellín, the combos recruit young females to sell their virginity to tourists. However, crimes against women have often been silenced. Few people in Colombia are aware that the country occupies the top of the list of countries with the highest levels of feminicide in the world, and denouncing domestic violence remains taboo. The Colombian government has enacted important laws against feminicide and rape, but bringing criminals to justice continues to be a challenge.5 While these laws recognize that systematic violence against women is a real problem in the country, the system that has been in place prevents people from denouncing, presents inaccurate counts, and overall, obstructs justice.6 However, Colombian women have actively fought back. They make use of their voices, their bodies, and their creativity to denounce feminicidal violence. Through marches, stitching, sculpture, documentary, film, litera­ ture, and other forms of expression, women claim and demand their rights. The rest of this chapter will focus on two examples of such creative resistance, the poetry of Marta Lucía Quiñónez (1970–) and the occupation of spaces by La Red Feminista Antimilitarista. Quiñónez is an Afro-Colombian writer from the region of Apartadó in the Gulf of Urabá, the banana capital of Antioquia’s Caribbean,7 whose works depict the violence that forced her to leave her land and took her to Medellín to become one of its most incisive testimonial voices. La Red Feminista Antimilitarista is an intersectional feminist organization in Medellín led by women who document feminicides in the city and in the country, mourning these violent deaths as public deaths through marches, batucadas, graffiti actions, and education campaigns. These two case studies demonstrate ways that women are denouncing how Medellín marginalizes those who are different and fighting against the structures that oppress female bodies in the city.

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Trauma, Corporeality, and Transformation in the Poetry of Marta Quiñónez Marta Lucía Quiñónez has published more than 20 books of poetry, short stories, and testimonio. She has won prizes and scholarships including the Beca de Creación en Poesía (Poetry Creation Scholarship, 2011), the Gran Premio Ediciones Embalaje (Grand Prize Ediciones Embalaje, 2012), and the Premio al Arte y la Cultura de la Alcaldía de Medellín (Art and Culture Award of the Medellín Mayor’s Office, 2019). In addition, she has partici­ pated in important poetry festivals and events including the Third Festival of Poetry of the Comoros Islands, Africa, in 2000, and the XII Meeting of Poets of the World, in Havana, Cuba, in 2003, and has been invited to poetry readings in Brazil, México, the United States, and other countries. She is a social psychologist and a philologist, and has a master’s degree in communication from the University of Huelva in Spain. The writings of Quiñónez invite us to consider the relevance of the testi­ monial discourse in the reconstruction of memory and the role of poetry as a place of transformation. In particular, I propose a reading of her work from a decolonial feminist perspective, utilizing theories in which the body is the center and represents the territory that has been violated and usurped, but at the same time, resists, empowers, and confronts the other. Quiñónez’s poetry is expressed from both the personal and the collective, from the experience of an Afro-descendant, and from the body of a woman. Her poetic voice is a witness that tells us not only about the excessive cruelty that has been unleashed in the country but also about its normalization. It is enunciated from bodies that are transformed to reveal the effects of aban­ donment, hunger, feminicide, and other weapons of domination. Quiñónez migrated to Medellín in 1991 after witnessing some of the dead­ liest years in her native Apartadó, a municipality in the Antioquian subregion of Urabá, located near the Caribbean coast. Urabá has seen some of the most ruthless violence of the armed conflict, due in part to its role in managing the most important banana industry in the country. To speak about bananas in Colombia is to speak about the long and close relationship between multi­ nationals, the Colombian government, the military, and the paramilitary. It is a story that, until recently, has been hidden and erased from the official national narrative and that has a precedent in the 1928 banana plantation strike, a massacre perpetrated by military and paramilitary forces, the traces of which were quickly erased, imposing silence. García Marquez portrays the event in Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), evoking the official silencing of it through the insistence that, “En Macondo no ha pasado nada, ni está pasando ni pasará nunca. Este es un pueblo feliz” (“Nothing has happened in Macondo, nothing has ever happened, and nothing will ever happen. This is a happy town.”). Amid such denial of the truth, the characters in García Mar­ quez’s novel face situations so unlikely and so suppressed from official history that they find themselves alone in their misery.

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The violence unleashed in Urabá has been recently documented in: Hay futuro si hay verdad, the final report of the Comisión de la Verdad; the report by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, Modelos para expor­ tar: paramilitarismo en el Urabá antioqueño, sur de Córdoba, bajo Atrato y Darién and Basta Ya! Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity by the Grupo de Memoria Histórica; and it also appears in testimonial narratives including the novel ¡Los muertos no se cuentan así! (That’s Not How You Count Dead People!, 1991) by Mery Daza Orozco, whose protagonist is Oceana Cayón, a teacher who has to endure a life of peril after the dis­ appearance of her husband, who was also an educator and was affiliated with the Unión Patriótica (UP) political party.8 The book portrays the extermination suffered by the militants of that party and their families, the helplessness of the relatives of the disappeared, and the torture to which the young woman is subjected when the paramilitaries kidnap her. Other important testimonies are Gloria Cuartas: Por qué no tiene miedo (Gloria Cuartas: Why Isn’t She Afraid) (1998) by Marbel Sandoval and Fusil o toga: Toga y fusil (Rifle or Robe: Robe and Rifle) (2010) by Father Javier Giraldo. The first describes the experiences of Cuartas,9 the former mayor of San José de Apartadó, who witnessed massacres, disappearances, and displacements. The second recounts the 13 years of paramilitary crimes that Giraldo witnessed. Much in the way of these writings, Marta Quiñónez also presents us with lyrical testimonies in her early poetry. In her book Noctívago (1998), the poetic voice expresses pain about her city, the place of her childhood that has been converted into the land of war. Apartadó is Troy and its inhabi­ tants remain erased in oblivion: Apartadó Río de plátano donde los colores se confunden … el púrpura y el desamparo la pasión y el odio el amor y la quietud la tierra donde Troya parece renacer después de siglos y de olvidos [Apartadó River of plantain where the colors get confused … purple and neglect

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passion and hatred love and stillness the land where Troy seems to be reborn after centuries and oblivion] (8) For Quiñónez, the memories of childhood and adolescence oscillate between happiness and loss. On the one hand, the time shared with friends is a refuge to which she returns again and again, as she told me in an interview on July 25, 2014: “I always evoke that period of my life as the happiest of my existence because we were absolutely free.” On the other hand, many of her friends were killed during the 1990s, and so the memories and places of her adolescence reveal the trauma and appear multiplied, reconstructing and resemantizing themselves through the act of writing. In these verses, the poetic voice is a witness that informs us not only of the excessive cruelty that suffocated Urabá, but also of the normalization of this violence, which is as expected as it is feared: En Urabá la sangre sale para adornar el asfalto la muerte ya no produce el sobresalto en la madrugada cada uno espera de manera inconcebible su turno hasta la palabra está poseída por esa cadenciosa danza macabra [In Urabá blood spills to decorate the asphalt Death does not produce fright in the sunrise each one awaits its turn in an inconceivable way even words

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City, Give Me Your Song! are possessed by that rhythmical danse macabre] (Noctívago 10)

In 2014, the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica published the book Cuatro aproximaciones biográficas a la realidad social del país (Narratives of life and memory: Four biographical approaches to the social reality of the country), a volume of testimonial narratives from the winners of the II Convocatoria Nacional de Propuestas Artísticas y Culturales de Memoria (The Second National Call for Artistic and Cultural Memory Proposals, 2014). One of these voices is that of Quiñónez, who participates with the four narratives titled “Nombres propios” (“Proper Nouns”), a combination of poetry and testimonial writing in which she recalls her dead young friends: Patricia, Josepo, Rafa, El secre, and Jairito. In the following poem dedicated to her friend Rafa, the poetic voice of a young woman speaks to us of personal pain in the face of death:10 A Rafa Mientras el polvo disipaba los últimos augurios de la tarde tú marchabas apocalípticamente hacia lugares desconocidos por la memoria por un maldito plomo que ni siquiera conocía tu risa [To Rafa While the dust dissipated the last omens of the evening you were marching apocalyptically to places unknown by memory because of the damn bullet that did not even know your laugh] (“Nombres propios” 36)

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Her poetry is a lament and a cry of rebellion that opposes the war that rages against youth and joy. It seeks to understand the loss and to give words to mourn where silence reigns. As a child, Quiñónez lived in a small pueblo, where everyone knew each other, and where the events of one family happened to the whole town. For that reason, she remembers accompanying the town to the daily wakes. The violent deaths that happened regularly were the occasion to do a collective mourning and also the only form of socialization in a place where nothing else happened. As a young girl, Quiñónez looked forward to the wakes, the novenas, and the funeral caravans where she was able to drink coffee and sit around other children. Death, in other words, was a sad entertainment: La cuadra entera acompañó a la familia en el sepelio de Julio y se diri­ gió en cortejo fúnebre hacia la iglesia, pasando de largo por el cemen­ terio cercano a la casa y soportando un calor que a esa hora desintegraba la carne y los huesos. Al llegar nos recibió el tradicional repique de las campanas de las tres y fuimos llenando poco a poco sus recintos, lo mismo que el olor a muerte proveniente del féretro que hacía difícil la respiración. Al estar tan joven la muerte aún no era para mí aquel espectáculo triste que asumían los adultos, incluso con mis amigos acostumbraba a jugar en el cementerio después de clase, así que ir a un entierro era como un brusco baño de realidad al que asistí sin ser muy consciente de que despedía a alguien que no volvería a ver. [The entire block accompanied Julio’s family to his burial and went in funeral procession to the church, passing by the cemetery near the house and enduring a heat that at that time disintegrated the flesh and bones. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the traditional ringing of the bells at three o’clock and we gradually filled the spaces, just as the smell of death coming from the coffin that made breathing difficult. Being so young, death was not yet for me that sad spectacle that adults assume. I even played with my friends in the cemetery after class, so going to a funeral was like a wave of reality that hit me, without me being very aware that I had said goodbye to someone I would never see again.] (“Nombres propios” 35) As a young woman, she mourned the death of some of her closest friends. They were young, poor, and black, and had to join the war or perish. Many filled the ranks of armed groups on both sides and died in that conflict. Undoubtedly, the death of her friend Josepo marked her as a person and as a poet. The trauma of losing him reveals itself through her poetry and nar­ rative repeatedly, as in her account of learning of his death after returning to Apartadó:

88 City, Give Me Your Song! La última vez que supe de él fue una mañana de abril de 1996 en la que había llegado al pueblo invitada para un recital. Caminando por las calles que me habían visto crecer me topé con uno de mis antiguos amigos al que le pregunté por Jos; tras quedarse mirándome por largo rato, como teniendo algo para decir sin decidirse a hacerlo, finalmente repuso: — — — — —

¿Josepo? ¿No sabes lo que ha pasado? No, no sé, ¿qué ha pasado? Josepo ha muerto, lo mataron los paracos. ¡Cómo! Sí, lo mataron. Unos hombres le pidieron que les hiciera una carrera en su taxi, no le pagaron y le dispararon. — ¿Pero quién te contó eso? — pregunté incrédula. — Todo el mundo lo dice — concluyó (“Nombres propios” 31) [The last time I heard anything about him was one morning in April 1996, when I had returned to town, invited to give a recital. Walking through the streets that had seen me grow up, I bumped into one of my old friends and I asked him about Jos; After staring at me for a long time, as if he had something to say without being able to say it, he finally replied: — — — — —

Josepo? Don’t you know what happened? No, I don’t know. What happened? Josepo is dead, the paramilitaries killed him. What? Yes, they killed him. Some men asked him to give them a ride in his taxi, they didn’t pay him and they shot him. — But, who told you that? – I asked incredulously. — Everyone says so, — he concluded.] War is the lack of opportunities, it is the necropolitics that sacrifices youth and the future of entire communities for profit. Quiñónez’s narrative evidences personal pain but also the heartbreaking trauma of an entire society. For that reason, Quiñónez includes a chorus of black voices that appear lamenting their loss—the voices of the women of the town and the mothers and the aunts who mourn the massacred youths: ¿Quién lo mató, —interrogaba al silencioso cielo más allá del techo de la casa—, quién? Esa pregunta retumbaba desde el fondo de su alma y nadie era capaz de respondérsela. La policía había dicho que lo habían encontrado muerto y que desconocían los móviles del asesinato aunque en el fondo cavilábamos, — sabíamos—, que había sido la supuesta mano negra, aquellos agentes llegados al pueblo para hacer una

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limpieza general que incluía a nuestros amigos del barrio, de la escuela, del colegio, que no estaban metidos en nada ni andaban en tratos sucios con nadie. [“Who killed him,” she questioned the silent sky beyond the roof of the house, “Who?” That question resounded from the bottom of her soul, and no one was able to answer it. The police had said that they had found him dead, and that they did not know the motives for the murder, although deep down we pondered, —we knew— that it had been the alleged black hand, those agents who had come to town to do a general cleansing that included our friends from the neighborhood, our school friends, who were not involved in anything and had no dirty dealings with anyone.] (“Nombres propios” 38) The denunciation of the genocide that occurred is forceful and echoes so many other voices that come from all corners of Colombia. The words of grieving mothers that reveal their personal and national trauma: “Me lo mataron, me mataron a mi niño,” gritaba doña Hilda en el paroxismo del dolor. “Pero por qué, Dios, lo permitiste, si sólo era un niño,” lloraba dirigiéndose a un cielo incapaz de darle respuesta o con­ suelo, aunque en realidad, nadie habría sido capaz de dárselo. Así, la hora de un entierro se vuelve la hora suprema de la humanidad, el momento en que todos nos vamos al hoyo con el muerto, no al baile, como dicen por ahí, ya que una parte de nuestro cuerpo y de nuestra memoria queda sepultada con él. “They killed him, they killed my child,” doña Hilda shouted in the paroxysm of pain. “Why did you allow it, God, if he was only a child?” she cried, addressing a sky unable to give her answers or con­ solation. In reality, no one would have been able to give her any. Thus, the hour of a funeral becomes the supreme hour of humanity, the moment in which we all go to the grave with the dead, not to the dance, as they say, since a part of our body and our memory remains buried with him. (“Nombres propios” 34) Here too, the narrative voice rebels against indifference and oblivion because the violent death of young people is the disintegration of society, it is the wound that never closes, and with every death, something in us dies as well. Furthermore, in her testimony, Quiñónez explains that death is not the only consequence of excessive violence. Fear and lack of opportunities send a large part of the population on a pilgrimage looking for a place to live. The author gives her account of forced displacement caused by paramilitaries that brought so many from the Urabá region to Medellín and other major cities:

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City, Give Me Your Song! Cada vez más a menudo aparecían cadáveres esparcidos por el pueblo sin saberse quién los mataba. Esa mano negra venía ajusticiando a numerosa gente en las fincas bananeras acusándola de pertenecer a la guerrilla o de ser su auxiliadora, y muchas veces bastaba un rumor o una discordia entre vecinos para acusar a alguien y condenarlo al sepulcro. Por esta razón muchos resolvieron salvar la vida y salir del pueblo para engrosar los cordones de miseria de Medellín o de algunas ciudades de la costa donde esto era preferible a la muerte. Así pasamos de la alegría a un llanto cotidiano. [More and more often, corpses appeared scattered around the town without knowing who killed them. That Black Hand had been execut­ ing many people on the banana plantations, accusing them of belonging to the guerrillas or being their collaborators, and many times a rumor or discord between neighbors was enough to accuse someone and con­ demn him to the grave. For this reason, many decided to save their lives and leave the town to swell the rings of misery surrounding Medellín or some cities on the coast, where this was preferable to death. So, we went from joy to a daily cry of mourning.] (“Nombres propios” 34)

Through Quiñónez’s works, we witness the magnitude of a violence that destroys what binds us together as communities. The effect and degradation of society are evidenced by simple microaggressions becoming acts of revenge that lead to death. Daily quarrels become fratricidal acts, and small lies turn into death sentences. Life and Death of Women in the City When Quiñónez moved to Medellín as a young woman, she joined an artistic movement of poets and playwrights who write and suffer the city.11 Her experience as a black, queer woman who both transits the city and is wounded by it comes forth in her poetry. In fact, the title of this chapter refers to one of her most important publications, Dame tu canto ciudad (City, Give me Your Song, 2011), in which the poet expresses both loathing and love for a city of great contrasts. At the same time, through the act of writing, the poet reterri­ torializes the spaces occupied by a conservative, patriarchal, elitist, homo­ phobic, and racist society. Ana Beatriz Rodrigues Gonçalves and Marcela Batista Martinhão assert that Quiñónez appropriates the urban territory with a feminist discourse based on a gendered social and cultural experience. Her poetry challenges the patriarchal axes of domination and hierarchy of bodies and social spaces. Through the act of writing, Quiñónez inserts the female body into the literary discourse of the city and presents a corporeization of pain through the struggles of women. These themes are further explored in Quiñó­ nez’s recent poetry collection Alikanusha (2022), Casa (2019), and other poems that the author has published on social media.

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The poems that comprise Alikanusha are a testimony of life that begins in the mother’s womb, from which the poetic voice, a baby girl, feels that she has been expelled into a hostile world. In Alikanusha, a Swahili word that means “denied,” the newborn reveals the trauma of abandonment from the moment she was born: “Las compuertas del vientre de mi madre / dieron paso al torrente / a la nacida / y fui la no esperada” [“The floodgates of my mother’s womb / gave way to the torrent / to the newly born / and I was the unexpected one”] (“Año uno,” Alikanusha). Stripped of everything, but above all of her maternal love, the girl faces alone a patriarchal, racist, misogynistic, and death-strewn world. The scene makes clear the inter­ sectionality of her being: a girl who is poor and black, becomes an “other” who, without leaving her essence, becomes the narrator of her own story. Thus, to protect herself, the newly born turns into a metamorphosed being that reveals itself to the fire when it becomes a flame: “sembrada estoy a una esperanza / que nadie quiere / terca sostengo mis endebles huesos / enterra­ dos hasta el cuello / alguien desea expulsarme de la tierra hacia el fuego / en un descuido soy llama abrazando el porvenir” [“I am planted with the hope / that nobody wants / stubbornly, I hold my weak bones / buried to the neck / someone wishes to expel me from the earth towards the fire / on account of neglect, I am a flame embracing the future,”] (“Año Dos,” Alikanusha). On the other hand, the adult poetic voice, which has survived because of what the author calls “her drive,” travels through urban roads that she weaves together with other paths of memory. In the city, she finds poverty, suffering, and cruelty. In the poem “Las calles son ahora” (“The streets are now”) she reveals the dispossession of wandering people who have been condemned to destitution: “Las calles son ahora / casas de multitud de cuerpos” [“The streets are now / houses of a multitude of bodies.”] From the first stanza, we see the transformation of the streets that receive mendicant bodies. However, the focus shifts and, out of the crowd, a woman appears praying: Una mujer desarrapada mira con ojos suplicantes Ante tanta ternura pedida inclino la cabeza con vergüenza ¿De qué temo? de los ojos que suplican no de la mujer sucia no de las calles que comienzan a erguirse como rojizos impúdicos muros humanos sí No era esto lo que aspirábamos de la ciudad

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City, Give Me Your Song! [A ragged woman looks with pleading eyes Before so much tenderness requested I bow my head in shame What am I afraid of? of the eyes that beg? no of the dirty woman? no of the streets that begin to rise like reddish immodest human walls? Yes Wasn’t this what we strived for in this city?] (“Las calles son ahora,” Casa, 49)

The shame is not of the woman who asks, but of a society that allows it. The very strong image of mobile bodies, unfolded, and metamorphosed into reddish “human walls” are a scathing criticism of the uprooting of peoples. These bodies are objectified in the indolent city where the color of the reified bodies augurs death. Although Quiñónez presents us with a vision of an extractivist world that deprives human beings, in her poetry there are also moments of sublime hope. This hope, however, is always accompanied by deep pain. In the unpublished poem “Canto LI,”12 we find a poetic voice that, like Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, turns into a tree. It is not the laurel of the Greek myth, however, but a mango tree, which bears the fruit that in Quiñónez’s poetry evokes her childhood longing. In this poem, the nurturing tree-woman becomes a conduit of healing for the dead buried deep in the soil: Siembro dentro mío un árbol de mango cuyas raíces se hundan en la tierra por la que camino que sirva de asidero a los muertos de mi infancia para que puedan mirar, a través de mis ojos, el azul celeste. Para que el limo lleve hasta sus huesos la melodía de una esperanza posible, de un largo eco que llene el mundo de la alegría arrebatada a las niñas muertas en este país de infames [I plant a mango tree inside myself whose roots sink into the land that I walk on

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Let it serve as a foothold for the dead of my childhood

so they can look,

Through my eyes, the azure blue

Let the mud carry to their bones

the melody of a possible hope,

of a long echo that fills the world

of the joy snatched from the dead girls

in this country of villains]

The image of the tree-goddess has movement and power since, by drag­ ging the dead out of their confinement, it restores them the dignity that violence had stolen from them. The “dead girls” of Canto LI allude to feminicide, which is an urgent issue for Quiñónez. The author has shared several poems on social media that serve as a testimony of lives that would otherwise be forgotten or lost in the countless lists of dead women. Quiñónez works on this issue in an innovative way, combining poetic expression with the news that comes out in the press. In this sense, the poet becomes a chronicler and reporter of the reality of women in Medellín. Her poem “Conmoción en Medellín por caso de mujer asesinada y tirada al río” (“Shock in Medellín due to the case of a woman murdered and thrown into the river”), titled in the same way as a notice published in the newspaper El Tiempo, appeared on Facebook on April 15, 2020. Quiñónez quotes the news story as a preamble to the poem: El cuerpo de la víctima estaba envuelto en sábanas.… Autoridades en Medellín investigan un presunto caso de feminicidio en la ciudad ocur­ rido el pasado fin de semana en el barrio La Frontera, en la Comuna 2 al nororiente de la capital antioqueña. [The victim’s body was wrapped in sheets.… Authorities in Medellín are investigating an alleged case of feminicide in the city that occurred last weekend in the La Frontera neighborhood, in Comuna 2, in the northeast of the capital of Antioquia.] By including the journalistic discourse, Quiñónez tells us that what we are reading is not fiction. Quiñónez then borrows from another source, a post from the Twitter account of Lauradesdibujada (@lauradesdibujada), an activist from Medel­ lín. On April 13, 2020, Lauradesdibujada writes a fictional note where the victim is given a voice to describe herself in the first person and account for the cruelty that was exerted upon her own body: Me llamo Luz Dary Murillo Gómez, tengo 51 años y soy víctima de desplazamiento forzado desde 2015. A mi agresor se le ocurrió estran­ gularme y tirarme al río Medellín. La policía me encontró ayer a las 10 p.m. a la altura de Santa Cruz. Soy el noveno feminicidio del año.

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City, Give Me Your Song! [My name is Luz Dary Murillo Gómez, I am 51 years old, and I am a victim of forced displacement since 2015. My attacker decided to strangle me and throw me into the Medellín River. The police found me yesterday at 10 p.m. at the height of Santa Cruz. I am the ninth feminicide of the year.]

Here Quiñónez borrows the testimonial fiction in which, figuratively, the woman who has been massacred is empowered, and it is also evidenced that feminicide is systematic. What follows is a prayer that seeks to restore the dignity of the woman whose life has been taken from her together with the right to defend herself, to walk, and to inhabit the city. The poem recon­ structs the violence on the body of one more victim, in a militarized city where awareness, empathy, and reason are lacking, a city accustomed to death where a woman is nothing, much less when she is extremely poor. In her prayer, the poet ritualizes and memorializes Luz’s life: Te has apagado entre el espanto y odio

Los dedos que se abrazaron a tu cuello

No lo hicieron por una caricia

De seguro ya la muerte estaba dibujada

En su pupila

El río te recibió

Como lleva haciéndolo por siglos

En este criminal país

Te envolvieron en sábanas

Sin sospechar que de ellas

Te crecerían alas

El manto de la tristeza nos abruma

[You have died out in fear and hatred

The fingers that hugged your neck

didn’t intend to caress you

Surely death was already drawn

In his pupils

The river received you

As it has been doing for centuries

In this criminal country

They wrapped you up in sheets

Not suspecting that of them

You would grow wings

The cloak of sadness overwhelms us]

The poetic voice presents us with verses in constant movement that take us from the neck of the woman to the eyes of her killer, where deep hatred is reflected. On the other hand, the river is transformed into a cradle to

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receive the woman. Her cycle begins and ends there, in nature. However, that same river that receives her with so much love, is the river where the corpses of the fratricidal war that has been waged in Colombia have been laid. The tension of the verses reminds us that the country’s rivers are mass graves. The stanza ends with the metamorphosis of the sheets turned into wings and the woman turned into a goddess or a butterfly. The reference to Remedios la Bella, who ascends to heaven in One Hundred Years of Soli­ tude, is obvious. The two flying women are mirrors of each other: men kill themselves for Remedios, and a man kills Luz. The following stanza is a warning to all women since we are all Luz, any of us could be next: A las que quedamos Al otro lado de la luz Viendo cómo los asesinos Andan sueltos por la tierra En busca de su próxima víctima Porque su amor se ha perdido En el fondo del pantano Que han socavado en su alma [To us who remain Across the light Seeing how the killers Are freely roaming the earth In search of their next victim Because love has been lost At the bottom of the swamp That has undermined their souls] In the final verses the prayer is an accompaniment to Luz, who, hand in hand with the poetic voice, walks towards the “peace” that was denied to her. There is an obvious play of words in which Luz will reach “peace” in death rather than “light” because, although her own name means light in Spanish, she had neither in life. The poetic voice sings for her, who has no voice and, in the midst of that trance towards infinity, the poem shifts and returns us to the land where the woman of a barrio matters, where her absence hurts, and she is missed: Que te alumbren las parcas El camino de regreso Que tu luz almática Te lleve de regreso Hacia esos infinitos horizontes En donde quizás

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City, Give Me Your Song! Encontraste la paz

Que no te dio la vida

Va este mi doloroso canto

Por tu callada voz

Que ya no podrá llamar con gritos a la vecina

Que no podrá reír ni llorar

En estos tiempos del oprobio

[Let the fates light up for you

The way back

May your soulish light

Take you back

Towards those infinite horizons

Where maybe

You found the peace

That life did not give you

This is my painful song

For your quiet voice

That will no longer be able to call your neighbor shouting

That will not be able to laugh or cry

In these times of shame]

(“Conmoción en Medellín”)

Quiñónez’s poetry denounces subalternities such as displacement, mar­ ginalization, and feminicide, and at the same time provides catharsis. She, therefore, confronts us with the horror of our history and our present, and simultaneously, she invites us to heal. Rita Segato understands the female body as a text and territory where all violence is carried out (Las nuevas formas). In Quiñónez’s poetry the reterritorialization of both the body and the city occurs through the text, the place of the intersectional (feminine, racial, heterosexual, of class and collective) is disputed. As Rodrigues Gon­ çalves and Batista Martinhão assert: This rewriting of the city breaks with the Manichaean and binary thinking about it, because the city of Medellín to which Marta Quiñó­ nez dedicates her work does not have just two sides, a good one and a bad one. On the contrary, it is complex and paradoxical, where one has love and violence, flowers and abandonment, affection, and indifference. This poetic revelation allows us to glimpse how dense and wide the subjective experience of women in large urban centers can be. Amidst the chaos of an unequal city, like so many others in Latin America, it unveils the complex web of which the city of Medellín is made, a tangle of social and affective relationships, woven daily by those who live, suffer, and dream of the city. (79, My translation)

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Education, Political Action, and Accountability Faced with the reality that Medellín and the whole region of Antioquia have been disproportionately affected by gender-based violence and femicide, women in the city have been actively denouncing and creating ways of pro­ tecting themselves. The Red Feminista Antimilitarista of Medellín has been committed to, on the one hand, counting and reporting on feminicide cases in the country, and on the other, creating knowledge that they implement through formative processes around the city.13 The group was founded in Medellín in 1996 with the name Red Juvenil de Medellín (The Youth Network of Medellín), and was an initiative that grew out of the need to empower young people who were discriminated against and stigmatized. In an interview, Patricia Llanos, a spokeswoman for the Red, explained that during the 1990s, youth in Medellín, particularly those from impoverished neighborhoods, were perceived as sicarios due to the stigma of drug trafficking in the city.14 For that reason, they decided to organize themselves through art and cultural production to show the city the power of youth. As they did so, they reflected on how poverty and lack of education made them vulnerable and prevented them from having a future, and how this circumstance was exacerbated by the armed conflict. Therefore, they rea­ lized that their cultural production was also political. As the members of the Red came in contact with people from Bogotá and abroad, they also became aware of other groups of young people working towards similar goals. In Spain, they accessed new ideas including conscientious objection and non­ violence as praxis. They declared themselves against the legal and illegal militarized groups that ruled the city. Young men decided that they were not going to serve in any of the armies, and the women decided not to date or have any relationships with men who were part of the war. With their newly acquired knowledge and commitment, they were ready to take on the streets to demand change. Through the years, however, the women of the Red realized that even though the organization worked towards equality, the distribution of labor was not equal; not only were they in charge of the daily operations, but also, of taking care of the men within the group. In addition, they realized that the realities of the Red’s membership had changed, with the group now comprised primarily of women, and as such, had to struggle against the extreme violence that the city exerted on their bodies. They came to see that the neoliberal and militaristic practices of the city administration, combined with institutionalized machismo, and a religion that has tradi­ tionally considered the female body as their property, demanded a revision of the group’s focus, and for this reason, in 2012, the group changed its direction, becoming the Red Feminista Antimilitarista. The second focus of the group’s work is the use of creative expression to call out and resist patriarchal violence. In some ways, this work overlaps

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with their educational mission, as in the case of Crearte para la Paz, a pro­ gram for children and youth, the name of which is a play on words com­ bining crear—to create—and art for peace. More generally, they use art and performance to reterritorialize the urban spaces, through means such as graffiti, marches, batucadas, and concerts. Some of their most widely recognized work is through a campaign known as No + Feminicidios, which involves the spray-painted stenciling of walls throughout the Center of Medellín with images that reclaim the female body. These sketches testify to the “real” or “ideal” control these women have over their own bodies. Some of their pieces address slavery, and the exploitation of workers, and oppose the idea of the homogenization of female beauty. Here, too, their art and education missions overlap, as these illustrations have an essentially pedagogi­ cal function, raising consciousness about the economic and sexual violence that pervades the city. A primary objective of Red’s street action is to confront the institu­ tional narrative that women in Medellín and in Colombia are killed by intimate partners, making it seem as if they are crimes of passion. According to Llanos, through their investigations they discovered that 40% of feminicides occurred in the private sphere, but about 60% occurred as a result of the armed conflict (and in the post-accord, these structures continue to oppress women, particularly impoverished ones). Furthermore, the Comisión de la Verdad corroborates this situation in the volume published on gender violence in the context of armed conflict titled Mi cuerpo es la verdad: Experiencias de mujeres y personas

Figure 3.1 Stencil graffiti and sketches by the Red Feminista Antimilitarista on their previous headquarters in Medellín’s City Center. Photograph taken by the author on December 11, 2014.

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LGBTIQ+ en el conflicto armado (My Body is the Truth: The Experi­ ence of Women and LGBTIQ+ in the Armed Conflict, 2022). The com­ mission collected the testimonies of 10,864 women survivors, stories that document not only the atrocities of the war but also the courage of women who came together and formed organizations that protected their lives and integrity: [W]omen understood that the war was nothing more than a reinforce­ ment of the patriarchy, a contribution to the gigantic business of selling arms; And above all, they understood that, along the path of war, they would not find a way out for the recovery of dignity in Colombia. Step by step, they became political subjects and agents of transformation.…. Women are fundamental in the reconstruction of the social fabric; They have never given up and have been able to start over, to recover their social life, despite everything. Women’s organizations and women lea­ ders have broken the vicious circle of violence. Faced with so much death and destruction, they declare their forceful no to war, their peaceful resistance, and their collective defense of life and dignity (30, my translation) Finally, the Red founded the Observatorio Colombiano de Feminicidios (Colombian Observatory of Feminicide), a digital map that visualizes the geography of feminicide around the country. As they explain, the Observa­ torio is “an exercise to exalt freedom, protection, and life.” The Red asserts that this initiative “allows for a situated understanding of femicides in the

Figure 3.2 “No mas feminicidios,” an anonymous graffiti in Medellín’s city center. Photograph taken by the author on December 11, 2014.

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country, and for political and radical readings of violence, which are essential to think about overcoming them” (“Paren la Guerra” 4, my translation). The Red theorizes and practices the reterritorialization of the body and the city— and in the case of the Observatorio, the nation— because all are conquered territories that must be resemantized through collective efforts. Despite many efforts for peace and accountability, displaced, migrant, racia­ lized, and impoverished women continue to be victims of feminicidal violence, and the cruelty against them increases. It is essential to recognize the enormous efforts made by women artists and organizations, so that in times of peace we do not forget that the war continues to be waged in the bodies of women. The structures that oppress them remain in place when armed conflict ends, and continue to be sanctioned by all institutions and authorities. This phenomenon is not specific to Colombia or the developing world, as feminicidal violence affects women globally and must be addressed critically and incessantly.

Notes 1 In “Wounds and Monsters,” I discuss the relationship between feminicide and capitalist practices that allow the powerful to own not only the Colombian ter­ ritory but also those who inhabit it. 2 I analyze this performance in my article “Las galerías urbanas de memoria en Medellín.” I include it here as an example of how young people perceive their city and how they use their voices and artistic expression to confront it. Also as a tribute to the artist Mauricio Ospina (1983–2018) who was a graphic designer and activist from Medellín. He was a victim of assassination on December 27, 2018. His untimely death was reported in Colombia’s news media, including in an article by Emily Hart in Colombia Reports on January 29, 2019. 3 A description of the intervention is available on Ospina’s blog (“Lipoescultura”) and the video can be viewed on Vimeo (“Lipoescultura_intervención artística”). 4 The effects of narco aesthetics and crude neoliberalism are also a concern in Escobar’s novel, whose narrator expresses her disdain: “I hate everything [these] waxed-eyebrowed, non-biodegradable women represent. I hate their shrill, affec­ ted voices; they’re like dolls for four-year-olds, like little drug-dealer hussies bottled into plastic bodies as stiff as the muscles on a man. It’s very confusing; these macho girl-women disturb me, overwhelm me, force me to dwell on all that’s broken and ruined in a country like this, where a woman’s worth is determined by how ample her buttocks and breasts are, how slender her waist. I hate the stunted men too, reduced to primitive versions of themselves, always looking for a female to mount, to exhibit like a trophy, to trade in or show off as a status symbol among fellow Neardenthals.… I hate this Mafioso world, which for the past twenty years or so has dominated the taste and behaviour of thugs, polititians, businessmen and almost anyone who has the slightest connection to power in this country, I also hate the ladies of Bogotá.” (1–2) 5 Law 1761 of 2015 (the “Rosa Elvira Cely” Law), for example, recognizes femini­ cide as an autonomous crime and guarantees the investigation and punishment of violence against women based on gender and discrimination (“Ley 1761 de 2015”). This legislation is named for a victim of feminicide who was assassinated in 2012. 6 In 2022, the Comisión de la Verdad published the volume Mi Cuerpo es la Verdad: Experiencias de Mujeres y Personas LGBTIQ+ en el Conflicto Armado (My Body is the Truth: The Experience of Women and LGBTIQ+ in the Armed

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7

8

9 10

11

12 13 14

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Conflict) as the seventh volume of its final report (Hay futuro si hay verdad). Divided into two parts, the volume is an initial report into gender-based violence in the context of the armed conflict. The first, “Mujeres: Voces que defienden y cuidan la vida” (“Women: Voices that Defend and Care for Life”), takes into account testimonial narratives of 10,864 women who endured extreme violence. The second, “La verdad es arcoíris” (“The Truth is a Rainbow”), relates the struggles of LGBTQ+ people who have suffered extreme violence due to homo­ phobia. Most importantly, on May 24, 2023, the Colombian government announced the construction of a new Center of Historical Memory focused on gender-based violence. It will be named after Jineth Bedoya’s campaign “No es hora de callar” (“Now Is Not the Time to Be Silent”), which was founded in 2010 and visibilizes violence against women. This center will be part of the compensation that Bedoya will receive from the Colombian State after the InterAmerican court found Colombia guilty of the kidnapping, torture and rape of the journalist in 2000. This initiative will be essential to understanding the truth, since the country still does not know the dimensions of gender-based violence. As in other Latin American countries, the production of bananas in Colombia has been accompanied by violence and horror. As part of an industry character­ ized by the exploitation of workers, the bananeras are also the center of union­ ized workers struggle. Colombian conservatives have long confounded syndicalism with communism and associated any left-leaning or progressive policies with guerrilla movements. Being a syndicalist during the 1990s in Colombia meant being a target for political or criminal violence. The Unión Patriótica, UP, is a political party created in 1985 during the dialogues between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and pre­ sident Belisario Betancur. Many of its leaders and supporters were assassinated by paramilitary groups who accused them of being guerrillas. Gloria Cuartas was the mayor of Apartadó from 1995 to 1997, was a senator of Colombia starting in 2010, and in 2022 was named director of the Unit for the Implementation of the Peace Agreement by president Gustavo Petro. According to her testimonial narrative, Rafa was a young man, just few years older than the poet, but already had the responsibility of supporting a wife and child. He was an informal godfather to young Marta and accompanied her in her high school graduation ceremony (“Nombres propios” 34–36). Although an official record of contemporary poets from Medellín does not exist, the great amount of publications, recitals, poetry festivals, etc. suggest that Medellín is a city of poets. See “Los poetas de Medellín,” published by Revista Mascalunas, for a limited list and a selection of poems, including two by Qui­ ñónez. The annual Festival de Poesía de Medellín, which began in 1991, figures among the most important poetry events in the country and in the region. The city also has the Festival de Poesía Alternativo (The Alternative Poetry Festival) which takes place at the same time and aims to give a voice and highlight the works of local poets. For the organizers of the Festival de Poesía Alternativo, the Festival de Poesía de Medellín caters primarily to poets from abroad. Quiñónez presented “Canto LI” in “Escribir echando mano de los sueños” (“Write Using Dreams”), episode 9 of the podcast Canta tu cuento (“Sing Your Story”) on May 9, 2021. This historical summary of the organization is based on interviews I conducted with Sandra Grisales, the legal representative of the Red, and Patricia Llanos, a spokeswoman, on December 11, 2014. The sicarios in the Colombian context of the time were adolescents who served the Medellín Drug Cartel and were in charge of selective assassinations of those considered enemies. The figure of the adolescent on a motorcycle who killed their victims by firing a machine gun while fleeing fast has become an icon of popular

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City, Give Me Your Song! culture. The predominance of this violence in Colombian literature and cinema in the 1990s is evidence by novels such as La virgen de los sicarios (1994) by Fernando Vallejo and Rosario Tijeras (1999) by Jorge Franco, both of which were later made into internationally acclaimed films.

Works Cited @lauradesdibujada. “Me llamo Luz Dary Murillo Gómez, tengo 51 años y soy víctima de desplazamiento forzado desde 2015. A mi agresor se le ocurrió estrangularme y tirarme al río Medellín. La policía me encontró ayer a las 10 p.m. a la altura de Santa Cruz. Soy el noveno feminicidio del año.” Twitter, 13 April 2020, www.twit ter.com/laudesdibujada/status/1249806486773121029. Accessed 19 July 2023. Ángel, Albalucía. Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, 1975. Botero, Fernando. Torso de Mujer. Medellín: Parque Berrío, 1987. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Modelos para exportar: paramilitarismo en el Urabá antioqueño, sur de Córdoba, bajo Atrato y Darién (1983–2006). 2 vols. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2022. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Narrativas de vida y de memoria: Cuatro aproximaciones biográficas a la realidad social del país. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2014, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/descargas/inform es2015/narrativasDeVida/narrativas-de-vida-y-memoria.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2023. “Conmoción en Medellín por caso de mujer asesinada y tirada al río.” El Tiempo, 14 April 2020. www.eltiempo.com/colombia/medellin/investigan-presunto-feminici dio-en-medellin-484176. Accessed 19 July 2023. Daza Orozco, Mery. ¡Los muertos no se cuentan así. Bogotá: Plaza & Janés, 1991. Escobar, Melba. La casa de la belleza. Bogotá: Emecé, 2015. “Escribir echando mano de los sueños.” Canta tu cuento, episode 9, 9 May 2021, www.podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/canta-tu-cuento/episodes/Episo dio-9–Escribir-echando-mano-de-los-sueos-e10itri. Accessed 19 July 2023. Franco Ramos, Jorge. Rosario Tijeras. Bogotá: Plaza & Janés, 1999. Fregoso, Rosa-Linda and Cynthia Bejarano. “A Cartography of Feminicide in the Americas.” In Terrorizing Women, edited by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano. London: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 1–42. Fuentes, Luz Bibiana. “La agencia interpersonal frente al fracaso de la inter­ subjetividad en La casa de la belleza de Melba Escobar.” Revista iberoamericana, 87(274), pp. 207–224, www.revista-iberoamericana.pitt.edu.eu1.proxy.opena thens.net/ojs/Iberoamericana/issue/view/322. Accessed 19 July 2023. García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Perennial Classics, 1998. Giraldo, Javier. Fusil o toga: Toga y fusil. Bogotá, 2010. Grisales, Sandra. Personal interview, 11 December 2014. Grupo de Memoria Histórica. Basta Ya! Colombia: Memories of War and Dignity. Bogotá, Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2016, https://centrodememoriahis torica.gov.co/descargas/informes2016/basta-ya-ingles/BASTA-YA-ingles.pdf. Acces­ sed 19 July 2023. Hart, Emily. “‘Enough’ – Medellin Art Festival Protests Spiralling Violence.” Colom­ bia Reports, 29 January 2019, www.colombiareports.com/enough-medellin-art-fes tival-protests-spiraling-violence. Accessed 18 July 2023.

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Hay futuro si hay verdad: Informe Final de la Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición. Bogotá: Comisión de la Verdad, 2022, www.comisiondelaverdad.co/hay-futuro-si-hay-verdad. Accessed 18 July 2023. Lagarde y de los Ríos, Marcela. “Preface: Feminist Keys for Understanding Femini­ cide: Theoretical, Political, and Legal Construction.” In Terrorizing Women, edited by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano. London: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. xi–xxv, www.read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/1432/chapter/ 169174/Preface-Feminist-Keys-for-Understanding. Accessed 19 July 2023. La virgen de los sicarios. Directed by Barbet Schroeder. Les Films du Losange/Le Studio Canal+/Vértigo Films, 2000. “Ley 1761 de 2015.” Función Pública, Gobierno de Colombia, 6 July 2015, www.fun cionpublica.gov.co/eva/gestornormativo/norma.php?i=65337. Accessed 18 July 2023. Llanos, Patricia. Personal interview, 11 December 2014. Lopez Baquero, Constanza. “Las galerías urbanas de memoria en Medellín .” Revista de Estudios Colombianos, 50, 2017, pp. 35–49, www.colombianistas.org/wp-con tent/themes/pleasant/REC/REC%2050/Ensayos/50_9_ensayo_lopez_baquero.pdf. Accessed 18 July 2023. Lopez Baquero, Constanza. “Wounds and Monsters: Representations of Gender-Based Violence and Feminicide in the Aftermath of the Colombian Armed Conflict.” In Human Rights in Colombian Literature & Cultural Production: Embodied Enactments, edited by Kevin Guerrieri and Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo. New York: Routledge, 2022, pp. 157–171. “Los poetas de Medellín.” Revista Mascaluna, www.sites.google.com/site/revistama scaluna/los-poetas-de-medell%C3%ADn?authuser=0. Accessed 19 July 2023. MacKinnon, Catharine A. “Crimes of War, Crimes of Peace.” UCLA Women’s Law Journal, 4(1), 1993, pp. 59–86. Mi cuerpo es la verdad: Experiencias de mujeres y personas LGBTIQ+ en el conflicto armado. Volume 7 of Hay futuro si hay verdad: Informe Final de la Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición. Bogotá: Comisión de la Verdad, 2022, www.comisiondelaverdad.co/hay-futuro-si-ha y-verdad. Accessed 18 July 2023 Navia, Carmiña. “Introduction.” In El universo literario de Laura Restrepo, edited by Elvira Sánchez-Blake and Julie Lirot. Bogotá: Taurus, 2007, pp. 19–38. Observatorio Colombiano de Feminicidios (Red Feminista Antimilitarista), www. observatoriofeminicidioscolombia.org. Accessed 19 July 2023. Olivera, Mercedes. “Violencia Feminicida: Violence against Women and Mexico’s Structural Crisis.” In Terrorizing Women, edited by Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano. London: Duke University Press, 2010, pp. 49–58. Ospina, Mauricio. “Lipoescultura.” Mauricio Ospina: Diseño gráfico e ilustración, 6 June 2014, www.mauricio-ospina.blogspot.com/2014/06. Accessed 18 July 2023. Ospina, Mauricio. “Lipoescultura_intervención artística.” Vimeo, uploaded by Mauricio Ospina, 6 June 2014, www.vimeo.com/97500904. Accessed 18 July 2023 . Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. Alikanusha. Medellín: Alcaldía de Medellín, 2022. Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. Casa. Medellín: Editorial MQ, 2019. Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. “Conmoción en Medellín por caso de mujer asesinada y tirada al río.” Facebook, 15 April 2020, www.facebook.com/100004408774000/posts/p fbid02M5NEnyG4mY16fKpHddP81UtHbJqvbKQyPyH59KM79rRYn9EnsfsVdsjNzj q9fDnZl/?mibextid=gkx3sN. Accessed 19 July 2023.

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Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. Dame tu canto cuidad. Medellín: Beca de Creación en Poesía, 2011. Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. Noctívago. Medellín: Editorial MQ, 1998. Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. “Nombres propios.” In Narrativas de vida y de memoria: Cuatro aproximaciones biográficas a la realidad social del país. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2014, pp. 28–46, www.centrodememoriahistorica. gov.co/descargas/informes2015/narrativasDeVida/narrativas-de-vida-y-memoria.pdf. Accessed 17 July 2023. Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. El rostro del pan. Medellín: Editorial MQ, 2014. Quiñónez, Marta Lucía. Personal interview. 25 July 2014. Restrepo, Laura. Delirio. Bogotá: Alfaguara, 2004. Restrepo, Laura. Los divinos. Miami: Alfaguara, 2018. Restrepo, Laura. La Multitud Errante. Bogotá: Planeta Colombiana, 2001. Rodrigues Gonçalves, Ana Beatriz, and Marcela Batista Martinhão. “Dame tu canto ciudad: a subjetividade expressa entre ruas e casas na poesia de Marta Quiñónez.” Estudios de Literatura Colombiana, 42, 2018, pp. 63–80, doi:10.17533/udea.elc. n42a04. Accessed 19 July 2023. Rosario Tijeras. Directed by Emilio Maillé. Dulce Compañía/FIDECINE, 2005. Sandoval, Marbel. Gloria Cuartas: Por qué no tiene miedo. Bogotá: Temas de Hoy, 1998. Segato, Rita Laura. “Femigenocidio y feminicidio: una propuesta de tipificación.” Revista Herramienta, 49, 2012, www.repositorio.ciem.ucr.ac.cr/jspui/handle/ 123456789/151. Accessed 18 July 2023. Segato, Rita Laura. Las nuevas formas de la guerra y el cuerpo de las mujeres. Puebla: Pez en el Árbol, 2014. Vallejo, Fernando. La virgen de los sicarios. Bogotá: Santillana, 1994.

4

Reworking the Trauma of the Capital in Film and Music

The Capital City as the Spectacle of Violence Bogotá is a place where memory is alive. Memory sneaks through traffic and installs itself in the walls, buildings, and fast-paced city streets. Memory is present in artistic forms that include urban art, theater, and museums dedicated to its preservation. Monuments, marches, and formal and informal exhibitions of memory encircle the capital city, where people come to bring their demands for truth and justice. Many have come seeking refuge, such as those displaced by the war, violence, and injustice. They have made Bogotá their new home. Together with their hopes for a better future, they have brought their traumatic memories and their stories. In the City Center, the seat of political, judicial and religious power, memory is negotiated to exhaustion. On any given day, one can find any form of public demonstration, an art installation or an occupation. The Capital is not only the place to which Colombians bring their claims, but also where a lot of the violence itself has occurred. In this chapter, I will first review some of the most shocking historic episodes of the city from around the mid-twentieth century to the present, in order to understand the heritage of trauma that affects generations of Bogotanos. Within that con­ text, I will also analyze the film Un tal Alonso Quijano (2020) produced by Universidad Nacional de Colombia. This “tragicomedy-thriller-musical,” is important, as director Libia Stella Gómez points out, for being “the first feature film from the Film and Television School of the National University of Colombia. It is a film made entirely by students, something that has never been seen in the national cinema” (Gómez, my translation). Although the history of the city’s violence is not the focus of the narration, it serves as the backdrop of the story. In my analysis, I argue that the film reworks urban trauma by portraying how different generations of Bogotanos inhabit the city and how they resist the oppression that continues to marginalize them. I also examine how the different characters seek a language that allows them to approach an understanding of their situation, or at least to express the damage and deterioration of society. Despite the fact that violence in Bogotá existed before the 1940s, the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán is regarded as the event that fractured DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267-5

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the country’s history and broke it in two. Gaitán was a charismatic leader whose impassioned speeches moved the people of Colombia like never before. A highly educated man with sometimes conflicting political ideas, Gaitán rose in popularity due to his ability to communicate directly with those who had been neglected, as well as his disdain for traditional politics and his ability to summon the people. Although he was a candidate for the Liberal Party, he appealed to Colombians regardless of their political affiliation. With a pseudo-militaristic cry to action “¡A la carga!” Gaitán demanded change for the people and by the people. His ability to mobilize the masses was not well received by the Conservative nor the Liberal elites. Although Gaitán had powerful enemies, no one knows who ordered his assassination on that infamous Friday, April 9, 1948. While the circum­ stances behind his murder remain unknown, the outcome was clear. His death brought chaos and destruction to the Capital, which then spread to the rest of the country. This was the beginning of cycles of violence that have afflicted Colombia to the present day. The Bogotazo, as the events that occurred in the Capital after the assas­ sination of Gaitán are known, was peculiar not only by its scope but also by how quickly it unfolded. As Herbert Tico Braun has described: “[i]n a few hours downtown Bogotá was in flames, its public buildings bombed and ransacked, its stores looted” (7). Such destruction continues to haunt Bogo­ tanos, and it is not strange to hear stories of what happened in any city tour or in nearby cafes, where memories of the buildings and the trolleybuses that burned to the ground are still alive. The trauma of the Bogotazo, and the nationwide upsurge of La Violencia in its aftermath, have been documented in many forms of art, including photo­ graphy, film, literature, and particularly in novels and painting. Álvaro Obre­ gón’s Violencia (1962) is one of the most poignant visual representations of this period. The body of a pregnant woman lies with one breast and abdomen, as if they were mountains, rising to the sky, while her other breast points to the ground as does her lifeless face. Obregón paints the sorrow of war through the blameless, a mother and her unborn child, the dyad of life and death. As Álvaro Medina has noted, the comparison between the dead mother and motherland is evident, as both “are one, implying that primal fertility has ceased. She, the figure, is itself the horizon, a seemingly blocked horizon, hopeless and without a future” (132, my translation). The Bogotazo would not be the last time in which images of the city in flames would shock Colombians. Decades later, in 1985, the revolutionary group Movimiento 19 de Abril, known as M-19, planned its own Bogotazo. The insurgents felt betrayed by then-president Belisario Betancur (1982–1986), who had promised peace and did not deliver. Hoping that the people would support them in their claims, they planned a siege of the Palace of Justice. They demanded that the president be put on trial for not signing the previously accorded peace. The president, however, never responded. Instead, the military attacked the building with tanks, burning it to the ground with the guerrillas

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inside, along with judges, court employees, and other civilians. During two days, November 6 and 7, the rule of law was broken. In the wake of the siege, there were a total of 94 dead and at least 11 disappeared. This event has been politicized, buried, and unburied many times over. The families of the victims are still fighting for justice and waiting for the truth, creating tensions between those who want the memory erased and those who lost their loved ones in the siege. Many testimonies and novels have been written about the Palace of Justice, because it is a wound that remains open in Colombia’s history. One of the most iconic acts of mourn­ ing for the loss of life in the Palace of Justice was the installation “Noviembre 6 y 7” (2002) by renowned artist Doris Salcedo.2 By lowering 280 chairs through the facade of the newly reconstructed Palace of Justice, Salcedo commemorated seventeen years of silence and denial by the Colombian authorities. Salcedo has stated multiple times that Colombians have not mourned their loss: “If every death has mourners, if every life is mourned, we will accomplish the creation of another country” (“Doris Sal­ cedo explica su obra,” my translation). The spectacle of violence in the capital reached its maximum expression during the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. The magnicidios, or selected assassinations of politicians and journalists, provoked generalized anxiety and dread among Bogotanos. Violence became a form of communication and discipline, and fear regulated society. Crimes ordered by unknown intellectual authors point to alliances—between drug cartels, powerful elites, paramilitary groups, the military, and other state agencies—against those who threatened the status quo. Some of the victims belonged to political parties such as the Unión Patriótica (UP), a political party created in 1985 during the dialogues between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC, and President Betancur. The new political party broke away from the FARC in 1987 becoming an alternative for many Colombians who were tired of the traditional but ineffectual and corrupt two-party system. Although many lawyers, human rights advocates, and other profes­ sionals belonged to this party, they were accused of supporting the guerril­ las. By the end of the decade, their leaders were assassinated. Among them were two presidential candidates: Jaime Pardo Leal (1939–1987) and Ber­ nardo Jaramillo Ossa (1955–1990). Members of the party were persecuted to extinction, as has been made evident in the 2018 report by the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, Todo pasó frente a nuestros ojos. El gen­ ocidio de la Unión Patriótica 1984–2002 (Everything Happened Before our Eyes. The Unión Patriótica’s Genocide). The crimes against the UP have been contested in Colombian and international courts.3 Following the death of many of its leaders and the tragedy of the Palace of Justice, the M-19 lobbied to resume the peace dialogues with the newly elected president Virgilio Barco (1986–1990). In 1988, they kidnapped poli­ tician Álvaro Gómez Hurtado to hasten conversations with Barco, and in 1990, the revolutionaries laid down their weapons in a famous ceremony.

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After creating a new political party, the Alianza Democrática M19, AD­ M19, its charismatic leader, Carlos Pizarro Leongómez (1951–1990) laun­ ched a popular campaign for the presidential run of 1990. His assassination on April 26, 1990, closed a series of executions of candidates that began the previous decade. Among those assassinated candidates was Luis Carlos Galán (1943– 1989), a political leader for the Nuevo Liberalismo political party, foun­ ded in 1979 by Galán himself along with then-senator Rodrigo Lara Bonilla (1946–1984), who later was named Minister of Justice during the Betancur administration. Both Lara Bonilla and Galán took a strong stand against narcotrafficking because they believed it was the nation’s ruin. After vigorously denouncing the drug cartels, both men were assassinated in Bogotá, a few years apart. While Lara’s assassination in 1984 left the images of a gunned-down car with the windshield com­ pletely destroyed, the assassination of Galan in 1989 was televised in its entirety. The candidate was killed in front of the cameras while deliver­ ing a speech in the municipality of Soacha, on the outskirts of Bogotá. Some have been prosecuted in relation to these murders, including Alberto Santofimio Botero, a former minister of justice and senator who was found guilty of conspiring with the Medellín cartel to murder Galán. However, details of these macabre and convoluted histories have been murky, and justice remains unattainable.

Figure 4.1 Enlarged image of a newspaper article about the assassinations of Luis Carlos Galán, Bernardo Jaramillo, and Carlos Pizarro as part of the exhibit “Resisto Luego Existo” at Centro de Memoria Paz y Reconcilia­ ción in Bogotá. Photograph taken by the author on July 13, 2023.

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At the time of these assassinations, the press reported on the massive fun­ eral marches that followed the leaders’ caskets, the crying of their children, and the nation paralyzed by shock. These killings marked the beginning of a new decade in which, as it turned out, more magnicidios would occupy the front pages. Among the victims of those subsequent killings were congress­ man Manuel Cepeda (1930–1994), human rights lawyer Eduardo Umaña Mendoza (1946–1998),4 and, in one of the most devastating cases for many Colombians, the journalist, satirist, and activist Jaime Garzón (1960–1999). Garzón was a television personality whose comedy spoke to Colombia about the problems the nation was facing: narcotrafficking, paramilitaries, guerillas, corruption, clientelism, classism, etc. He demonstrated his com­ mitment to peace by leading efforts to translate the 1991 constitution to the indigenous languages spoken in the country and by serving as a mediator for the liberation of those who had been kidnapped by the guerrillas. His death left a wound that remains open, and his memory has been kept alive through public art that reproduces his image and his words. In Bogotá, on Calle 26, massive murals commemorate his life; in Corferias, one of Bogo­ tá’s convention centers, a monument remembers the twentieth anniversary of his death; his image adorns the main plaza at the Universidad Nacional; and his famous phrase “país de mierda”—an expression of both affection for Colombia and disgust—resounds through the city in graffiti walls. After his death, visual artist Doris Salcedo utilized red roses to cover Garzón’s house and filled with flowers the streets going from his home to the place where he

Figure 4.2 A wall with photographs of places of memory established by activists, vic­ tims’ families, and defenders of human rights, as part of the exhibit “Resisto Luego Existo” at Centro de Memoria Paz y Reconciliación in Bogotá. Photograph taken by the author on July 13, 2023.

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had been killed. Those red roses signified the fragility of life in a country where, as has been popularly stated, when Garzón was killed, laughter was killed.5 All of these acts of memory and mourning are a testament to the imperative to never forget. Massive explosions, shattered glass, fleeing crowds, and panicked confu­ sion are visions that continue to haunt Bogotanos. In addition to this visual imagery, Colombians recall how the 1989 bombing of the Avianca Flight 203 was reported with graphic descriptions of flesh burning.6 The explosive, which detonated midair over the municipality of Soacha, allegedly targeted then-candidate César Gaviria Trujillo, who replaced Galán in the pre­ sidential race. Enraged by the threat of extradition under a government possibly led by Gaviria Trujillo, the Medellín Cartel ordered the attack, which killed 107 people, but not the candidate, who did not board the plane. Different versions of the story have been told over the years, and confusion remains regarding how the bomb was placed and why Gaviria was not aboard. The mystery not only exacerbates the trauma of the nation but also feeds the obsession that some Colombians, along with many around the world, have with Pablo Escobar. In addition to witnessing the downing of Avianca Flight 203, Soacha has been the scene of many more injustices. During the government of Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010), this marginal part of Bogotá, where many displaced people have made their homes, suffered the forced disappearances of young men as a result of the “false positives” scandal. With his catchphrase “Mano firme, corazón grande,” Uribe swore to stop guerrillas from terrorizing people. His success saw no limits; the greater the assault on guerrillas, the greater his popularity, regardless of the devastatingly high civilian casualties. His signature policy of “Seguridad Democrática” placed pressure on the army to account for their lack of success against the FARC, creating a situation in which military leaders resorted to corrupt practices to boost their results. Soldiers were promised privileges such as money and time off for every guerrilla killed in action. Soon, high-ranking commanders ordered soldiers to recruit young men from the municipality of Soacha, luring them to Norte de Santander, a department in the northwest, with promises of work. There they would kill the young men, dress them in guerrilla uni­ forms, and report them as having been killed in combat. The mothers of these young men discovered these crimes and other atro­ cities. Many of them met in 2008 while searching for their loved ones. While the authorities maintained that their children were guerrilleros, the mothers insisted that their sons had been deceived by those who were supposed to protect them. In 2010, they became the Mothers of Soacha, a collective that seeks justice and reparation. They demanded that their children’s names be cleared and that the guilty pay for their crimes. As a result, the sight of women marching while holding the pictures of their loved ones, embodying their pain and trauma, has become part of the landscape of resistance against the horror in Bogotá.7

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In spite of the turbulent nature of the attacks and human rights violations in the city, a myth of exceptionality exists in which the terrorism faced by the Capital is separate from the armed conflict. Bogotanos do not deny that their city has lived through periods of terror, but a consensus has long existed that the Capital is somehow immune to or isolated from the armed conflict experienced in the countryside, where forced displacement, forced disappearances, mas­ sacres, and assassinations of local leaders have stigmatized entire communities. The publication Paisajes Inadvertidos. Miradas a la guerra en Bogotá (2019) by Santiago Silva Schlesinger, challenges that notion by demonstrating that the war not only changed the dynamics of the city but also affected how Bogotanos inhabit the public space and how they relate with one another (14). Based on the testimonies of victims and family members, Silva Schlesinger travels through different geographies within the city and brings us closer to a Bogotá that resists oblivion. Family members not only had to endure these crimes committed against their loved ones but also have the responsibility of keeping their stories alive. The author argues that understanding Bogotá’s multiple roles in the armed conflict is imperative to confront the challenges of peace: Bogotá was a war zone not only due to significant events that remain engraved in our memory but also due to dynamics that changed the daily life of its citizens. In addition, Bogotá has been the place of refuge for many Colombians who escaped the violence experienced in the rest of the country.… At times, it is a city of transit for those fleeing vio­ lence, and at others, it is the place where it is possible to think about the future and rebuild projects truncated by the conflict. (369–70, my translation) Bogotá struggles with its memories because, while many would like to sup­ press them, others have to live with their identities marked by the city’s painful history. These memories are the inheritance of generations of people who continue to deal with the trauma left by decades of violence. A ques­ tion that has been largely overlooked to date deals with how the youth of today are dealing with this legacy. The rest of this chapter will approach this question by considering one recent example of how young people are negotiating memory through music and film.

Escaping Reality in Un tal Alonso Quijano (2020) The premise of Un tal Alonso Quijano (2020) is that to inhabit the city, one has to be crazy or lose oneself in a cathartic frenzy, like dancing the pogo in a rave. The main story centers on the mishaps of a literature professor, a so-called Alonso Quijano, for whom living out the literary fantasy of Don Quixote is preferable to facing his painful reality. After his wife and daughter perished in an airplane explosion, Quijano, whose real name is Albino Mayorca, aban­ doned his name and his past, embracing only his literary persona.

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Present and past are interwoven at various levels. On the one hand, the story is about present-day Colombia, where all the characters are con­ tinuously afflicted by different levels of aggression. On the other, we dis­ cover that the horrors of the past are ever-present. Multiple and overlapping forms of violence cause the characters to search for ways to escape their pain. As the film’s director, Libia Stella Gómez, has stated, Un tal Alonso Quijano is a film that explores the fragility of sanity and reflects upon the act of masking oneself in order to cope with pain, frustration, and trauma.8 Although the protagonist is Professor Quijano, Santos Carrasco, his friend and companion of literary adventures, plays a key role in the story. Santos is convinced that Quijano is playing a game and enjoys being part of it by rehear­ sing the part of Sancho Panza. Just like his analog in Cervantes’ novel, Santos does not suspect that Professor Quijano has lost his mind. Even when he is taken ill to a mental institution—after having attacked the university’s dean, believing that he was one of the Yanguesans—Santos insists that the professor is not crazy. He instead launches an investigation into his past in order to find the reason for his escape from reality. Santos, who does not know anything about his friend’s previous life, brings together the action of the film by solving the mystery. Un tal Alonso Quijano begins with a bird’s-eye view of Bogotá. As if we were in a plane landing on the plateau, we see the immense metropolitan area today, surrounded by majestic mountains. Then, we hear in the back­ ground television news from the last century—coverage of the downing of Avianca Flight 203. The two levels of reality—seeing the twenty-first century Capital and hearing that broadcast from 1989—break the timeline. This alarming juxtaposition serves as a metaphor for trauma, with the echoes of the past bringing back into our everyday reality one of the most haunting terrorist events in Colombian history. Although the story of the bombing has changed over the years, depending on who has told it, the film narrates it from the perspective of the most vulnerable: a mother and child who perished on the plane, the naive boy from a marginalized comuna of Medellín who unknowingly carried the bomb, and the family members of both who end up crossing paths in Bogotá. In the film’s present, Quijano, as an elderly professor, possesses features that resemble those of the original Quixote. Riding on a scooter motorcycle with a ruff around his neck, a helmet or barber’s basin hanging from his back, and a stick horse—and accompanied by Santos, who rides along in similar conditions—Quijano is a sight to be seen in a solemn Bogotá. In the classroom, Quijano and Santos recite from memory passages of Don Quix­ ote. The students, who read along excitedly, also worry about their class assignment, which they are preparing based on Cervantes’ novel. Quijano seems to be particularly taken by a young student, Lore, who reads the part of Dulcinea. In his delusion, she is the lady of his dreams. At home, Quijano is tormented by his past, as the image of Lore has triggered memories that only Santos is able to unravel when, worried for his friend, he discovers a story of pain and violence.

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The film’s past is divided into two parts that correspond to two cities and two families. In Bogotá, a younger Quijano argues with his wife, Laura, and his machismo prevents him from being happy. He accuses Laura of not performing her duties as a mother and a housewife. She argues back stating that she works as a writer and that she needs his help around the house, too. Quijano’s harassment of his spouse pushes her to return to her native Cali. Abandoning Quijano, she leaves him her finished novel and a note imploring him to stop being so blind. Their child, departing with her mother, also leaves something behind, a notebook in which she expresses all the trauma caused by her parent’s quarrels. In the meantime, a family in Medellín struggles to subsist. The mother, without a partner and working to feed her three teenage children, tells her son, Ferney, that he must help with the household expenses, as he is, after all, the “man of the house.” Ferney then falls easy prey to the motorized sicarios that circle the comuna. They are looking for someone to do an important job and want to know if he is trustworthy. The first test is to send him on an errand: he must deliver a package but is cautioned not to open it. Ferney, who is characterized as an innocent, not very bright boy, delivers the package and never realizes that it was a decoy. This seems to be enough for the sicarios, who then prepare him for taking another package on an Avianca flight. The sicarios lie to Ferney, who believes he is carrying a delicate recording device that he needs to activate once the flight is in the air. Ferney, Quijano’s family, and 170 passengers and crew will meet their end when he unwittingly detonates the bomb. Unbeknownst to them, Ferney’s sister, La Mona, and Professor Quijano cross paths in the present time. She runs a stand where the professor buys his morning juice. The dramatic irony is revealed when La Mona is casually talking to another professor while Quijano is waiting to be served. La Mona says that she has been living in Bogotá for many years, “a city of everyone and no one,” where she had to move to, with her family, after her brother was killed by narcotraffickers. Neither La Mona nor Quijano ever find out about each other’s tragedy or about how linked their lives really are. After the death of his wife and daughter, Quijano is tormented by guilt. His machismo drove his wife and daughter away and as a consequence, they were killed in the terrorist attack. This feeling of culpability is what leads Quijano to seek escape in a literary fantasy. After discovering Quijano’s secret, Santos acts as the voice of reason, telling his friend that their death was not his fault. The film makes evident not only the violence of a narco­ state but the more general, structural violence that oppresses all the char­ acters in the present and the past. Cultural violence envelops every aspect of society: verbal and emotional abuse affects not only Quijano and his family, but also other characters. When Santos searches for the professor’s family, for example, he comes across his friend’s mother-in-law, who has also been institutionalized in an asylum. Her mind is stuck in the past. She obsesses over getting dinner ready for her imaginary husband and fears that she is

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running out of time. She denies ever having a daughter and urges Santos to leave because her husband will be home at any minute. Like her own daughter, the mother had been a victim of intrafamilial violence, and the scene repeats itself like a reflection in a mirror. Gender-based violence is not only present in the professor’s storyline. Lore also seems to be teetering on a tightrope of violence. At a rave, Rodrigo, her classmate, touches her as they move to the rhythm of punk music. What initially seems like a consensual flirtation turns into a violent attack when he bites her neck. Other predatory practices can be seen when Lore leaves the club and has to jump in front of a taxi cab for fear of being assaulted by three men lurking outside. Later, Rodrigo tries to rape Lore while she is walking around the university campus. Harassment and abuse in Colombian universities have been widely denounced in recent years. News outlets such as VICE (2017), Semana (2019), and El Tiempo (2020) have reported not only on the culture of sexual abuse on campuses, but also on the lack of clear policies to protect both students and employees.9 The feminist YouTube channel Las Igualadas (2017, 2018, and 2020) has also reported on the victim-blaming and other types of revictimization suffered by students from different universities, who have denounced their aggressors.10 They have focused specifically on the situation faced by students from Universidad Nacional, one of the most important institutions of higher education in the country. Victims argue that administrative officials fear bad publicity and therefore sweep their com­ plaints under the rug. Also, female students report that professors harass them in front of their peers and with the complicity of those fellow students, experiences that further their vulnerability.11 Although the film presents peer-to-peer sexual abuse, we find out that Laura, Quijano’s wife, had once been his student, a circumstance that reflects how the power relations between professors and students are blurred in Colombia’s culture of machismo and violence.12 Cultural violence affects the most vulnerable. In the film, Santos must live with the shame of having been fired from the university’s library where he worked. Relocated to the Veterinary College, Santos takes care of feeding and herding cattle. At work, his boss continuously abuses him verbally, humiliating and harassing him about the state of the barn and how dirty his overalls look. Figuratively, he has become a peasant, a condition that in Colombia is associated with ignorance and backwardness. At home, he must hide his demotion, lying to his wife about losing his job and manipulating his daughter into covering for him. The loss of his status in a society where “el qué dirán”—concern for what others might say or think—is the ultimate disgrace. Therefore, he must keep up appearances, even in front of those who love him most, with the hopes of regaining status or obtaining some benefit in the future. Santos embodies the character of Sancho because, on the one hand, being close to literature and intellectuality dignifies his exis­ tence by bringing him nearer to his former job. On the other hand, playing

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Sancho allows him to escape his reality. Just as Don Quixote does for Sancho, the professor, through his alter ego, validates and reassures his friend, Santos. After waking up in the hospital, in a lucid outburst, Quijano recites from Cervantes’ novel: Glory in thy humble birth, Sancho, and be not ashamed of saying thou art peasant-born; for when it is seen thou art not ashamed no one will set himself to put thee to the blush; and pride thyself rather upon being one of lowly virtue than a lofty sinner. Countless are they who, born of mean parentage, have risen to the highest dignities, pontifical and imperial. (Cervantes vol. 2, ch. XLII)13 The main story, in the present time, transpires at the Universidad Nacional. While that institution is a center of intellectuality and activism, it is also a territory of conflict subjected to violence by different armed groups, and to the stigmatization of society (Silva Schlesinger 24). The university’s history of conflict and resistance dates back to its foundation in 1867, as Ciro Quiroz Otero has demonstrated in his noteworthy publication La Universidad Nacional de Colombia en sus pasillos y fuera de ellos (The National Uni­ versity of Colombia in its Corridors and Outside of Them, 2018). Founded on the principles of liberalism, the university immediately clashed with the Church, which had traditionally profited from educating Colombians and maintaining the colonial status quo. To delegitimize the university, the Church appealed to morality and labeled the new institution as “atheist and radical” (Quiroz 8). Throughout the years, students at La Nacional were involved in political struggles, as student organizations were formed and protests against the government became a tradition. Since at least the 1940s, political and religious elites claimed that the university was infiltrated by communists. By 1947, State violence against the students became a reality. For the first time, the armed forces, police, and military transcended the freedom of the university with water tanks and tear gas (Quiroz 92). The confronta­ tion between the state and the university has affected many professors and students who have been persecuted, with some being assassinated and forcibly disappeared (Silva Schlesinger 62). The marginalization and stigmatization of students has continued into the present, making the university a war zone.

The Student Movement Students in Colombia have historically resisted through their political activ­ ity. In November 2019, inspired in part by the strikes that took place in Chile, student organizations joined labor unions, LGBT and feminist groups, collectives of artists, and the minga indígena, 14 among many others, in “El Paro Nacional,” a nationwide strike against new neoliberal policies implemented by President Iván Duque. The protestors demanded peace and an immediate stop to the killing of community leaders around the country.

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In an attempt to repress the peaceful protest in Bogotá, the military police, Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (ESMAD), responded with full force, kill­ ing Dilan Cruz, an 18-year-old high school student. The death of the young man outraged the population, and many took to the streets. Sergio Montero and Isabel Peñaranda explain that the Paro Nacional broke historical records, not only because of the great numbers of participants but also due to the diversity of the protestors and the “unprecedented public support: 70% of Colombians supported the Paro.” The authors note that there was a shift from previous strikes due to the massive participation of the middle class. Traditionally, elites have delegitimized protesters by equating them with criminals, or even worse, with urban guerrillas. During the global Covid crisis, the national strike seemed to have dissipated. However, given the violations of the Colombian state, extended curfews, tax reform proposals, public health problems, the economic crisis, and literal hunger, new forms of protest appeared in the country’s main cities. As a reply, the militarization of these places was greater than ever, and the repression against young people greatly increased. As Montero and Peñaranda recount: The murder on September 9, 2020, of Javier Ordóñez, a law student who worked as a taxi driver, at the hands of Bogotá’s police for vio­ lating a COVID-19 curfew sparked a new wave of protests and riots around the city. Javier’s words to police agents “I can’t breathe, please release me,” recorded on video by one of his friends and widely circu­ lated on Twitter and mainstream media, was a chilling echo of George Floyd’s murder. The night of September 10, groups of protesters set several police stations in Bogotá on fire and were met with a brutally violent response by the police, who opened fire onto the protesters, sparking further outrage. By the end of the revolts of the following days, 13 civilians had been assassinated by the police, over 580 woun­ ded, and a third of the small police stations known as CAIs burned.15 On July 15, 2023, I had the opportunity to visit the Casa de la Memoria in La Gaitana Park, in Suba, located northwest of the city. There the community remembers the young people murdered in the town. I sat down with José Javier Baquero and Nury Rojas, parents of Angie Paola Baquero Rojas, a 29-year-old student who was shot on September 9, 2020. Recounting her death, I was able to witness the pain of two broken parents who cannot understand why this happened. They broke down in tears as they told me about their fight for jus­ tice and how they have only received more re-victimization. José Javier cannot find the words to express his pain, he only blames President Duque and Mayor Claudia López for their tragedy. He works at Casa de la Memoria to keep Angie’s memory alive. For Nury, her grief and depression will not stop her from fighting to obtain justice for her daughter because, as she exclaims, “my daughter bled to death” and finds the police response implausible because Angie “was exercising her legitimate right to protest.” Nury knows exactly

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who killed her daughter, and she cannot forgive. She uses her body and voice in every march and every square. She confronts the police and asks the judges, “Why is a uniform worth more than the life of a human being?” Both of them come from humble means: José Javier, worked as a truck driver and Nury as a recycler. They never expected to become visible figures who struggle to face this horror and to be recognized as victims, while receiving threats and being persecuted for seeking justice. They had to leave their home in Bogotá and move to a rural area of the city, where the inti­ midation has persisted. Impunity continues to surround the murders of the young people, which María Jimena Duzán has labeled as “La masacre de Bogotá” (“The massacre of Bogotá”). Their family members wait with little hope. Nury expresses: “I feel very bad, I know that my daughter’s case is going to take days, months, years, until they feel like solving it.” Duque’s government insisted that the young protesters were part of urban guerrillas and acted forcefully against them. On April 28, 2021, his con­ troversial tributary reform sent thousands to the streets, the protests lasted until mid-2022, becoming what is known as the Estallido Social. Young people organized themselves and created the Primera Línea, a line of defense that protected the demonstrators against the ESMAD. They communicated their discontent through political posters, comics, murals, graffiti, performance art, and other forms of visual expression that conveyed their precarious situation. Slogans such as “S.O.S. Colombia” and “Nos están matando” became common and were written in giant letters on streets and bridges that could be seen from the air.16 Social media was a tool to visibilize the human rights violations that were being committed, particularly the assassinations, eye injuries, and other attacks. Nicolás Aguilar-Forero states that: During 2021, 5,808 cases of police violence were registered, which included 80 cases of homicidal violence, 47 cases of sexual violence, 105 blindings, 2,053 arbitrary arrests against protesters, 66 judicial assem­ blies related to social protest, 16 cases of harassment of community activities such as communal pots or cultural and artistic exhibitions, and 1,991 cases of physical violence. (10, my translation) Social media also helped those in power to justify the attacks, arguing that the police were defending private and public property, and that officers were also injured.17 Aguilar-Forero explains that young people in Colombia have “confronted a systematic juvenicide through which their political practices have been eliminated, criminalized, and stigmatized” (1).18 Despite their marginalization, young people led the change that brought Gustavo Petro to power. In 2023, however, members of the Primera Línea, still hooded and fearing reprisals, have denounced the failure of the president who promised to release from prison those protesters who are still detained in subhuman conditions.19

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Protests and Punks Although university students have inherited violence from past generations, and have themselves experienced political and social oppression, in the film they are portrayed as active and engaged. The university is a place of creation where students bring literature to life, working on different projects, filming, singing, acting, and collaborating. They express resistance through the way they dress, their tattoos, piercings, and hairstyles, all of which reveal the influence of punk rock. Their frustration in the face of cultural violence is expressed by the film’s music score, which includes songs such as “El baile contra la motosierra” and “Despierta” by renowned band, Desarme Rock Social, a group that has been central to Colombia’s punk rock scene since the 1990s. Themselves alumni of the Universidad Nacional, the band members are also part of the film’s cast. Punk music arrived in Colombia at the end of the 1970s and became popular among urban youth in Bogotá and Medellín, as Germán Muñoz and Martha Marín have noted. The genre, particularly since the 1990s, has been an outlet to denounce “[t]he crises imposed by increasing corruption, pov­ erty, war and violence” (60, my translation). Desarme Rock Social was born out of nonconformity and as a reaction to the atrocities that we see and endure every day, sponsored by the authoritarian and repressive system that dominates the peoples of the world. Desarme is the release of this feeling and the means of expressing what we think about all the injustices committed by the owners of power. (cited in Muñoz and Marín 60, my translation) These themes converge in the song “El baile contra la motosierra” (“The Dance Against the Chainsaw”) which, in its YouTube version, features the voice of one of the mothers of Soacha denouncing the state agencies that have taken their children: Por favor estemos alerta o estén alerta, que no se dejen quitar a sus hijos, que no confiemos en esos que dicen llamarse “los grandes héroes de la patria”, “los hombres de honor”, que los hombres de honor no existen. Son unos villanos, son unos cobardes detrás de un uniforme que les han dado una capacitación para matar, que les han dado armas para matar, para matar al pueblo. Que por favor donde vean un policía o un soldado, corran porque somos falsos positivos, de pronto, uno nunca sabe. [Please be alert! Do not allow them to take away your children. Do not trust those who call themselves “the great heroes of the country,” “men of honor.” Men of honor do not exist. They are villains. They are cowards behind a uniform. They have been trained to kill. They have been given weapons to kill, to kill the people. Please, wherever you see a policeman or a soldier, run, because we could suddenly be false positives, you never know!] (my translation)

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Youth in Colombia have grown up with the image of mothers mourning the loss of their children at the hands of state agencies. They have experi­ enced—if not first-hand, through news and social media—all the para­ military violence that had existed in the country but was accelerated during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010). The title “El baile contra la motosierra” is a direct comment on paramilitary use of extreme violence, a reference that does not need to be explained because the use of the chainsaw for dismembering people is something that is vox populi, a normalized practice. The singing voice winks at us with the following disclaimer: Este es el baile contra la motosierra

Ustedes saben que es eso …

El tema que van a escuchar ahora

es producto de nuestra imaginación,

Cualquier parecido con la realidad

es pura coincidencia

[This is the dance against the chainsaw

You know what that is …

The song that you will be listening to

is a product of our imagination

Any resemblance to reality

is pure coincidence]

The song continues in the next stanza with its denunciation of the alliances between paramilitary groups and state agencies: Vivimos en un país de paramilitares (de falsos positivos),

en donde secuestran, en donde torturan,

en donde asesinan a todo aquel que piense diferente

Todo aquel que lucha por la libertad.

No estamos diciendo que esto suceda en este país,

porque ¿a qué gobierno se le ocurriría utilizar

un instrumento de trabajo para la tortura y la muerte?

[We live in a country of paramilitaries (of false positives),

where they kidnap, where they torture

where they kill anyone who thinks differently

Anyone who fights for freedom

We are not saying that this happens in this country

Because what government would use

a tool for work, for torture and killing?]

(my translation, the italics are also mine) The second disclaimer questions precisely the normalization of extreme forms of violence that happen in the country. Everyone knows and has been

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desensitized to violence. Violence is accepted, expected, and many times encouraged. The continuous support of fascist practices has put in power corrupt men who adhere to the extreme right and who suppress, discredit, or ignore any form of social demands. The musical score includes other songs by Desarme Rock Social, such as “Despierta,” which incites people to wake up and to resist.20 It also features original songs made for the film such as “La herida del adiós” a song that conveys the feelings of both Quijano and Colombian youth. The first stanza expresses in a poetic language of despair the sensation of entrapment and loss: La herida del adiós

Lágrimas que no dejan vivir

La cicatriz y anestesia del dolor

Caminos que están por cerrar

Silencios que no dejan morir

Ey, la herida del adiós

Ey, la herida del adiós

[The wound of goodbye

Tears that do not let live

the scar and numbing of pain

Roads that are about to close

Silences that do not let me die

Hey, the wound of goodbye

Hey, the wound of goodbye]

Trauma, silence, and alienation are the centripetal forces that keep the characters encircled, as the second stanza implies: Ya no quiero vivir pues vacío estoy

Mi sombra es el vestido

Ya no quiero vivir la herida del adiós

No creo que yo tenga un lugar

Donde sentir que no quiero escapar

Mi atracción al descubierto está

En mis ojos se ve el arrullo de un adiós

La herida del adiós…

[I no longer want to live because I am empty

My shadow is my clothing

I no longer want to live the wound of goodbye

I don’t think I have a place

Where I could feel that I do not want to escape

My attraction lays bare

In my eyes you see the lullaby of a goodbye

The wound of goodbye]

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The misunderstanding and lack of communication seem to exacerbate the loneliness and feelings of disengagement. Therefore, finding a language that transmits what is impossible to express, and that generates a way of coping with trauma, damage, and death, is utterly important. The characters in the film must generate a vocabulary that allows for some coherence as a way to recover their voices—a language for hope, peace, and change. While the students make use of punk lyrics, Quijano appropriates the Cervantine lan­ guage. But is Quijano a senile man whose literary obsessions serve only as escapism? Or, on the contrary, is he speaking and acting through Don Quixote in order to make sense of his reality? The modernity of Cervantes’ obra magna allows his readers to under­ stand the political and social realities of his time while identifying the same in our present day. Miguel Soler has accurately stated that Don Quixote is a reflection of the historical moment to which it belongs and can be seen as an attempt to criticize and denounce the society of the time. To do this, Cervantes uses the paradox of projecting the lucid gaze of a madman onto the world of the supposedly sane. (310, my translation) The loss, the disappointment, and the sense of uprooting of baroque Spain can be dislocated and transported to the Colombian present, where the same universal sentiments prevail. It could be said that, in his madness, Quijano rebels against a system that oppresses him. In a comedic sequence, the professor who has escaped from the asylum decides to fight against the TransMilenio, the controversial transpor­ tation system that overwhelms Bogotanos. The TransMilenio, like the wind­ mills, is a literal and metaphoric giant. It was founded in the year 2000 and was immediately praised nationally and internationally. Throughout the years, however, administrative corruption, the lack of urban planning, and civic cul­ ture have contributed to an enormous deficit. Ángela María Herrera Puyana et al. explain that the flawed system, “owes its dilemma to the consolidation of a monopoly of private operators in the provision of the service and the pre­ valence of a capitalist profit motive, without clear and effective controls” (106, my translation). Quijano, blade in hand, confronting the massive vehicle, is a direct commentary on the corruption of the city and the shame of Bogotá. When Quijano confuses the dean and another professor with the Yan­ guensans, we see a similar dynamic: “So far as I can see, friend Sancho,” he exclaims “these are not knights but base folk of low birth” (vol. 1, ch. XV). Behind the humor hides the criticism of administrators who are distant from the students’ experience. Only in his deluded state could the professor attack those in power. As Soler has noted: The theme of madness has been repeated on numerous occasions and almost all the critics agree on the same ideas: it emerges as a masked

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Reworking the Trauma of the Capital form of denunciation and desire for change in human relationships. It attempts to seek sincerity, as an essential step to regenerate social coexistence. That is why Cervantes uses it as a means of change, peace, and justice. And furthermore, at that time, madness is the only way the author has to communicate his social languages. (310, my translation)

Both the literary and musical languages in the film are centrifugal forces that serve not only as an escape but also as resistance. Fleeting glimpses of free­ dom can be observed in two parallel scenes: In the first, at the club, young people let go of their rage through the rough movements of the pogo and the mosh, following the rhythms of politically committed lyrics. Later, at the insane asylum, when the doctor who is treating Quijano allows the patients to act in Don Quixote’s scene of the liberation of the galley slaves, the rampage formed by the patients gets entirely out of hand. Both, the com­ motion of punk music and that of insanity allow everyone to be uninhibited. At the end of the film, insanity and commotion converge at another rave where Lore presents her final class project. After Quijano returns to the university, Lore approaches him to give him, and us, the last message of the film: After reading Don Quixote, she believes that he was not crazy, pro­ posing that “he disguised himself to break the routine, to unleash his ima­ gination with the chivalric tales that he liked so much” (My translation). Both Quijano and Lore share the same feeling, needing to mask themselves in order to unleash their potential. Lore invites the professor and Santos to the club where she performs the song “Dulcinea,” based on the sonnet, “The Lady of Oriana to Dulcinea del Toboso,” which figures among the “com­ mendatory verses” at the beginning of Don Quixote: Oh, fairest Dulcinea, could it be! It were a pleasant fancy to suppose so— Could Miraflores change to El Toboso, And London’s town to that which shelters thee! When the two worlds meet—the madness of literature and the combustion of punk—they form a rampage of freedom and resistance. Un tal Alonso Quijano was released to the public on July 1, 2020. The film was originally scheduled to come out in theaters, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was distributed instead social media. It appeared first on YouTube, where it reached over 500,000 views and was later presented in other cultural outlets. In a time of health crisis and increasing violence, art that dismantles stereotypes and counters the official version of history, as well as bringing people together is extremely important. This is particularly true because the virus gave the Colombian government a perfect excuse to exert control over its citizens, a new catastrophe in a country saturated with injustice.

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Figure 4.3 Wall representing common slogans in Colombian protests as part of the exhibit “Resisto Luego Existo” at Centro de Memoria Paz y Reconcilia­ ción in Bogotá. Photograph taken by the author on July 13, 2023.

As we have seen, the vulnerability of women and youth is not a thing of the past, and neither are the images of the capital city burning. Violence and trauma expressed through the characterization in the film show that, despite generational differences, Colombians share a common history of loss. The past and the present are interconnected, and therefore forgetting is not pos­ sible. In order to achieve a better future, Colombians must confront not only the violence of the past but also the daily violence that is part of the culture today.

Notes 1 There are many conflicting versions of the siege of the Palace of Justice, with the greatest points of contention centering on who began the attack and who started the fire. In my monograph Trauma, Memoria y Cuerpo: El testimonio femenino en Colombia (2012), I have favored the narratives of the witnesses, compiled in numerous testimonial accounts including The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy (1993) by Ana Carrigan, Noches de humo: cómo se planeó y ejecutó la toma del Palacio de Justicia (1988) by Olga Behar, among others. Another important source is the recorded audio from the time, particularly tapes of phone calls between Alfonso Reyes Echandía and the press, in which the magistrate states that a ceasefire is needed in order to start negotiations. He begs president Betancur to give the order to the military to stop shooting. The M-19 had a list of demands and wanted to negotiate, but the military never stopped the attack (“El magistrado Alfonso Reyes”). Reyes Echandía, who was chief justice of the Supreme Court, perished in the siege. Later, a covert operation by the military

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2 3 4

5 6 7

8

9

10

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Reworking the Trauma of the Capital took place which included, among many other irregularities, removing the clothing of the victims and washing their bodies. The public intervention was recalled in the article “‘Noviembre 6 y 7’, Doris Salcedo” by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio in January 2014. The chapter “Un camino sin final: la justicia en el caso de la UP” (“A Road with No End: Justice in the Case of the UP,” pp. 407–63) provides details of court rulings and the impunity faced by the victims in and beyond the courts. Umaña Mendoza was part of a group that investigated the assassination of Gaitán. He worked with the family members of the disappeared of the Palace of Justice, investigated the death of Carlos Pizarro Leongómez, and defended the victims of the UP, among others (“Asesinado Eduardo Umaña,” “Eduardo Umaña Mendoza”). The intervention that commemorates Garzón is mentioned in the interview “Doris

Salcedo: From Singular Identity to Collective Historiography” by Carolina Ariza.

See the special report from Colombian publication El Tiempo: “Avión de

Avianca: 30 años de la barbarie del narcoterrorismo” by Julián Ríos Monroy.

In my article, “The Women of Colombia: Building Peace with Their Hands” (2017), I argue that although the mothers have achieved partial justice through the imprisonment of some perpetrators, they face a daunting obstacle: many of those whom they regard as responsible remain in positions of power. Uribe, in particular, has alleged that their children were criminals, invalidating their struggle in the eyes of many (346). In 2023, the JEP subpoenaed both presidents Uribe and Santos to testify about their involvement in the false positive scandal. Gómez explains the characters’ motivations as follows: “Alonso disguises himself to escape the pain, Santos assumes himself a librarian so as not to lose his status, Lorenza describes herself as punk to fit in, and Ferney dresses in silk to get his family out of poverty.” See “Inside the Culture of Sexual Abuse at Colleges Across Colombia” by Camilo Jiménez Santofimio and Tania Tapia Jáuregui; “Llegó la hora de hablar de vio­ lencia sexual en las universidades colombianas,” an episode of the podcast El Diario by Semana; and “Acoso en universidades: práctica sistemática pero poco dimensionada” in El Tiempo. See the following videos by Las Igualadas: “Así es el acoso sexual en universidades de América Latina,” “Las universidades de Colombia son un infierno para las mujeres,” “La Universidad Nacional no sabe qué hacer con el acoso sexual,” and “La universidad que ignoró la denuncia pública de acoso sexual de 131 estudiantes.” Gender-based violence in universities has been the subject of study at least since 2017, following the eruption of the #metoo movement. Since then, the com­ plaints have been of such magnitude that Latin American universities have been forced to establish prevention policies and protocols. These changes, however, have served primarily to protect the public image of the institutions themselves. Critics allege that the universities either do not comply with their own norms or do so at the cost of the victims’ reputations. For this reason, complaints in the country continue to be made not through official channels but rather through “collectives and feminist groups” (Godoy Ferro). Such activism takes place lar­ gely on social media, which although effective for social sanction, also brings opportunities for revictimization, through harassment, bullying, and the intimi­ dation of those who speak out. Despite the challenges victims and advocates face, some universities have been compelled to take certain allegations seriously. For instance, in 2020, Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá fired a biology professor for sexual harassment (“Desvinculan a profesor de Los Andes por presunto caso de acoso sexual”). Also, in EAFIT University in Medellín, two music professors were dismissed (“Universidad Eafit despidió a dos profesores denunciados por acoso sexual”).

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12 There is a great need to analyze, on the one hand, the contemporary places of normalization and romanticization of relationships that perpetuate violence and make universities places of fear for women and, on the other, the cultural pro­ duction of women who make visible and demand urgent change. Colombian female students and teachers have denounced through graffiti, blockades, batu­ cadas, videos on social media, making their testimonies known as victims of male professors and other professionals in positions of power who have control not only over their present but also over their future. The feminine cultural com­ mitment questions the lukewarm solutions of the institutions and puts their bodies and their words in the public arena where they are re-victimized and violated. These considerations are of particular interest since the Petro adminis­ tration came to power with an agenda of commitment to women, to their security, and to equality. However, this unique opportunity for change is still far from being realized. 13 In the film Quijano recites word for word entire passages from Don Quixote. In this chapter, rather than citing the Spanish version from the film and translating it, I cite from the English translation by John Ormsby, available through Project Gutenberg. 14 Minga indígena refers to groups of indigenous peoples who join together to do community work and to protest injustices against them. See Turkewitz and Villamil. 15 Montero and Peñaranda cite the deaths of 13 civilians in their 2020 article, but the total was later revised to 15. 16 Colombian and U.S.-Colombian academics joined under the name Primera Línea Académica to create resources for teaching about the Estallido Social (Colombia Syllabus). 17 Julio César Londoño’s column in El Espectador illustrates well the vulnerability of students. He describes events on May 4, 2021, at Universidad del Valle (Uni­ valle) in Cali, where wealthy and powerful citizens decided to arm themselves to confront the student protesters. Londoño recounts the episode: “De pronto alguien vociferó: ‘¡Tenemos 25.000 armas, malparidos!’. Era un señor de blanco que esgrimía una pistola desde su blanquísima camioneta Toyota Prado. Enton­ ces un estudiante contestó: ‘Nosotros tenemos la mejor biblioteca del país’” (“Suddenly someone shouted: ‘We have 25,000 weapons, you bastards!’ It was a man in white who wielded a gun from his very white Toyota Prado truck. Then a student answered: ‘We have the best library in the country!’”). The driver’s threat exemplifies the fear of the powerful when they feel that their privileges are threatened. In contrast, the emancipatory phrase of the student represents the freedom of knowledge and the empowerment that comes from having nothing to lose which propels them to fight. 18 The author explains that juvenicide, feminicide, and genocide are expressions of the necropolitics which “oil the machinery of neoliberalism” and evidence who is deemed disposable and who isn’t (19–20). 19 On May 12, 2023, María Jimena Duzán interviewed the leaders of the Primera Línea, who expressed their disappointment in the government’s lack of action. 20 Despertar means to wake up in Spanish. Just like in English, it assumes that those who are not paying attention are in a dreamlike state. The song is a com­ mand: “Wake up.” This demand in Colombia has been utilized by activists such as Colectivo Dexpierte, who paints murals in Bogotá and in many other places in Colombia. Their works are characterized by bright and phosphorescent colors. Each mural is a collective “action” that makes use of paint, lettering, and stencils made from photographs. The main intention of these “actions” is to remember people who have been disappeared by the state or with its complicity: “Dexpierte is an initiative that enables scenarios of resistance against oblivion and the con­ stant dismemorialization that Colombia is experiencing. This is how it proposes

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Reworking the Trauma of the Capital to go through the forgetfulness generated and interposed with time and history; forgetfulness marked by lies, prohibition, silence and domination as a structural part of a genocidal political and economic system with its own people” (Colec­ tivo Dexpierte “Re-existencias,” my translation). Dexpierte not only offers its street art gallery but also practices what they call “Arte-Memoria,” a process of virtual archiving of photography, video and cartography with which they reach other audiences, the results of which can be seen in the digital map Acciones y recorridos de memoria (Actions and memory routes).

Works Cited “Acoso en universidades: práctica sistemática pero poco dimensionada.” El Tiempo, 25 July 2020, www.eltiempo.com/vida/educacion/acoso-en-universidades-practica -sistematica-pero-poco-dimensionada-522042. Accessed 19 July 2023. Aguilar-Forero, Nicolás. “Memoria y juvenicidio en el estallido social de Colombia (2021).” Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud, 20(3), 2022, pp. 1–27, dx.doi.org/10.11600/rlcsnj.20.3.5492. Accessed 19 July 2023. Ariza, Carolina. Interview with Doris Salcedo. “Doris Salcedo: From Singular Identity To Collective Historiography.” AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, 31 October 2020, www.awarewomenartists.com/en/magazine/doris-sa lcedo-de-lidentite-singuliere-a-lhistoriographie-collective. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Asesinado Eduardo Umaña.” El Tiempo, 19 April 1998, www.eltiempo.com/a rchivo/documento/MAM-803695. Accessed 19 July 2023. Behar, Olga. Noches de humo: cómo se planeó y ejecutó la toma del Palacio de Jus­ ticia. Bogotá: Planeta, 1988. Braun, Herbert Tico. The Assassination of Gaitan: Public Life and Urban Violence in Colombia. University of Wisconsin Press, 1986. Carrigan, Ana. The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Todo pasó frente a nuestros ojos. El geno­ cidio de la Unión Patriótica 1984–2002. Bogotá, Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2018, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/todo-paso-frente-a-nues tros-ojos-genocidio-de-la-union-patriotica-1984–2002. Accessed 19 July 2023. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguelde. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, translated by John Ormsby, vol. 1, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885, www.gutenberg.org/files/996/996-h/996-h.htm. Accessed 19 July 2023. Cervantes Saavedra, Miguelde. The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, translated by John Ormsby, vol. 2, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885, www.gutenberg.org/files/5946/5946-h/5946-h.htm. Accessed 19 July 2023. Colectivo Dexpierte. Acciones y recorridos de memoria. Google Maps, 15 June 2015, www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?ll=7.318882,–74.838867&t=h&source=embed& ie=UTF8&msa=0&spn=10.8807,17.556152&z=6&mid=zvWFZB17jHxQ.kRzlGc IZMmIA. Accessed 19 July 2023. Colectivo Dexpierte. “Re-existencias y Re-conocimientos desde lo silenciado.” www. scribd.com/fullscreen/79494455?access_key=key–2ku2fhorgny252di3l0s. Accessed 19 July 2023. Colombia Syllabus. Primera línea académica, www.wakelet.com/@Colombia_Sylla bus_Primera_linea_academica9574. Accessed 19 July 2023.

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Desarme Rock Social. “El baile contra la motosierra.” YouTube, uploaded by Kinorama Colombia, 22 June 2013, www.youtu.be/GcNDIaaQ0VU. Accessed 19 July 2023. Desarme Rock Social. “Despierta.” YouTube, uploaded by Desarme Rock Social—Topic, 24 April 2023, www.youtu.be/vva9pSUlo2Y. Accessed 19 July 2023. Desarme Rock Social. “Dulcinea.” YouTube, uploaded by Red Collision Entertainment, 14 July 2020, www.youtu.be/8OgUUj8fQMg. Accessed 19 July 2023. Desarme Rock Social. “La herida del adiós.” YouTube, uploaded by Oscar Eduardo Cala W., 15 July 2020, www.youtu.be/rXkZXKqyDYw. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Desvinculan a profesor de Los Andes por presunto caso de acoso sexual.” Semana, 6 February 2020, www.semana.com/educacion/articulo/desvinculan-a-profesor-de­ los-andes-por-presunto-caso-de-acoso-sexual/650885. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Doris Salcedo explica su obra, Quebrantos.” YouTube, uploaded by El Espectador, 12 June 2019, www.youtu.be/dFGgv5CXPEc. Accessed 19 July 2023. Duzán, María Jimena. “¿Por qué los jóvenes de la primera línea no se ven repre­ sentados por Gustavo Petro?” A fondo con María Jimena Duzán, 12 May 2023, www.open.spotify.com/episode/4vfhuez9S0kS5s1thEnRgl?si=pgoKXgcp Q76DUfLv-_7OIg. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Eduardo Umaña Mendoza.” HRD Memorial, www.hrdmemorial.org/hrdrecord/ eduardo-umana-mendoza. Accessed 19 July 2023. “El magistrado Alfonso Reyes pidió al gobierno de Belisario Betancourt decretar un cese al fuego.” YouTube, uploaded by Señal Memoria, 6 November 2020, www. youtu.be/pHE3Cta-SIQ. Accessed 19 July 2023. Godoy Ferro, Mónica. “Las estudiantes denuncian, las universidades silencian.” Volcánicas, 23 March 2021, www.volcanicas.com/las-estudiantes-denuncian-la s-universidades-silencian. Accessed 19 July 2023. Gómez, Libia Stella. Question-and-answer session following a screening of Un tal Alonso Quijano. UNF International Poetry Festival, 4 April 2023, UNF Gallery of Art, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, FL. Herrera Puyana, Ángela María, Laura Daniela Gómez Rodríguez, and María Fer­ nanda García Fonseca. “¿Por qué TransMilenio en Bogotá está en crisis?” Revista Ciudades, Estados Y Política, 4(3), 2017, pp. 103–118, www.revistas.unal.edu.co/ index.php/revcep/article/view/68606. Accessed 25 July 2023. Jiménez Santofimio, Camilo. “‘Noviembre 6 y 7’, Doris Salcedo.” Semana, 23 January 2014, www.semana.com/impresa/especial-arcadia-100/articulo/arcadia-100-novie mbre-6-y-7-doris-salcedo/35117. Accessed 19 July 2023. Jiménez Santofimio, Camilo, and Tania Tapia Jáuregui. “Inside the Culture of Sexual Abuse at Colleges Across Colombia.” VICE, 19 October 2017, www.vice.com/en/a rticle/8x54bg/inside-the-culture-of-sexual-abuse-at-colleges-across-colombia. Accessed 19 July 2023. “La masacre de Bogotá.” YouTube, uploaded by Revista Semana, 16 September 2020, www.youtu.be/0uCwccqsXdE. Accessed 19 July 2023. Las Igualadas. “Así es el acoso sexual en universidades de América Latina.” YouTube, uploaded by La Pulla, 30 September 2018, www.youtu.be/E8A1uful1pc. Accessed 19 July 2023. Las Igualadas. “La Universidad Nacional no sabe qué hacer con el acoso sexual.” YouTube, uploaded by Las Igualadas, 22 May 2018, www.youtu.be/KBY Kio7yB7M. Accessed 19 July 2023.

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Las Igualadas. “La universidad que ignoró la denuncia pública de acoso sexual de 131 estudiantes.” YouTube, uploaded by Las Igualadas, 30 June 2020, www.youtu.be/ vG1alnTSq2Y. Accessed 19 July 2023. Las Igualadas. “Las universidades de Colombia son un infierno para las mujeres.” YouTube, uploaded by Las Igualadas, 26 September 2017, www.youtu.be/_ s7qR3YOzKs. Accessed 19 July 2023. Londoño, Julio César. “La orgía de sangre de los Trizas.” El Espectador, 7 May 2021, www.elespectador.com/opinion/la-orgia-de-sangre-de-los-trizas. Accessed 19 July 2023. López Baquero, Constanza María. Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: El testimonio feme­ nino en Colombia (1985–2000). Tempe, Arizona: Asociación Internacional de Lit­ eratura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica, 2012. “Llegó la hora de hablar de violencia sexual en las universidades colombianas.” El Diario from Semana, 2 April 2019, www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/llego-la-hora-de-habla r-de-violencia-sexual-en-las-universidades-colombianas/607914. Accessed 19 July 2023. Medina, Álvaro. “Alejandro Obregón, Germán Londoño y el tema de la violencia en el arte colombiano.” Palimpsesto, 3, 2003, pp. 130–144, www.revistas.unal.edu.co/ index.php/palimpsestvs/article/view/83057/72720. Accessed 19 July 2023. Montero, Sergio, and Isabel Peñaranda. “An Urban Perspective on the Colombian ‘Paro Nacional’.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2020, www.ijurr.org/spotlight-on/urban-revolts/an-urban-perspective-on-the-colombia n-paro-nacional. Accessed 19 July 2023. Muñoz, Germán, and Martha Marín. “EN LA MÚSICA: Están La Memoria, La Sabiduría, La Fuerza….” Estudios Sobre Las Culturas Contemporáneas, 12(23), June 2006, pp. 45–70.,www.search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthTyp e=shib&db=a9h&AN=21515542&site=eds-live&scope=site. Accessed 19 July 2023. Obregón, Alejandro. Violencia. 1962. Bogotá: Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia (MAMU) del Banco de la República, www.colecciones.banrepcultural.org/docum ent/coleccion/63a069025d96b8790f26128c. Accessed 25 July 2023. Quiroz Otero, Ciro. La Universidad Nacional de Colombia en sus pasillos y fuera de ellos. Bogotá, D.C.: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Rectoría, 2018. Ríos Monroy, Julián. “Un vuelo de cuatro minutos y una verdad que lleva 31 años en el aire.” El Tiempo, 27 November 2020, www.eltiempo.com/justicia/conflicto-y-na rcotrafico/31-anos-del-atentado-del-avion-de-avianca-437606. Accessed 19 July 2023. Salcedo, Doris. “Noviembre 6 y 7.” 6–7 November 2002, Bogotá: Plaza de Bolívar. Silva Schlesinger, Santiago. Paisajes inadvertidos: Miradas de la guerra en Bogotá. Bogotá: Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconcilición, 2019. Soler, Miguel. “La lúcida locura de don Quijote: Una máscara para la crítica social.” LEMIR, 12, 2008, pp. 309–324, www.parnaseo.uv.es/lemir/Revista/Revista12/14_ Soler_Miguel.pdf. Accessed 19 July 2023. Turkewitz, Julie, and Sofía Villamil. “Indigenous Colombians, Facing New Wave of Brutality, Demand Government Action.” New York Times, 24 October 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/world/americas/colombia-violence-indigenous-p rotest.html. Accessed 19 July 2023. Un tal Alonso Quijano. Directed by Libia Stella Gómez, performances by Álvaro Rodríguez, Manuel José Sierra, Brenda Quiñónez, and Felipe Ríos, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2020. “Universidad Eafit despidió a dos profesores denunciados por acoso sexual.” Semana, 19 October 2020, www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/universidad-eafit-despidio-a-dos-p rofesores-denunciados-por-acoso-y-abuso-sexual/202002. Accessed 19 July 2023.

5

Creating Feminist and

Depatriarchalized Spaces

Murals, Rap, and Ethics

Feminism, Community, and Collective Care Scholars in the Global South have argued that today’s society, particularly in the northern hemisphere, tends to value individualism over community, detrimentally affecting the social fabric. From that positionality, they believe that the Eurocentric capitalist/neoliberalist logic promotes individual over community rights and self-care over community care. Furthermore, care work has been seen as something that corresponds to family intimacy, and it is, for the most part, unpaid work. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Latin American feminists have been deliberating on the politics of care in order to balance needs and rights (Tronto 35).1 Marisa Fournier, for example, argues that the devastation of the pandemic revealed three crucial factors: the first is that humans are co and interdependent; the second, that health, educa­ tion, and food are fundamental rights, and for this reason, care work is vital for human life; and the third, that solidarity and cooperation are key for the preservation of life (22). Since care usually falls in the hands of women and other marginalized people, who take great responsibility for their families and communities, care theorists have expressed concern about the use of “care” as a way to manipulate, infantilize, or revictimize vulnerable people. My position on the politics of care follows Joan Tronto, who explains that all the negative arguments against the politics of care correspond to the politics of risk. Risk is disempowering because it implies that the world is a dangerous untrust­ worthy place over which we have little control. “Caring,” on the contrary, refers to looking after each other and working together. It is a political stance that resists fear. It sees the world as a place of need and vulnerability, but also, as a place where happiness is possible (37). Feminismo comunitario (communitarian feminism) argues that caring for the community is everyone’s responsibility and that battles are won through community solidarity. Bolivian activist and theorist Julieta Paredes is one of the leading voices of this alternative school of thought. Paredes situates knowledge in the bodies of indigenous peoples and their territories, under­ stood as the places where reflection, relationships, and political decisions are DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267-6

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made (“Despatriarcalización” 103). In conjunction with Buen Vivir, femin­ ismo comunitario offers a political praxis to eradicate all forms of domina­ tion that are intrinsically linked to the patriarchy (Guzmán and Triana 23).2 For Paredes, patriarchy is the essence of the subjugation of bodies and ter­ ritories, and therefore a process of depatriarchalization is needed. This work involves recovering, reinventing, and reinterpreting language to name what has been denied to the racialized and marginalized. For women, this means “recovering our bodies, our stories, and our proposals for the future” (“Hilando” 112). Patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism form a historical triad that oppresses both female and feminized bodies as well as the Pachamama.3 The connection of the body and the territory is critical for feminismo comunitario in Guatemala, where indigenous thinkers such as Lorena Cabnal believe that body-land-territory has been usurped by the patriarchy. She explains that before the arrival of Spaniards to Abya Yala, there were patriarchal relationships among original peoples, but “when the colonial patriarchy joined the ancestral patriarchy, this colonial patriarchy exercised power, control, domination, and expropriation of bodies and land” (“Espe­ cial: Territorio, cuerpo, tierra”). Indigenous cosmology conceives life as a woven net that has suffered great violence and has to be mended. In this net, everything is connected and, as feminists, it is crucial to recover the Earth, and protect the land and all its resources in order to live well. With that said, Cabnal emphasizes that bodies are territories, and the land and natural resources cannot be defended without defending the lives of girls and women. Cabnal explains: Part of the postulate of Community feminism in Guatemala lays out the recovery and defense of the body-territory, because although I recognize that all oppression, misogyny, racism, colonialism, lesbophobia, etc., have been built on this body, also in this body resides the political power to emancipate. In this body, I can find the possibility of recreat­ ing myself, of revitalizing myself among other bodies. As long as those bodies do not exercise hegemony, control, and domination over mine, I can recreate and revitalize myself with energy from those bodies that are searching for emancipatory paths for life… It seems to me that this body can also be revitalized by nature.… Community feminism in Guatemala believes in healing as a political cosmic path … “If you heal, I heal. If I heal, you heal. It is reciprocity.” (“Especial: Territorio, cuerpo, tierra”) This chapter examines how feminism and community play out in the urban space and spaces of fear in Colombia’s capital. Communitarian feminism and Buen Vivir are present in the cultural production and activism of Guayra Puka Arias Florián, a sociologist, muralist, and community artivist based in Bogotá. She works together with women and youth groups to

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create collective murals and graffiti, which she considers open spaces for communication, negotiation, and political action. The concept of shared vulnerabilities4 is also present in the analysis of the feminist rap Diana Avella, an artist and gestora cultural, 5 who is committed to confronting the realities of the country. Through their art, these women summon and include other female voices, forming a collective body that fights and heals together. This unified entity demands justice and assumes responsibility for its own territories, which are regarded as extensions of their own bodies. Indirectly, their work points to common threads that weave a Latin Amer­ ican history of women who govern territories as they reimagine and recreate those places.

Murals Depicting Female Thought Bogotá is one of the cities that best exemplifies the relationship between contemporary Latin American urban art and democracy. Politics are actively and incisively debated on the streets, where every injustice, claim against the government, and denunciation is painted and graffitied on buildings, walls, and bridges. Throughout the city, we also find a variety of female repre­ sentations, fictional and real, that promote inclusion by highlighting the diversity of Colombian women and, at the same time, confronting racism and machismo. Graffiti in Bogotá was legalized in 2013 when Gustavo Petro was mayor of the city. The events that fueled the debate that led to its legalization have hints of magical realism, including the murder of a teenager, a police cover-up, and Justin Bieber. The story is widely known in the country, and one can hear it in Bogotá’s graffiti tours or read it in news reports and academic papers. In 2011, Diego Felipe Becerra, a 16-year-old student, was tagging under the 116th Street Bridge when a police officer shot him in the back. The Metropolitan Police immediately began a smear campaign falsely accusing the young man of being armed. Justice, in this case, did not come until over ten years after the young man’s parents began fighting to find the culprit of the murder, who was finally charged in 2017, but managed to evade capture for five years, finally being arrested in 2022. Meanwhile, in 2013, Canadian singer Justin Bieber visited Bogotá, and accompanied and protected by the Metropolitan Police, painted a wall on 26th Street. The city’s graffiti artists were outraged, and through a campaign on social networks, made a call to all artists to cover up Bieber’s painting and take over the walls. Numerous artists, including Becerra’s father, arrived to paint during the next 24 hours. Soon after, and amid many con­ troversies, Petro signed Decree 75 in 2013, by which, as Gabriel Ortiz van Meerbeke and Bjørn Sletto explain, “the city shifted to allowing graffiti every­ where except in sites where it would not be tolerated.”6 There are many graffiti artists in the city—individuals and crews—and some of them are famous nationally and internationally. Many are com­ mitted to social causes. Among them, I became interested in Guayra Puka

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because her art integrates academic reflection with community activism within a feminist framework. As she explained when I interviewed her in 2014, the walls are “the public spaces that by right belong to us to express ourselves freely” and yet, they are spaces that only businesses and adver­ tisers can access. Conceived in this way, painting walls is a collective dialo­ gue and political action that counteracts the messages that consumer media promote. Guayra Puka describes these actions as negotiated proposals in which each of the participants changes the sketch to represent and recreate their own pain, their own story, and their own identity. Through her collaborative murals, Guayra Puka raises the possibility of generating spaces for communication, encounters, and the creation of memory. Her social painting has been inspired by the Chilean Brigadas Ramona Parra, which consist of organized groups of muralists who use public spaces to deliver their political message.7 She is also one of the founders of Corporación para la Investigación y el Trabajo Comunitario Aitue, a collective formed by young people in 2011 with the aim of impact­ ing communities in Southwestern Bogotá: “We utilize popular education as a way of working with the people, we identify needs within the neighbor­ hoods, we brainstorm plans, and develop and implement them in order to recover and rebuild the social fabric.” Guayra Puka’s work as a muralist began in the early 2000s when she combined her great passions—drawing, which she used as a form of catharsis, and sociology, the career she was studying. She realized the potential that her drawings had by adding social elements to them. Her work focused on com­ munities that were not institutionally recognized as victims. Guayra Puka explains the intricacy of the war in the Capital where “there is a tendency to designate the displaced as victims and identify them with events that have occurred outside of Bogotá.” On the contrary, those communities that have suffered victimization within the city seem to be invisible: “There is some type of compensation for relatives of community leaders who were killed, but the communities that were under the protection of that leader are completely abandoned.” In addition, neighborhoods that were under control of guerrillas or other illegal groups face additional challenges: when the leaders of those groups died, the residents not only lost protection but they were also them­ selves branded thereafter as criminals or guerrilleros. Although they were victims, their association with illegality precluded any recognition. Due to this complexity, Guayra Puka contemplates the need for dialogue and negotiation to break cycles of violence, silence, and revictimization. To do this, she develops collective graffiti assemblies in which she works toge­ ther with the community to elaborate the message: I design it, I draw it, but with everyone’s contribution. They are very simple drawings, but the idea is to evoke situations, actions, and shared spaces, that is, without being afraid of symbolism and making sure the symbol is absolutely evident. The criteria, of whether an action is going

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to be carried out or not, becomes evident not because one person is painting, but because many come together to build a collective propo­ sal—so it is not one, it is not just me who invents a sketch. Everyone negotiates the sketch, the proposal. We build the message, we all manage it, and we all contribute to the realization of the mural. Guayra Puka’s murals are committed to the ethics of not forgetting, as is evident in her work Renacer de la UP (Renewal of the UP, 2014), a mural that honors the struggles and survival of the political party Unión Patriótica, better known as the UP.8 The history of this party exemplifies the way in which the country’s elites, ruling class, and right-wing armed groups have dealt with leftist movements. During the 1980s, President Belisario Betancur (1982–1986), who had come to power with the promise of peace, began a national dialogue with the country’s guerrilla groups including, Movimiento 19 de Abril, M-19; Ejército Popular de Liberación, EPL; and Fuerzas Arma­ das Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC. He formed the Commission for Negotiation and Dialogue and Colombians trusted that a ceasefire could be possible. Artists around the country began to paint doves that symbolized peace. Some were white birds that extended their wings as if embracing peace, some carried laurel branches, and some were wrapped in the national flag. Many were accompanied by slogans that expressed support and enthusiasm. In the pages of her book Historia de un entusiasmo (The His­ tory of an Enthusiasm, 1999),9 Laura Restrepo recorded the euphoria that this possibility brought to the country. Furthermore, renowned cultural fig­ ures Fernando Botero and Gabriel García Márquez painted doves as a sign of support for the peace process. The latter wrote next to his drawing the slogan “Peace with Open Eyes,” meaning that peace had to be actively monitored and guarded.10 The peace process, however, was not easy and it had many enemies including the Armed Forces and conservative elites. Persecution of the guer­ rillas during the ceasefire made many distrustful of the government. Betan­ cur could not bring about peace, and the national tragedy of the Palace of Justice in 1985 ended up crippling his government.11 Suspicious of the government’s intentions, and even more so of the military and the recently created paramilitary groups, the FARC did not continue to partake in the dialogues. They did obtain, however, a com­ mitment from the government through the creation of the Unión Patriótica as a political arm that would eventually allow them to demobilize. The new party broke away from the FARC in 1987, mainly because its mem­ bers suffered persecution and political violence (Todo Pasó 44). The UP became an alternative party for many Colombians, and numerous lawyers, human rights defenders, and other professionals belonged to this party. The presence of such prominent citizens, however, did not prevent allega­ tions that the party supported the guerrillas, and the persecution of the UP membership increased. Between 1984 and 2002,

134

Creating Feminist and Depatriarchalized Spaces 4,153 members of this party were murdered, disappeared or kidnapped. Among these, 3,122 were victims of selective murder, 544 were victims of forced disappearance, 478 were victims of murder in massacres, 4 were kidnapped and 3 more suffered other forms of violence, (Todo Pasó 108)

Many others were driven into exile, forcibly displaced, and suffered illegal detentions, sexual abuse, torture, threats, and more. On January 30, 2023, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights announced its ruling that Colombia is responsible for the extermination of the political party.12 The memory that remains of the UP is that of an annihilated political party whose presidential candidates, Jaime Pardo Leal (1939–1987) and Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa (1955–1990), were assassinated, and these crimes have remained in impunity.13 The accumulation of violence that marks the life and death of the members of the UP has left a trauma in the city itself, which reveals a need to make visible and document their memory. This trauma is evident in the number of writings, murals, and graffiti in general, that mark the city.14 For Guayra Puka, this issue is very close to her own experience because her father was killed for political reasons, as he was a community leader, associated with the Communist Party and the worker’s unions. Her mural, which was located on Calle 19 and Carrera Décima in the center of Bogotá, pays homage to the survivors of the UP.15 Her interpretation of the struggles faced by the victims focuses on rebuilding. The mural seeks to rewrite history, showing the life that remains despite so much death.

Figure 5.1 Renacer de la UP (Renewal of the UP, 2014), a mural by Guayra Puka in Bogotá. Photograph taken by the author on July 21, 2014.

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Contrary to the common perception that the party was eliminated, the UP has, in fact, survived to tell its story. Its members today take responsibility for confronting the past and finding the truth in order to obtain justice. Their bodies remain present and are capable of joy. This is important in Guayra Puka’s colorful piece, where the greens and yellows, colors of the land which are associated with the Unión Patriótica, are prominent. At the bottom of the wall, a working-class barrio is illustrated. Out of the humble houses, flags waving in the air represent a desire for peace and inclusion. In the middle of a light blue sky, a hand holds a corn cob which is also an element linked to the land, and to our peasant and indigenous history. Corn is the symbol of rebirth and also the insignia of indigenous movements in Latin America. The people on the left side of the wall are surrounded by the color red, signaling their affiliation to the revolutionary struggle, but also as an allusion to the life that continues despite the loss. During my interview with Guayra Puka in July 2014, she shared that after finishing this mural, she could not move for almost two months due to the physical effort and the historical, personal, and collective responsibility that she carried on her shoulders. The Argentinean phrase, “poner el cuerpo” comes to mind when analyzing Guayra Puka’s embodied practice, which goes beyond being present to give all your physical, mental, and emotional effort. Barbara Sutton explains: Poner el cuerpo overlaps somewhat with “to put the body on the line” and to “give the body,” but it transcends both notions. With respect to political agency, poner el cuerpo means not just to talk, think, or desire but to be really present and involved; to put the whole (embodied) being into action, to be committed to a social cause, and to assume the bodily risks, work, and demands of such a commitment. Poner el cuerpo is part of the vocabulary of resistance in Argentina [and Latin America] and implies the importance of material bodies in the transformation of social relations and history. (130) In 2013, accompanied by 40 women who belong to the Women’s Movement for Peace and other collective organizations of women and feminists, Guayra painted another large-scale mural titled Mujeres por la Paz (Women for Peace).16 A diverse population of women participated, including grand­ mothers, young girls, black and indigenous women, and homeless people who lived in the area. They made themselves present, claiming their sexual rights, demanding political participation for women, poniendo el cuerpo, to make Colombia understand that peace was impossible without them. They all rejected “the war which has put women in unbelievable situations where they bear children to fight.” Women were decisive in defining limits: “We will not send our sons to the war to face other children of other mothers. We declare ourselves in civil resistance. We demand a bilateral cease of fire. We are Women for Peace” (Arias Florián).

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Figure 5.2 Mujeres por la Paz (Women for Peace, 2013), a mural by Guayra Puka in Bogotá. Photograph taken by the author on July 21, 2014.

The mural was painted at a time when a new peace agreement was on its way.17 In 2012, President Juan Manuel Santos started dialogues with repre­ sentatives of the FARC-EP. All the government delegates were men, “sending the message that war was a man’s business” (Fernández-Matos and GonzálezMartínez). Women, who had had to endure extreme losses and who had been spoils of war during all the years of conflict, demanded inclusion: Women’s and feminist organizations protested the lack of representa­ tion of women and reminded the State of its international commitments to human rights and gender equality. For this reason, they came toge­ ther and decided to create the group “Women for Peace” in October 2012.… On December 4, 2012, Women for Peace produced the mani­ festo “La paz sin las mujeres ¡No va!” [“Peace will not take place without women”], which expressed the need for women to assume leading roles in the negotiations that were taking place between the Government and the FARC-EP. Their claims were heard: in 2013, two women plenipotentiaries were appointed and in 2014, the sub-commis­ sion on gender was created. (Fernández-Matos and González-Martínez) The mural consists of many colors and abstract figures that recreate aspects of the female body. These female representations reveal a rainbow of diversity and communicate effort and collective triumph. The eyes and breasts of many shapes and sizes signify that women are present and vigi­ lant; the breasts imply femininity and also motherhood. The hands represent the construction of a collective body and a more just society. The raised fists

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are the worldwide symbol of solidarity and unity. These hands, noses, and mouths are painted in different colors because Colombian women are diverse, Guayra Puka explains, recalling the women participants who mixed the colors to insert themselves into the painting. They made figures that matched the color of their skin and the shapes of their noses and mouths. They also wanted to paint butterflies, because these insects sym­ bolize women’s struggles and rebirth into free beings who are beautiful in their differences. By portraying themselves in these specific spaces, these women create new references and alternatives for themselves and for others. This embodied art shows how women’s bodies carry the weight of war, but also how these bodies transform spaces and make them emanci­ patory places of resistance and collective clamor. The women who parti­ cipate in these murals reconstruct their memories and identities, writing their feelings, sorrows, happiness, and hopes, imprinting these places with female bodies and thoughts.

Corpo AITUE: Solving Everyday Problems Chilean revolutionary culture has had a great influence on Guayra Puka, not only on her painting campaigns but in the collective Corpo Aitue, which she founded together with other young professionals. In the Mapuche indigen­ ous language, Aitue means “the land that is loved,” and this word holds great meaning for Guayra Puka and her team, who decided to invest their work and experience to care for their territory. They use academic reflection and situated knowledge to provide answers to specific questions about the problems faced by the community and how to make their territory a better living space for all. The communities that Guayra Puka and her collective have worked with in the southwest of Bogotá for more than a decade reside in areas that have been abandoned by the State and therefore lack basic resources. There, the popu­ lation is exposed to new forms of violence, including revictimization by the State, emerging armed groups, and the so-called “ollas de la droga,” which literally translates as “drug pots” and refers to lawless places where people can openly buy and use drugs. In Colombia, they are managed by combos that recruit young people from the neighborhoods as vendors and consumers. Although Corpo Aiute had initially planned to work with adults to address the needs of the community, they soon realized that only children and young people came to their meetings. While some in the organization felt discouraged, for others, this created new opportunities for reflection, learning, and acting. Guayra Puka explains: Since the adults didn’t come, only children did, some felt like they did not sign up to work in a nursery. They saw it as an activity beneath them, as “care work.” This shows that we live in a very machista and patriarchal society, and depatriarchalizing has been complicated for

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Creating Feminist and Depatriarchalized Spaces Aitue, because there are always more women than men in this exercise. However, there has not been much awareness about the female body, female work, or awareness about boys and girls as subjects of trans­ formation. This is the change that we are building! (Noriega 35)

Through painting and other artistic activities, the collective treats the local children as true political subjects with the power to make a real generational change. They have identified the need for childcare to be a communal respon­ sibility. In Colombian society, childcare is still the work of women, thus pre­ venting the personal development of caregivers, and in the case of marginalized women, this situation also prevents the development of their community. One of Aitue’s most important initiatives is “Callejón con salidas” (“Alley with exits”),18 a collective action that involves everyone in the community, particularly children and youth. They utilize popular pedagogy that focuses on activities that they describe as “sentipensantes,” a word that combines the verbs sentir (to feel) and pensar (to think).19 Using both feelings and thoughts is key for communitarian work, which opposes the capitalist dehumanization of work based on productivity. Aitue believes that by pro­ viding children and youth with outlets and alternatives, the organization gives them the power to impact “the spaces of communal action, the streets, community action boards, and their own homes” (“Economía Social del Cuidado”). They create dances, theater, murals, community gardens, songs, and games that promote the affective bond as a community praxis and as a political act. With “Callejón con salidas,” they demonstrate other ways of being, existing, resisting, and living within the territory. These empowering practices seek to make children and women from the neighborhoods, poli­ tically active people who can govern over their territories by leading and demanding their rights to live well and inhabit worthy places. As a specialist in public care policies with a gender perspective, Guayra Puka is keen to discuss sexual education with young people. They meet to talk about sexuality and unwanted and premature pregnancies. By opening this forum, they confront a major issue within the community that concerns both females and males. Her work also addresses gender inequality, a dia­ logue that is necessary because of what she identifies as constant, pervasive violence against women: Any woman who works in community organizations and does not assume herself a feminist has a serious problem, because my reasons for being a feminist are the permanent sexual and gender violence in which I find myself, in every situation. Even my own male coworkers—the most conscious, the most humane, the most sensitive—exercise a type of systematic violence towards me. For that reason, I am committed to dedicating a space to the gender perspective in all the educational spaces we create. Machismo occurs even at an unconscious level in all

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relationships … there is a constant exercise of manipulation against women; not only against the traditional women, but even with women who have broken those schemes, slightly more subtle violence is exerted against them. (Árias Florián) Aitue mends the social fabric by empowering the community to care for and govern their territory. It focuses on those people who are more vulnerable within the community and also best able to recognize the need to collabo­ rate. Taking matters into their own hands, they work together to transform, beautify, appropriate, and take care of the land they love in order to pro­ mote Buen Vivir.

Diana Avella, Feminism in Hip Hop Diana Avella is one of the pioneers of Colombian female rap and is recog­ nized as one of the greatest exponents of this musical genre in the country. Her fame is evidenced by many high-profile performances, including at the Great National Concert with the Bogotá Symphony Orchestra (FOSBO) on July 20, 2022.20 She was also one of the invited artists during the inauguration of President Gustavo Petro on August 7, 2022. She has been a judge at the Red Bull Batalla de los Gallos Awards, one of the most important hip hop venues in Latin America. Avella is committed to the social realities of the country and is a spokesperson for women’s rights in Colombia and abroad. She is part of ÚNETE, a UN Women’s initiative against gender-based vio­ lence, and the campaign “No Es Hora de Callar,” “Now Is Not the Time to Be Silent,” founded by journalist and activist Jineth Bedoya in 2010.21 Her lyrics and videos have been embraced and shared by organizations including Safe World for Women, among others. She has a degree in Spanish Language and a Master’s in Education and Technology from the Francisco José de Caldas District University. She has published academic articles in important journals and works incessantly to promote hip hop as a catalyst for true cul­ tural change. She is a single parent who recovers, revitalizes, and claims the right to be a mother, an artist, a professional, and an ambassador for rap and women’s rights, and to succeed in all aspects of her life. I interviewed Avella for the first time on July 20, 2014, Colombian Inde­ pendence Day, on a soccer field where her son, Juan Diego, was playing a game. I arrived by bus to barrio Rincón, in Suba, a municipality north of Bogotá. My dad, who was alive at the time, accompanied me because he knew the city very well, and for me, Bogotá was, and still is, a labyrinth. He was a little apprehensive about leaving me alone in the area, known for its crime rate and for being a challenging place to navigate, but once Diana arrived, he relaxed and left me with her. We walked to the field and spoke for an hour amid the game’s noise. She never stopped “maternando” while talking to me—she cheered her son, told him that she loved him, that he

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was playing really well, and reminded him to drink water, put on sunscreen, and so on.22 She explained the joys and struggles of being a single mother from a barrio. She spoke from her own point of view and from the per­ spective of being the daughter of a single mother in a society where the responsibility of raising children falls to women: Men are not used to women having visibility or a more important job than them. So all those kinds of things are going to have a resonance and the point is that sometimes one must get a little radical because you see it as normal, but, there are women who have been murdered and leave their children with deep traumas, children that are also part of the aggression against other women. Women alone have to support their children, pay for school, feed them, to see that they are well cared for, that they are not on the street. Women pay the rent, services, clothing, etc. I think that is the struggle, which obviously empowers me to ask questions because there are unfair and undignified, political, social, and economic con­ ditions that are structural. And there, in the middle, we women are receiving, from all sides, messages about how difficult and how undignified this life is. That is life in this capitalist system and especially in this political and economic system in Colombia. (Avella, Personal interview) Diana also shared her ethics of “maternar,” which for her means setting an example, making her son part of every aspect of her life, and saying and acting with consistency and consciousness. She mentioned her hardships and triumphs as a woman in hip hop, as well as her efforts to obtain a degree. After the game, she invited me to her house to watch the documentary, Tres mujeres guerreras/Three Women Warriors (2014), produced by German filmmaker, Alexander Preussand, which had been recently released in Europe, but couldn’t be seen in Colombia at the time. While she got ready, Diana left me to watch the film with Juan Diego, who was very proud of his mother. In the film, one of the women warriors is Avella, who not only gives her perspective on the armed conflict but also raps the song “Tres mujeres guerreras” (2014), which recounts the courage of three women in the midst of all the senseless violence that has affected Colombia.23 The song praises the work of Teresa Castrillón, a survivor of the war in Puerto Berrío, Antioquia, a pueblo located in the Magdalena Medio. She was the founder of the victim’s organization Ave Fénix that searched for the disappeared in that area of the country. Avella’s lyrics celebrate the strength of Teresa, who is referred to as “Ave Fénix.” Her faith is immutable despite the grim nature of her labor: searching for the bodies of disappeared people in the Magdalena River.24

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Todos los lunes a las cinco de la tarde la parroquia recibe al Ave Fénix Sus ojos están cansados pero ella no tiene miedo y aún cree que su oración dará la paz a ese cuerpo El Magdalena y sus colores aún alberga en sus entrañas una vida sin vida, un alma anónima, Es una historia, es su familia, son sus hijos, su mamá Es seguro, un hombre desplazado por la violencia, que asesinaron paracos, por defender su tierra Es el dolor de una patria lanzado sin compasión a un río para ocultar lo que pasó El río habla, ella lo escucha y también siente angustia, es más su valentía el Ave Fénix después de la eucaristía organiza su trabajo del otro día adoptar bondadosa a un cuerpo sin vida, rescatarlo del Magdalena y darle santa sepultura El Ave Fénix al río escucha porque nació en el campo, pero también porque a los suyos los mataron Y en una pared escribe religiosa la fecha y la hora de esas muertes pero no teme, no guarda rencores, ella habla del perdón para sanar sus dolores Puerto Berrío tiene en sus calles a Teresa que no mira la causa solo ayuda presta Teresa Castrillón, mi heroína del día, ella merecería mucho más que estas rimas. [Every Monday at 5 p.m., the parish receives the Phoenix Her eyes are tired but she’s not afraid and she still believes that her prayer will give peace to that body The Magdalena River and her colors still harbor in her bowels a lifeless life, an anonymous soul, It is a story, it is her family, they are her children, her mother It is for sure, a man displaced by violence, paramilitaries murdered him for defending his land It is the pain of our homeland mercilessly thrown into a river to hide what happened The river speaks, she listens to it and also feels anguish, but her courage is stronger After going to church, the Phoenix organizes her daily work kindly adopting a lifeless body, rescuing it from the Magdalena River, and giving it a holy burial The Phoenix listens to the river because she was born in the countryside but also because her family members were killed And on a wall, she writes religiously the date and time of those deaths but she does not fear, she does not hold grudges, she talks about forgiveness to heal her pain

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Creating Feminist and Depatriarchalized Spaces Puerto Berrio has Teresa on its streets. She does not look for causes, she only helps Teresa Castrillón, my heroine of the day, would deserve much more than these rhymes]

The song portrays the reality of the victims in Colombia who take upon themselves the responsibility that corresponds to the state. Their work, similar to that of Antigone, exemplifies the struggle to provide dignity to bodies that have been mutilated by a war waged by powerful men.25 For Teresa, peace means to give appropriate burial to all the victims, regardless of their allegiance. Her faith and work are directed toward obtaining a peaceful future where all desaparecidos are accounted for. Yamile Ocampo is the next woman mentioned in the song. A victim herself, Ocampo is project manager at Fundación Ratón de Bibliotecas, an organization founded in 1981 that works to bring books to marginalized communities and promotes critical thinking through reading. Through the worst moments of the war in the city of Medellín, she took librarianship and literacy to the streets, challenging the imposed invisible borders by promoting the care of life through reading. In the face of constant danger, Ocampo traveled through the comunas to foment the love for books and provide alternatives to the pain left by the war. Avella characterizes her as the fairy grandmother who transforms a world of horrors into a place of hope, showing how the work of rebuilding communities falls in the hands of women: Cuando tu mundo ha sido cercenado, ha sido fusilado cuando creciste entre el miedo de ver morir a un hermano Cuando tus manos no alcanzaban a sostener la angustia de tu pobreza Tú fuiste más allá que él, que ese miedo que enceguece vidas, que nubla vistas y que miente y entonces disfrazaste a los fantasmas, le diste color a las heridas pa’ que sanaran Hiciste un arcoíris de comuna a comuna un ratón de biblioteca sacaste de su cuna para que reviviera la palabra que unos tenían silenciada con fronteras invisibles Señora Yamile, por favor guárdeme un libro de los suyos, con miles de figuras Señora Yamile, la necesitan los niños, la llaman que cuándo trae libros, que cuándo va a Manrique La señora Yamile está llena de juventud, pero son muchos años dedicados al estudio, alfabetizaba porque asustan mucho las balas de la ignorancia Coordina las bibliotecas populares y hace de verdades realidades necesarias

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Gracias por llevarle esos libros a esos niños por emancipar su alma, por ser de este cuento nuestra hada [When your world has been severed, it has been shot when you grew up in fear for seeing your brother die When your hands were not enough to hold the anguish of your poverty You went beyond that, that fear that blinds lives, that clouds views and that lies and then you disguised the ghosts, you gave color to the wounds so that they healed and you made a rainbow from comuna to comuna You took a bookworm out from his crib to revive the word that some had silenced with invisible borders Ms. Yamile, please save me a book of yours with thousands of pictures Ms. Yamile, the children call her, they need her. When will you bring books? When will you come to Manrique? Ms. Yamile is full of youth but dedicated many years to studying, She teaches reading and writing because the bullets of ignorance cause fear She coordinates libraries for the people and makes necessary realities out of truth Thank you for bringing those books to those children, for emancipating their souls, for being our fairy godmother in this story] In the last part of the song, Avella portrays herself as the third of the women warriors. Her work, as she explains, is to narrate the stories of the city and its women. Her lyrics try to make sense of the place of women in the war: Ella es la narradora de cada historia urbana de calle en calle con mil versos para rebelarse Nació en Santa Rosa, en Las Lomas del Centro Oriente sintió la pobreza y el dolor de su gente vive modesta con su hijo, es madre soltera y aprendió a que la resistencia debe hacerla con letras está orgullosa por todos los pasos dados porque a punta del Rap todo lo ha logrado ha llegado tan lejos como ha querido, es fuerte, es valiente, aunque a veces llora porque le duele el dolor de los que el sistema ignora Y cree que otro mundo es posible, por eso deja que la inspiren mujeres como Teresa y Yamile [She is the narrator of every urban story from street to street with thousands of verses for rebellion She was born in Santa Rosa, in Las Lomas, in the Centro Oriente she felt the poverty and pain of her people

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Creating Feminist and Depatriarchalized Spaces She lives modestly with her son, she is a single mother, and she learned that resistance must be done with lyrics she is proud of all the steps taken because she has achieved everything through rap she’s gone as far as she’s wanted, she is strong, she is brave, although sometimes she cries because she is hurt by the pain of those ignored by the system She believes that another world is possible, so she lets women like Teresa and Yamile inspire her.]

Women retell the stories of other women and, for Avella, being the spokesperson for women who work for peace, for mothers who struggle, for women who decide over their own bodies, is a great responsibility. Her songs portray the reality of Colombian and Latin American women. After visiting her house, Diana asked me to accompany her to the home of her extended family, as she needed to spend the rest of her day visiting her relatives and running errands. I met her uncle, her aunts and her mother, who made me feel like part of the family. They served me a delicious lunch and showed me great kindness. I met Diana again a few days later, and we had coffee in the Centro de Bogotá and spoke at length about theories of Latin American Testimonio. At the time she was writing her award-winning thesis, which she titled “Nacimiento de una experiencia” (Birth of an Experience, 2015), a testimonial piece that recounts the trajectory of rap in Bogotá and her experience as a woman from a barrio who owes her success to her art. Since then, Diana has finished her Master’s degree with a thesis titled, La revolución del guetto, el aula es la calle: Tecnología, hip hop y educación popular (The Ghetto Revolution, the Classroom is the Street: Technology, Hip Hop and Popular Education, 2022), where she collects the voices of the most important rappers and hip hop figures in Colombia, who talk about the processes and social transformations based on their art. In my interactions with Diana, conversation comes easily. By sharing my experiences with her, I seek to illustrate the essence of Latin American communitarian feminism, where care and affective bonds are indispensable for working together, and where thinking, feeling, and doing are ways of understanding each other.

A Girl from the Barrio Hip hop produced by women reveals personal and historical traumas that demand justice. This cultural production shows, on the one hand, the pain and loss caused by public and private violence, and on the other, calls out for gender equality in their profession, in society, and in the reconstruction of Colombian national identity. The road to equality is thorny. The diffi­ culties for women rappers are great because they not only have to face the innate marginality of doing hip hop, but also a society that condemns their

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involvement in activities understood as belonging to men. As Ángela Garcés Montoya explains: Inquiring about women in hip hop recognizes how culture does its job, and in Colombian society, the feminine and masculine spaces are well defined. Evidence of the symbolic spatial separation assigned to men and women is found in the naturalization of places proper to each gender: “Men belong on the street … women, in the house,” a harsh popular adage that assigns each gender its place and reorganizes all family, production, power relations, and their rules of sociability. (47, my translation) It is precisely when the masculine place is reterritorialized that hip hop reveals its transformative capacity. Hip hop artists create narratives, rewrite the city, take it over, take control of unlikely situations, and make them their own. If before they were involved in a maelstrom of alien violence, through hip hop they manage to conquer it, study it, and distance them­ selves from it to take control of their own bodies, communities, and envir­ onments. Through rap, they claim the right to be a woman, to express themselves, and inhabit the streets. Urban art offers them an alternative life where the hopper, rapper, and graffiti artist can tell their stories from their own point of view and recreate it, make it another. Hip hop, then, is not just a musical and artistic genre, but a way of existing. The lyrics of their songs also address the theory and practice of making female hip hop, as in the case of Avella, who maintains a firm ethic that change starts with her. Avella illustrates how her commitment to hip hop lies in portraying the lives of women who struggle as she does in her song “Rapeando como una niña” (“Rapping Like a Girl,” 2018), where the protagonist “Diana Avella” speaks of her achievements but also of the criticisms and difficulties that women in rap must face for usurping the masculine space: Treinta y cinco, cinco kilos de sobrepeso Un disco, una carrera, un hijo, once países, dos océanos con más de cien canciones y solo una pegó en la radio, sin embargo yo sigo Cuatro continentes, incontables tarimas, ni una rima, ni una sílaba, salida de sentido trescientas mil críticas casi todas falsas menos las que dicen que las brujas también bailan 4:30 a.m., trescientos días al año, doce, catorce, dieciséis horas de trabajo poco descanso, ni una sentí, más arrugas, sigo aquí y entre tantas ecuaciones solo atinaron a decir “mala rapera” Ven y me lo dices a mí Una mujer más que se opuso al sistema Al rap pone sabor y a los raperos tarea no soy la única, la mejor, ni la primera

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Creating Feminist and Depatriarchalized Spaces soy la que madruga y a nadie le tira piedra

No hago zancadilla, no miro competencia

Lucho por sentirme de la sopa la pimienta

[Thirty five, five kg. overweight An album, a career, a son, eleven countries, two oceans with more than a hundred songs and only one hit on the radio, none­ theless I continue Four continents, countless stages not a rhyme, not a syllable, without of meaning Three hundred thousand criticisms, almost all of them false, except those that say that witches also dance 4:30 a.m., three hundred days a year, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours of work, little rest, I did not feel it, with more wrinkles, I’m still here and among so many equations they only managed to say “bad rapper” Come and tell that to my face I am one more woman who opposed the system I give flavor to rap and homework to rappers I’m not the only one, the best, nor the first I am the one who gets up early and doesn’t throw stones at anyone I don’t trip anyone, I don’t look for competition I fight to feel like pepper in the soup]

By inserting her body into rap lyrics and showing herself as she is, Avella challenges the image of women in rap and other urban musical genres, and in popular culture in general, where women are violated and objectified. Avella portrays a real woman who does not remain silent: I began to have a leadership role in the hip hop movement. One voice, one vote, that is, it was not a voice or the basic intervention, with light arguments, but it is already a voice with academic arguments, with the weight of the academy and with the support as an activist, as part of processes, and organizations in Bogotá, and real actions. Of course, the hip hop movement in the city did not like that. So, of course, well, I had to endure all the criticism and the whole world of things that came at me. (Avella, Personal interview) The next part of the song addresses the double discrimination of being women and women hip-hoppers. In a country where el qué dirán—the opinion of others—matters excessively, daring to be different is punishable by society and also by male hip-hoppers who see women in the movement as fulfilling a quota: Tus letras misóginas no me asustan

tus ínfulas de macho a mí no me angustian

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van y vienen las palabras de motivación que me dicen que soy la dueña del honor de traer la métrica, la rima poética, un hip hop de cátedra y un kilo de ética Con el sabor de calle silenciando wannabes No se preocupen por mí tranquilos que ya volví No estaba en pausa estaba en espera los barcos navegan si se mueve la marea Hago rap de peso para alistar princesas convenzo a sirenas de nadar como ballenas Te asombran mis versos esto es una ciencia, mi revolución, mi clase, mi táctica, mi ciencia, mi resolución para salir de tantos problemas Soy la estadística de la niña fea que traumatizó galanes con rap e inteligencia Quién dijo que necesito de apariencia Mírame bien, mil kilómetros de pierna soy una mestiza, jaguar de tierra fría, soy una veterana rapeando como una niña. [Your misogynist lyrics don’t scare me your macho pretense does not cause me anguish Motivational words come and go telling me that I possess the honor of bringing the poetic form and rhyme, An academic hip hop and a kilogram of ethics With the taste of street, silencing wannabes Do not worry about me Take it easy, I’m back I wasn’t on pause, I was waiting ships sail if the tide moves I do heavy rap to get princesses ready I convince mermaids to swim like whales My verses amaze you, this is a science, my revolution, my class, my tactic, my science, my determination to get out of so many problems I am the statistic of the ugly girl who traumatizes hunks with rap and intelligence Who said that I need appearance Take a good look at me, a thousand kilometers of leg I’m a mestiza, a jaguar from a frigid land, I’m a veteran rapping like a girl.] For Avella, her lyrics are a manifesto, a way to make a movement of women who flourish in their differences. Female rap establishes diversity, be

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it racial, sexual, of gender, and even musical and artistic. Avella utilizes her body, her voice, her academic training to reclaim hip hop as her own. She gives value to her own work, her own body, and doesn’t follow rules. She is the queen of Colombian rap, and of a rap made for women who are black, mestizo, different in their creeds and sexualities, single mothers, poor. For her, the problems of Colombia are addressed in inclusion, in understanding the roots of violence, and in her stance against gender-based violence. Her voice is strong and demands to be heard not only in her songs but also in interviews circulating online, in YouTube videos, in blogs, in academic articles, and on many other platforms. Through these media, she theorizes about what it means to be a woman in hip hop and in Colombian society. Undoubtedly her most famous song is “Nací Mujer,” which has become a feminist anthem for many. In that composition, the artist criticizes the role that has been assigned to women and lashes out against it, inviting women to fight for their rights. As she explains: For the album “Nací Mujer” I said [feminism] has to go head-on. I wrote the song, and several others, questioning the fact that, since we are born women and give birth to children, we are expected to continue to be the silly little girls, the ones that are taken advantage of, and there is no consequence. Obviously, the fact that the record is called “Nací Mujer,” that this song exists, led me to study the phenomenon much more, to get closer to the people who worked on it, and to continue empowering myself to this day. (Avella, Personal interview) The song questions the traditional and macho Colombian society that keeps women limited to the private sphere: Pero mujer nací, según el mundo para asearlo, para saber cocinar y los hijos criarlos, la labor doméstica y los ojos cerrados, limitada la vista al perímetro privado, característica el silencio, la sensibilidad, el llanto como solución, amor incondicional, a todo en cuanto hiera, jamás refutar, aguante al máximo porque mujer nació para aguantar, buscar la voluptuosidad, asegurar la venta, el éxito es un marido que mantenga, y libertad se entenderá como poder trabajar, haciendo de modelo, presentadora de farándula, y nada más, que saber callarse, porque según muchos, el chisme es lo mejor que ellas saben, pero mujer nací, aprendí a resistir, El rap es mi argumento, tengo algo por decir …

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[I was born a woman, according to the world, to clean it,

to know how to cook and to raise children,

housework and eyes closed,

Vision limited to the private perimeter,

characteristics: silence, sensitivity,

crying as a solution, unconditional love,

Never speak back even when it hurts,

Suffer to the maximum because a woman was born to tolerate

adversity,

look for voluptuosity to ensure the sale,

success is a husband who supports you,

and freedom will be understood as being able to work,

acting as a model, an entertainment presenter,

and nothing more than knowing how to shut up,

because according to many, gossip is the best thing women know,

But I was born a woman, I learned to resist

Rap is my argument, I have something to say …]

Avella has dedicated this song to poor women, to single mothers who, like her, struggle to raise their children, but also to mothers who have seen their children bleed to death in the war. The song is her biggest act of resistance by confronting a society that marginalizes women. “Nací mujer” has taken her to various stages around the world, always accompanied by her son, whose presence she does not downplay, explaining that part of her empowerment as a woman means demanding that her role as a mother be recognized: I have taken Juan Diego with me almost everywhere. We went to Ger­ many, Paris, the Basque Country, Mexico, Ecuador and, well, it has been very difficult, because as an artist you are paid for airline tickets, hotels, per diem, they pay you, and they are willing to pay others who are going to perform, but the costs for a child are the same as for an adult. Of course, I also tell people “If you want to do your events with a gender perspective, talk about gender, and research the timeliest aca­ demic topic, which is women, then I need you to understand that women have children, so my son has to come with me because if not, I can’t go.” And they have understood it, reluctantly. Some people better than others, but they have understood. (Avella, Personal interview) Avella’s commitment is political: she aims to change society, and her hard work has paid off. She has been in charge of important initiatives for peace in the country that combine hip hop, activism, and academic work, includ­ ing the exhibit at the Museo Nacional de Colombia “Nación Hip Hop: Colombia al ritmo de una cultura” (2022–2023), for which she was one of the curators. On May 19, 2023, Avella, together with Paola Guarnizo, put

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together KOMPAZ (Kultura y Arte: hOmenaje y Memoria por la PAZ), an artistic event at the Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación that combined hip hop and theater “with the objective of addressing the structural pro­ blems of Colombia and the urban and rural affectations within the frame­ work of the construction of peace in the country” (“La memoria”). With her murals, Guayra Puka writes her stories and those of the commu­ nity. With her music, Diana contributes a testimonial narrative that creates memories. Both women recreate symbolic repertoires that aim to replace patriarchal discourses with empowering political messages that are unapolo­ getically feminist. These messages reterritorialize the spaces of confrontation of historical violence and machismo and rebuke the traditional messages that have fueled the war in the country. Puerto Rican researcher and activist Aurora Santiago Ortiz affirms that “it is in creative genres, memes, graffiti, and song that we create spaces outside of colonial scripts. These forms invite the spectator, listener, participant, and collaborator to witness, be present, and (re)interpret the text, song, or visual media before them.” These artists invite us to participate, to get involved, and contribute to the reconstruction of a country where transformation has been possible through art.

Notes 1 All translations in this chapter are my own. 2 Communitarian feminists have pondered on the contradiction of calling their movement “feminist,” which is a political current associated with Anglo-Saxon women. However, through their debates, they have concluded that there are several feminisms, and calling themselves “feminists” is a transgression because it breaks with preconceived ideas about what it is to be a traditional indigenous woman (“Especial: Territorio, cuerpo, tierra”). 3 Pachamama refers to Mother Earth and the environment in Aymaran cosmovi­ sion. For indigenous thinkers, the Pachamama is a subject of rights. In Ecuador, for example, Pachamama has constitutional rights as per article 71 of the Con­ stitution of 2008. During the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change and Rights of Mother Earth (2010) in Cochabamba, then Bolivian president, Evo Morales, famously said “we have two choices: Pachamama or death,” urging nations to commit to change for the sake of protecting the natural world (“Evo Morales Opens”). 4 Judith Butler reassesses the meaning of vulnerability as weakness or passivity, defining it instead as a place of resistance and embodiment. 5 Gestión cultural (cultural management) was developed in the 1980s and 1990s in Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean. Many universities in these geographical areas today offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in that professional field. The role of a gestor cultural is to promote art and culture and to serve as a liaison between artists and institutions, both public and private. Many of the gestores culturales I have met work with grassroots organizations and support the ongoing viability of cultural projects that often lack material resources. 6 This article is of great interest to understand the controversies and opinions of Bogotá artists. Through interviews and testimonies, the authors discuss not only the law, which was used by Petro to promote his political agenda, but also the ethics of graffiti. As the artists themselves explain, their work should not be at

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8 9

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11

12

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the service of governments, due to its inherently rebellious nature and uncom­ promising commitment to making social problems visible. On the other hand, for Guayra, legalizing graffiti opens doors for a much-needed communication in a divided country, allowing communities to come together to paint and allowing such public art to function as a pedagogical tool (Arias Florián). Named after Ramona Parra, a young activist who was assassinated in Santiago de Chile in 1946, the Brigadas began operating in 1965. They became important exponents of Latin American political muralism, particularly throughout the Allende years. Following the 1973 coup, the Brigadas were persecuted and silenced. However, since the National Plebiscite of Chile in 1988, they have actively inter­ vened in urban spaces throughout the country (“Las Brigadas Ramona Parra”). The Unión Patriótica is also discussed in chapter three. The author had previously published the book with the title Colombia: Historia de una traición (Colombia: The History of a Betrayal, 1986). Both versions nar­ rate Restrepo’s own experiences as a member of former President Betancur’s Commission for Negotiation and Dialogue. Product of her investigations and interviews with the M-19 guerrillas, this testimony shows the urgency of denouncing the government and the military, whom the author blames for the failure of the peace talks and the attacks carried out against the M-19. A photographic record of the doves and performances of the time can be seen in “La paz: más que una paloma,” a section of the online version of the 1986 book Artistas por la paz, available on the website of Villegas Editores as part of the series 100 Libros Libres. This site also records the participation of the most recognized artists in the country, including the phrase that became a staple of García Marquez’s activism. The author became a spokesperson for peace in the country and in Latin America. After his death in 2014, Fundación Gabo pub­ lished a book titled La paz con los ojos abiertos: periodismo, comunicación y construcción de paz en Colombia (Peace with Open Eyes: Journalism, Commu­ nication and Peacebuilding in Colombia, 2019): “The title of the book is due to the phrase pronounced by Gabriel García Márquez in 1984, which is still valid today: ‘Long live peace with your eyes open! Because I believe that the peace that we are trying to find cannot be a blind peace, but a peace with the eye of a condor’” (H. Restrepo). Feeling mocked and disillusioned by the government, the M-19 guerrillas decided to take over the Palace of Justice on November 5 and 6, 1985. They wanted to bring Betancur to justice because they were convinced that he had failed the Colombian people by suspending the ceasefire. The objective of the revolution­ aries was to restart a dialogue that the Armed Forces did not allow. Instead of negotiating with the guerrillas, the military launched a counterattack that resul­ ted in the burning of the legal compound, ninety-five dead, and at least eleven missing. This fact, which has been considered the worst political tragedy that Colombia has experienced in its history, has raised many questions about the role played by the government and the military in obscuring the investigations. I mentioned this episode also chapter four, and study it in detail in my 2012 book Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: El testimonio femenino en Colombia (1985–2000) (Trauma, Memory and Body: Women’s Testimonio in Colombia, 1985–2000). See the report “Colombia es responsable por el exterminio del partido político Unión Patriótica” by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as Catalina Oquendo’s article “La Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos condena a Colombia por el exterminio de la Unión Patriótica.” In 2021, thirty-one years after Jaramillo Ossa’s assassination, the Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación published a memorial that includes the voice of his wife, Mariella Barragán, expressing extreme sadness and disappointment for not obtaining justice (“Se le fue la mano”).

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14 One of the famous murals about the UP is El genocidio de la UP (2013) by Chirrete Golden, which was located on 26th Street and documented on the artist’s Facebook page and in other online publications. The painting showed a silhouette of Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa and centered on the history of death and forced disappearance associated with the political movement. On April 12, 2014, a group of 50 neo-Nazis defaced the mural with fascist slogans and threats, proving that this part of Colombian history still provokes fierce controversy. The Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (Movice) reported the situation in the article “Grupo fascista tacha mural en homenaje a las víctimas de la Unión Patriótica.” 15 Renacer de la UP was financed by the Unión Patriótica and was painted on the third floor of a tall building where access was difficult. Although many contributed, it took 24 days to complete. Guayra says that she was there every day from 8 AM until 8 PM. The mural no longer exists in its entirety. As of 2023, one can still see the remains under a new graffiti writing that reads “Colombia Humana,” referring to the political movement founded by President Gustavo Petro in 2011. 16 The mural takes its name from the group, Alianza Iniciativa de Mujeres Colombi­ anas por la Paz, an organization whose mission is to defend the rights of women victims of the armed conflict and to contribute to the construction of peace. 17 The mural was financed by Alianza Iniciativa de Mujeres Colombianas por la Paz and was painted ahead of the Día Nacional de la Memoria y la Solidaridad con las Víctimas on April 9. This date was already of great significance because it is the anniversary of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s assassination in 1948. The holiday was established in 2012 by the Ley de Víctimas. In 2013, the commemoration was particularly important as part of the Colombia Jornadas por la Paz, a symposium for peace that culminated with a March for Peace on April 9. National and international media reported on the massive march. See, for example, the article “Multitudinaria acogida tuvo la marcha por la paz” in El Espectador. Coinciding with the peace negotiations that were taking place in Havana, the Jornadas por la Paz were sponsored by the Santos administration in collaboration with propeace organizations and were celebrated by a great part of the population. 18 In Spanish, the phrase callejón sin salida translates literally as “alley with no exit,” referring to what is commonly called in English a dead end. Aitue’s activ­ ities are called “Callejón con salidas” because they provide opportunities for young people who otherwise would only find dead ends in those environments. 19 Communitarian feminists often quote the song “Mujer” (“Woman,” 1972) by Venezuelan Nueva Trova singer Gloria Martín, which contains the phrase “Pensar es altamente femenino” (“To think is supremely feminine”). Confronting the patriarchal assumption that men “think” and women “feel,” these words have been a slogan of Latin American feminism since at least 1985, when Mexican singer Amparo Ochoa made the composition famous. The Bolivian feminist organization Mujeres Creando (Women Creating) have utilized the saying in their iconic graff­ ities. See Ana Bustos’ interview with Bolivian anthropologist and activist María Galindo from October 11, 2017, titled “Pensar es altamente femenino.” 20 During the confinement that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, Avella partnered up with FOSBO as part of the audiovisual initiative #YoCantoPara (I Sing For). This campaign, which motivated people to sing for a cause, received financial stimulus from the Secretary of Culture of Bogotá in 2020. On November 28, 2020, Avella sang to promote coexistence and respect for women’s lives. 21 In “Wounds and Monsters: Representations of Gender-Based Violence and Fem­ inicide in the Aftermath of the Colombian Armed Conflict” (2022), I have ana­ lyzed this campaign and the forceful work of Bedoya, who has been a victim of sexual violence and who has been a voice and platform for many women who seek justice.

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22 Maternar is a concept in care theory, which means to build affective and emo­ tional bonds not only with your children but also with others that you care for. It is not only to procreate, but also to empathize with others and become their emotional support. Maternar means breaking circles of violence and gender stereotypes. 23 Avella has presented this song in different venues. See, for example, her partner­ ship with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Bogotá from November 28, 2020 (“Diana Avella & Fosbo”). 24 The 2017 publication, Memoria de la infamia: desaparición forzada en el Magda­ lena Medio (Memory of Infamy: Forced Disappearance in Magdalena Medio) compiles more than 120 testimonies, especially from mothers, who have suffered the forced disappearance of their relatives. The research by the National Center for Historical Memory was carried out in ten municipalities of this geographical area, which is rich in mining, energy and agricultural resources and has “a strategic geographical position for commercial interconnection.” As Memoria de la infamia explains, this situation “led to a strong dispute and a fierce exercise of territorial and social control of the region between different armed actors.” The area is also characterized by its great number of social movements and their various forms of resistance “Social conflicts have been related to distribution of land, labor conflicts, demands for greater political participation of marginalized social sectors and claims for human rights and economic, social and cultural rights” (28). 25 In the article “The Women of Colombia: Building Peace with Their Hands” (2017), I analyze Antígonas: tribunal de mujeres (Antigones: Women’s Court), a collective creation by Tramaluna Teatro in Bogotá (“Antígonas”), a play that compares the women who search for the disappeared with the courageous her­ oine who confronts the powerful Creon.

Works Cited Alianza Iniciativa de Mujeres Colombianas por la Paz, www.mujeresporlapaz.org. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Antígonas tribunal de mujeres.” Museo de Memoria de Colombia, www.museodem emoria.gov.co/arte-y-cultura/antigonas-tribunal-de-mujeres. Accessed 19 July 2023. Arias Florián, Guayra Puka. Mujeres por la Paz. 2013. Bogotá. Arias Florián, Guayra Puka. Personal interview. 21 July 2014. Arias Florián, Guayra Puka. Renacer de la UP. 2014. Bogotá. Avella, Diana. “Diana Avella – Nací mujer.” YouTube, uploaded by Diana Avella ­ Hip Hop Colombiano, 31 August 2017, www.youtu.be/S6gs6WzXiL8. Accessed 19 July 2023. Avella, Diana. Personal interview. 20 July 2014. Avella, Diana. “Rapeando como una niña.” YouTube, uploaded by Diana Avella— Hip Hop Colombiano, 8 March 2018, www.youtu.be/RxuXk8IcZGU. Accessed 19 July 2023. Avella, Diana. La revolución del guetto, el aula es la calle: Tecnología, hip hop y educación popular. 2022. Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, Master’s thesis, www.hdl.handle.net/11349/30611. Accessed 25 July 2023. Avella, Diana. “Tres mujeres guerreras.” YouTube, uploaded by Preuss Filmproduktion Berlin, 14 March 2014, www.youtu.be/Rw81tZb7WzI. Accessed 19 July 2023. Bustos, Ana. “Pensar es altamente femenino. Conversación con María Galindo.” Lobo Suelto, 10 October 2017, www.lobosuelto.com/pensar-es-altamente-femeni no-conversacion-con-maria-galindo-ana-bustos. Accessed 19 July 2023.

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Butler, Judith. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. London: Verso, 2021. Butler, Judith, Zeynep Gambetti, and Leticia Sabsay. Vulnerability in Resistance. Duke University Press, 2016. Cabnal, Lorena. “El relato de las violencias desde mi territorio cuerpo-tierra.” In En tiempos de muerte: Cuerpos, rebeldías, resistencias, coordinated by Xochitl Leyva Solano and Rosalba Icaza, vol. 4, Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, 2019, pp. 113–123, www.biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/gsdl/collect/cla cso/index/assoc/D14695.dir/En_tiempos_de_muerte-cuerpos_rebeldias_resistencias. pdf. Accessed 19 July 2023. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Memoria de la infamia: desaparición forzada en el Magdalena Medio. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2017, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/memoria-de-la-infamia-desaparicion-forzada -en-el-magdalena-medio. Accessed 19 July 2023. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. Todo pasó frente a nuestros ojos. El geno­ cidio de la Unión Patriótica 1984–2002. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2018, www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/todo-paso-frente-a-nues tros-ojos-genocidio-de-la-union-patriotica-1984–2002. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Colombia es responsable por el exterminio del partido político Unión Patriótica.” Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, 30 January 2023, www.corteidh.or. cr/docs/comunicados/cp_09_2023.pdf. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Diana Avella & Fosbo en Concierto #YocantoPara.” Facebook, uploaded by FOSBO—Orquesta Sinfónica de Bogotá, 28 November 2020, www.facebook.com/ watch/?v=405311171034054. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Economía Social del Cuidado: Aitue una Experiencia desde el Sur Oriente de Bogotá.” YouTube, uploaded by Guayra Puka Arias, 6 September 2020, www. youtu.be/GJ0ZIoyT03g. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Especial: Territorio, cuerpo, tierra.” Era Verde. YouTube, uploaded by eraverdeucr, 29 January 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uUI-xWdSAk. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Evo Morales Opens Climate Change Conference in Tiquipaya.” Democracy Now, 21 April 2010, www.democracynow.org/2010/4/21/evo_morales_opens_climate_ change_conference. Accessed 19 July 2023. Fernández-Matos, Dhayana Carolina, and María Nohemí González-Martínez. “La paz sin las mujeres ¡No va! El proceso de paz colombiano desde la perspectiva de género.” Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals, 121, 2019, pp. 113–134, www. jstor.org/stable/26731294. Accessed 19 July 2023. Fournier, Marisa. “Cuando lo que importa es la vida en común: intersecciones entre Economía Social, cuidados comunitarios y feminismo.” In El cuidado comunitario en tiempos de pandemia … y más allá, edited by Norma Sanchís. Buenos Aires: Asociación Lora Mora, 2020, pp. 22–42, www.asociacionlolam ora.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/El-cuidado-comunitario-Publicacio%CC %81n-virtual.pdf. Accessed 19 July 2023. Golden, Chirrete. “El genocidio de la UP.” 2013. Facebook, uploaded on 25 July 2016, www.facebook.com/Chirretestreetart/photos/a.557431604456774/557432581123343. Accessed 19 July 2023. Guzmán, Nataly and Diana Triana. “Julieta Paredes: Hilando el feminismo comuni­ tario.” Ciencia política, 14(28), 2019, p. 21–47, doi:10.15446/cp.v14n28.79125. Accessed 19 July 2023.

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“La memoria y el arte en KOMPAZ: Un homenaje a la paz.” Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación, 20 May 2023, www.centromemoria.gov.co/la-memoria-y-el-a rte-en-kompaz-un-homenaje-a-la-paz. Accessed 19 July 2023. La paz con los ojos abiertos: periodismo, comunicación y construcción de paz en Colombia. Fundación Gabo, 2019, www.scribd.com/document/394818169/La-pa z-con-los-ojos-abiertos-periodismo-comunicacion-y-construccion-de-paz-en-Colom bia. Accessed 19 July 2023. “La paz: más que una paloma.” Artistas por la paz. Villegas Editores, www.100librosli bres.com/artistas-por-la-paz-la-paz-mas-que-una-paloma. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Las Brigadas Ramona Parra.” Memoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/w3-article-100581.html. Accessed 19 July 2023. López Baquero, Constanza María. Trauma, memoria y cuerpo: El testimonio feme­ nino en Colombia (1985–2000). Tempe, Arizona: Asociación Internacional de Lit­ eratura y Cultura Femenina Hispánica, 2012. López Baquero, Constanza María. “Wounds and Monsters: Representations of Gender-Based Violence and Feminicide in the Aftermath of the Colombian Armed Conflict.” In Human Rights in Colombian Literature & Cultural Production: Embodied Enactments, edited by Kevin Guerrieri and Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo. New York: Routledge, 2022, pp. 157–171. López Baquero, Constanza María. “The Women of Colombia: Building Peace with Their Hands.” In Latin American Perspectives on Global Development, edited by Mahmoud Masaeli, Germán Bula, and Samuel E. Harrington, Cambridge: Scho­ lars Publishing, 2017, pp. 340–349. Martín, Gloria, and Mercedes Sosa. Mujer. Si se calla el cantor, Philips Records, 1973. Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (Movice). “Grupo fascista tacha mural en homenaje a las víctimas de la Unión Patriótica.” Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo, 15 April 2014, www.colectivodeabogados.org/ grupo-fascista-tacha-mural-en-homenaje-a-las-victimas-de-la-union-patriotica. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Multitudinaria acogida tuvo la marcha por la paz.” El Espectador, 9 April 2013, www.elespectador.com/colombia/mas-regiones/multitudinaria-acogida-tuvo-la-ma rcha-por-la-paz-article-415001. Accessed 19 July 2023. Noriega, Felipe. “Guayra: Lo político a través de la niñez.” Fervientre: Fuerza y Fir­ meza, 2018, pp. 34–35. www.issuu.com/revistanotasdeoccidente2013otv/docs/fer vientre_final. Accessed 19 July 2023. Ochoa, Amparo. Mujer. Fonarte Latino, 1985. Oquendo, Catalina. “La Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos condena a Colombia por el exterminio de la Unión Patriótica.” El País, 30 January 2023, www.elpais.com/america-colombia/2023-2001-30/la-corte-interamericana-de-der echos-humanos-condena-a-colombia-por-el-exterminio-de-la-union-patriotica.htm l. Accessed 19 July 2023. Ortiz van Meerbeke, Gabriel, and Bjørn Sletto “‘Graffiti Takes Its Own Space’: Negotiated consent and the Positionings of Street Artists and Graffiti Writers in Bogotá, Colombia.” City: Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action, 23(3), 2019, 366–387, doi:10.1080/13604813.2019.1646030. Accessed 19 July 2023. Paredes, Julieta C. “Despatriarcalización. Una respuesta categórica del feminismo comunitario (descolonizando la vida).” Revista de Estudios Bolivianos, 21, 2015, pp. 100–115, doi:10.5195/bsj.2015.144. Accessed 19 July 2023.

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Paredes, Julieta C. “Hilando fino desde el feminismo comunitario.” In Mujeres inte­ lectuales:Feminismos y liberación en América Latina y el Caribe, edited by Alejan­ dra de Santiago Guzmán, Edith Caballero Borja, and Gabriela González Ortuño, Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, 2017, pp. 111–139, doi:10.2307/j.ctv253f4j3.8. Accessed 19 July 2023. Restrepo, Hernán. “Fundación Gabo lanza el libro La paz con los ojos abiertos: period­ ismo, comunicación y construcción de paz en Colombia.” Fundación Gabo, 6 Novem­ ber 2017, www.fundaciongabo.org/es/noticias/articulo/fundacion-gabo-lanza-el-libro-la -paz-con-los-ojos-abiertos-periodismo-comunicacion. Accessed 19 July 2023. Restrepo, Laura. Colombia: Historia de una traición. Madrid: IEPALA, 1986. Restrepo, Laura. Historia de un entusiasmo. Bogotá: Norma, 1998. Santiago Ortiz, Aurora. “Notes on Colonialism, Transterritorial Connections, and Method Making.” In Caliban’s Readings, The Caribbean Philosophical Asso­ ciation, 22 May 2024, www.caribbeanphilosophy.org/blog/method-making. Accessed 19 July 2023. “Sanando nuestro territorio cuerpo-tierra.” YouTube, uploaded by Quince-UCR, 16 March 2016, www.youtu.be/fwba3zTJxvw. Accessed 19 July 2023. “‘Se le fue la mano, país’: 31 años de impunidad.” Centro de Memoria, Paz, y Reconciliación, www.centromemoria.gov.co/bernardo-jaramillo-ossa. Accessed 19 July 2023. Sutton, Barbara. “Poner el Cuerpo: Women’s Embodiment and Political Resistance in Argentina.” Latin American Politics and Society, 49(3), 2007, pp. 129–162, doi:10.1111/j.1548-2456.2007.tb00385.x. Accessed 19 July 2023. Thomas, Zareen. “Mujeres Guerreras: Negotiating Women’s Empowerment in Colombia.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 52(4), 2023, pp. 514–536, doi:10.1177/08912416221126519. Accessed 19 July 2023. Tronto, Joan. ¿Riesgo o cuidado?Buenos Aires: Fundación Medifé Edita, 2020, www. fundacionmedife.com.ar/sites/default/files/2021–2009/Riesgo%20o%20cuidado-DI GITAL.pdf. Accessed 19 July 2023. Villegas, Benjamín (ed.). Artistas por la paz. Bogotá: Villegas, 1986.

Conclusions To the Dream of an Empowered Motherland

In a period in the history of Colombia called La Patria Boba (The Foolish Fatherland), New Granada declared its independence in 1810 only to return to Spain’s grip in 1816. Clashes between Federalists, Centralists and ProRoyalists hindered the construction of an independent nation. The inability of criollos to unify the nation accentuated the division and unleashed a series of civil wars that affected the country for years.1 Over two hundred years later, Colombia has a new opportunity for freedom, as the Peace Accord proposed a new dawn in the history of the country. However, the legacy of the Foolish Fatherland persists, as the nation continues to choose war, due to political disagreements, lack of State leadership, and media manipulations that divide the population. Contrary to this machinery of destruction, and despite the continuing threats to human rights, organized collectives throughout Colombia carry on working towards rebuilding. The cycles of revenge and misunderstandings run deep in our fatherland’s history, trust is broken, and many still do not believe that Colombia can overcome its past. After years of visiting geographies of terror, and meeting and listening to so many people who wholeheartedly believe in peace and actively work for it in their territories, I am inclined to think and feel that depatriarchalizing is essential to recreating a motherland sensitive to earth and human rights—a country that accepts dialogue and confronts the truth, that puts a stop to feminicide and juvenicide with creativity, and that unlearns patriarchy and embraces equality. None of these wishes are new to the communities represented in this book. Far from being utopias, collectives in Medellín and Bogotá play a funda­ mental role in society, contributing to knowledge through their cultural production. They come together when the tendency is to divide. When authority wants to quiet them, they find ways to speak up with spray paint, with bright colors, with literal and metaphorical seeds that provide new meaning to the protection of life. Artists and social organizations in the country reinhabit the spaces of violence, giving a place to women and youth. They have joined together to grieve and care for each other. Through artis­ tic and group work they have nurtured critical thinking, they have made deep reflections, studied and analyzed speeches, formed an ethical DOI: 10.4324/9781003371267-7

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conscience, and worked to ensure their discourse is consistent with their actions. Through manual labor and fieldwork, they have raised awareness of the need to protect their lands. They have achieved governance over their environments and have attained an intergenerational impact. Bringing light to their effort is imperative in order to dream of an empowered motherland that works toward peace. Through my interaction with organizations and community leaders, I have reflected on the need to change our discourses as academics. There is a tendency both in academia and in popular sectors to call Colombia the country of oblivion. This may be due to the influence of great intellectuals, writers, and prominent figures who have assessed the country and have found themselves frustrated by the inexplicable impossibility of living in peace when that is what is most desired. The insomnia plague in A Hundred Years of Solitude seemed to be García Márquez’s diagnosis, describing a society condemned to suffer from the syndrome of forgetfulness. Our magi­ cal reality was also represented and romanticized in Carlos Vives’ hit “La tierra del olvido” (“The Land of Oblivion,” 1995), our second national anthem, in which the underlying message is that we not only forget, but are also forgotten. Perhaps this literary version of Colombia has influenced us into believing that we are exceptionally forgetful. Our memory loss seems to be common knowledge, we have learned and accepted this fact, and there­ fore our destiny is to repeat the cycles of violence. However, in my research, I have found that memory is alive in ordinary people, like the victims who refuse to forget and be forgotten, and in the collectives that learn by unlearning. Memory clings to places marked by trauma, and to monuments and museums dedicated to the truth. At the Institución Educativa Eduardo Santos in Comuna 13, I have seen El Museo Escolar de la Memoria, where, under the leadership of Dean Manuel López,2 students study their own recent history and learn not to repeat it themselves. In the commemoration of Orión Nunca Más on October 16, 2021, students acted in a play that recreated the infamous operation—a dif­ ficult staging that recreated the trauma of an entire community, through the eyes and voices of children who have inherited the responsibility to remem­ ber. Among the public were parents who had survived Orión, I could hear pride and sadness in their praise. At Somos de Calle, home of the Colortour, I have seen photographic exhibitions of the tattoos with which young people mark their bodies, becoming the scars that map their trauma and preserve their memories, lit­ erally engraved on their bodies, in a physical form that reveals deep wounds. I have spoken with Julieth Cortés,3 a young psychologist who, together with the children of the comuna, creates memories by baking cupcakes and decorating them with dreams for the future, so that young people know that they can access other worlds different from those of their marginality. I have also visited Habitante 13, a humble establishment that young Juli­ ana Marín has put together with the aid of her parents. Although she was a

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baby during Operación Orión, she feels a great responsibility for her comuna. Carrying Orion’s inheritance on her shoulders has led her to think about the need for the young people of the comuna to know and recognize their own territory. Habitante 13 promotes community integration, identi­ fying the problems that affect youth and looking for solutions. In other neighborhoods, I have also been to places of joy, memory, and resistance such as 4Eskuela, a free afterschool program at the Liceo Gilberto Alzate Avendaño in Aranjuez, Medellín. This hip hop school, run by Crew Peligrosos, offers training in the four elements of hip hop and involves hundreds of kids from the neighborhood who fall in love with what they do. MCs El Jke and PFlavor run the school with the rigidity of martial arts. Young people work hard to achieve success, and the effort of more than twenty years has been worth it, since many of their students have been recognized nationally and internationally. 4Eskuela provides a great service to children and their families, and to the community, giving these young people the opportunity to learn and create. They are more than a hip hop school, teaching ethics, ideas, feelings, and creativity. Walking around Bogotá, I came across don Carlos Castaño’s Galería de Memoria,4 a photographic exhibition located along Carrera Séptima. The photos that hang from clothesline show the history of Colombia since the 1940s. Most of the images come from newspaper articles, and some Castaño has taken himself. When I asked him about his reasons for putting together this gallery, Mr. Castaño explained that the truth must be available and open, and that memory must be kept alive. This list is far from exhaustive and my interest in mentioning some of these projects has to do, on the one hand, with giving them recognition and, on the other, to discuss the importance of looking at and studying these and many more projects that are leading peace efforts and that keep a record of our memory and history. There is much to be done and explored, and Comisión de la Verdad, Centro de Memoria Histórica and other institutions have just begun to scratch the surface of our truth. Reterritorializing the Spaces of Violence in Colombia seeks to contribute to this knowledge, but much more recognition is needed, because the collective efforts of organiza­ tions in urban areas are enormous. Beyond creating artistic work of value, these women and young people have gained the active participation of the community, and despite the challenges, they have achieved autonomy over their bodies and territories. They have brought hope to their barrios and should be recognized because, as Edward Soja has stated, “There is an urgent need to find some sources of hope in a world of eroding civil liberties and degraded participatory democracy” (7). It is time for Colombia to listen to its people, because there is a great perversity in a modern society that allows a cycle of re-victimization that targets women, youth and people in marginalized conditions. It is also time for other nations to look critically at themselves, as this situation is not unique to Colombia or South America. More and more, in a global context,

160

Conclusions

necropolitics play a leading role, even among nations that have embraced democracy since at least World War II, and that little by little have returned to fascist modus operandis. They speak of civil liberties while acting contrary to their speech. This trend fosters the oppression of the most vulnerable, who are branded as dangerous: immigrants, black and brown bodies, women and youth, LGBTQI+. Horrific images overwhelm us through media outlets. Social division prevails when states turn to repression, and citizens accept or embrace such authoritarianism in the belief that the “other” is bringing chaos too close to their homes. Judith Butler explains it well: “violence and non­ violence are whatever those in power decide they should be” (6). Colombia today presents the world with an example of resistance to such injustice through the way some of its people reterritorialize and inhabit physical, psychological, emotional, and temporal spaces. The country offers models for building communities that are active and full of energy, solving everyday problems. The collective actions and testimonies described in this book demonstrate ways to achieve embodied human experiences to confront visible and invisible violence, heal shared wounds, and light a path toward human rights and dignity. Reaching the end of this journey is bittersweet, and it only remains to thank once again all those who have shared their stories with me. The opportunity to travel and learn through brilliant examples of success is pri­ celess. The brave people of Colombia deserve better, and war is no longer an option. As Jesús Abad Colorado has stated, “If this country does not collapse, it is because of the strength of its people” (“El Testigo”). It is due to such endurance and empowerment that I will continue working with these communities, because I am convinced that their stories must be shared and their efforts are vital for the country.

Notes 1 Marco Palacios studies this episode of the nation’s history in “La fragmentación regional de las clases dominantes en Colombia: una perspectiva histórica.” 2 López has been dean at Institución Educativa Eduardo Santos for over two dec­ ades. He has discussed the vulnerability of students during and after the military operations in Comuna 13 in “En juego la vida,” Chapter 5 of the video series 20 años para no olvidar, produced by Museo Casa de la Memoria commemorating twenty years since Operación Orión. 3 Cortés is a survivor of Operation Orion who has collaborated with Asociación de Mujeres de Las Independencias (Las Independencias Women’s Association, AMI), helping women and girls who have been victims of sexual abuse and conflict. Her greatest contribution is the establishment of small schools called semilleros (seed­ beds) or places where minds and bodies can grow. In recent years, she has opened her own practice, El Consulturio de Jula, where she provides her services as a psychologist. Her testimonial account has been collected in “Crece en la guerra, mujer,” Chapter 3 of the video series 20 años para no olvidar. 4 Don Carlos Castaño jokingly calls himself “el bueno” (“the good one”), because he has the same name as the infamous former paramilitary leader of the Auto­ defensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC).

Conclusions

161

Works Cited Butler, Judith. The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind. London: Verso, 2021. “Crece en la guerra, mujer.” 20 años para no olvidar, Chapter 3. YouTube, uploaded by Museo Casa de la Memoria, 28 October 2022, www.youtu.be/Fu7JF5PrQxs. Accessed 26 July 2023. “El Testigo. Memorias del conflicto armado colombiano en el lente y la voz de Jesús Abad Colorado.” Universidad Nacional de Colombia, www.patrimoniocultural. bogota.unal.edu.co/el-testigo. Accessed 18 July 2023. “En juego la vida.” 20 años para no olvidar, Chapter 5. YouTube, uploaded by Museo Casa de la Memoria, 18 November 2022, www.youtu.be/p6eLRF3v3oM. Accessed 26 July 2023. García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Perennial Classics, 1998. Palacios, Marco. “La fragmentación regional de las clases dominantes en Colombia: una perspectiva histórica.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 42(4), 1980, pp. 1663–1689. www.jstor.org/stable/3539965. Accessed 26 July 2023. Soja, Edward W. Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Vives, Carlos. “La tierra del olvido.” In La tierra del olvido, Sonolux, 2015.

Index

Page numbers in italics denote figures. 4Eskuela program, Liceo Gilberto Alzate Avendaño 159 A la memoria (To Memory) graffiti art 38, 39 accountability 100 ACJ YMCA, Comuna 13, Medellín 40, 44n24 Agencia de Prensa IPC 29 Agrarian Hip Hop 61 agriculture and art see Agroarte Colombia Agroarte Colombia 11, 39, 49, 53, 57–62, 75n20; and Cementerio Parroquial La América 11, 58, 62–70, 72; Cuerpos Gramaticales (Grammatical Bodies) 11, 61–62; Galería Viva (Live Gallery) 11, 53, 65; Semillas del Futuro (Seeds of the Future) initiative 58–59 Aguilar-Forero, Nicolás 117 Aka (Luis Fernando Álvarez Ramírez) 28, 31, 38, 43n14, 43n15, 49–50, 52, 54–62, 64, 65, 66, 72; “Más amor” (“More Love”) 58–61; “Olor a Tiempo” (“Scent of Time”) 55–56; “Poesía de Tierra” 70–71; “Poetry of the Land” (interview, 2021) 54–55, 57, 58–59, 74n14; testimony to Comisión de la Verdad 55, 56 Alianza Democrática M19 (AD-M19) 108 Alianza Iniciativa de Mujeres Colombianas por la Paz 152n17 Alikanusha (Quiñónez) 90, 91 Alma, Ghido 58 Álvarez Ramírez, Luis Fernando see Aka Alzate Giraldo, Alejandro 53

“Amargos Recuerdos” (“Bitter Memories”) (Comando Élite de Ataque) 32–34 Amnesty International 7–8 Ángel, Albalucía, Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón 80 “Año Dos” (Quiñónez) 91 “Aquí estoy bien” (“I’m fine here”) (Esk–lones) 37–38 Argentina, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo 51 Arias Florián, Guayra Puka 14–15, 130–139, 150; and Corpo AITUE collective 137–139; Mujeres por la Paz (Women for Peace) mural 135–137, 136; Renacer de la UP (Renewal of the UP) mural 133, 134, 134–135, 152n14 Aricapa, Ricardo 75n19 Ariza, Joan Mateo see Jomag art 13–15, 97–98, 109; and agriculture see Agroarte Colombia; representations against gender-based violence in 81–82; see also graffiti art; murals; sculpture “Arte-Memoria” 126n20 Arteaga Ospina, Henry Antonio see Jke Asilo 38 group 22 Asociación de Mujeres de Las Independencias (AMI) 73n5, 160n3 assassinations (magnicidios), Bogotá 105–106, 107–110, 134 Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) 27, 28, 29, 43n11, 160n4 Ave Fénix 140 Avella, Diana 14, 131, 139–150, 152n20; “Nací Mujer” 148–149; “Nacimiento de una experiencia" thesis 144;

Index “Rapeando como una niña” (“Rapping Like a Girl”) 145–147; La revolución del guetto thesis 144; “Tres mujeres guerreras” (“Three Women Warriors”) 140–144 Avianca Flight 203 bombing (1989) 110

B-boy El Negro 23

B-Boy Julio 42n6 B-boying/B-girling 23

BACRIM 29

“El baile contra motosierra” (“The Dance Against the Chainsaw”) (Desarme Rock Social) 118–120 banana industry 83, 101n7 La Banda Paniagua 65–66 bandas 29

Baquero, José Javier 116, 117

Baquero Rojas, Angie Paola 116–117 Barco, Virgilio 107

¡Basta ya! Colombia: Memories of War

and Dignity report 5, 84

Batista Martinhão, Marcela 90, 96

Becerra, Diego Felipe 131

Bedoya, J. Jairo 30

Bedoya, Jhon 67–68 Bedoya, Jineth 101n6, 139

Bedoya, Óscar 67–68 Bejarano, Cynthia 79

Benedikta Zur Nieden educational

institution 62

Berna, Don see Murillo Bejarano, Diego Bernal, Ana Teresa 50

Betancur, Belisario 101n8, 106, 107, 133

Bieber, Justin 131

Black Lives Matter protests 5

body/bodies: cruelty and transformation

of 83; Cuerpos Gramaticales

(Grammatical Bodies) performances

11, 61–62; and musical performance

21; reterritorialization of 96, 100; as

sites of resistance 2, 13, 83; tattoos

158; violation and usurpation of 2,

83; see also women's bodies

Bogotá: assassinations (magnicidios)

105–106, 107–110, 134; “false

positives” scandal 8–9, 16n9, 110,

124n7; Palace of Justice, siege of

(1985) 106–107, 123n1, 133, 151n11;

as place of memory 105; Soacha

municipality 110; student movement

115–117; TransMilenio transportation

system 121; violence in 105–111

Bogotazo 80, 106

163

Bolivia, Mujeres Creando 152n19 Botero, Fernando 81, 133

Bouvier, Virginia M. 16n13 Braun, Herbert Tico 106

breakdance 23, 42n6 Brigadas Ramona Parra, Chile 132,

151n7

Buen Vivir 3, 130, 139

Bush, George W. 8

Butler, Judith 5, 6, 13, 150n4, 160

Cabnal, Lorena 130

“Callejón con salidas” (“Alley with

exits”) initiative 138

“Las calles son ahora” (“The streets are now”) (Quiñónez) 91–92 Calvo de Castro, Pablo 53

“Canto LI” (Quiñónez) 92–93 capitalism 2, 3, 129, 130

care/caring: care work 129; childcare

138; for community 129–130; politics

of 129; self-care 129

Casa de Hip Hop Kolacho, Comuna 13,

Medellín 39, 40, 41

Casa Morada, Comuna 13, Medellín

39, 40

Casa (Quiñónez) 90, 91–92 La casa de la belleza (The House of Beauty) (Melba Escobar) 80, 100n4 Castaño, Carlos 159, 160n4 Castaño, Jeison see Jeihhco Castrillón, Teresa 140–142 Cely, Rosa Elvira 100n5 Cementerio Parroquial La América,

Comuna 13, Medellín 11, 51, 58, 62,

62–70, 63, 72; Galería Viva (Live

Gallery) 11, 53, 65; murals 63,

63–64, 64, 65–70, 66, 67, 69, 70; as

place of memory 64–65, 67–69, 72,

75n21

Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación, Bogotá 150, 151n13 Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica

9, 12, 16n5, 26–27, 44n23, 84, 86,

107, 159

Cepeda, Manuel 109

Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote 111,

112, 115, 121, 122

Chelo 38, 69

childcare 138

children 58, 137–138, 158–159; see also young people Chile, Brigadas Ramona Parra 132,

151n7

164

Index

city: reterritorialization of 96, 100; as

territory 4

Ciudadela Universitaria de Occidente 62

Colectivo Aitue 14–15 Colectivo Dexpierte 125–126n20 Colombia Jornadas por la Paz symposium (2013) 152n17 colonialism 16n3, 130

coloniality 2

Colorado, Jesús Abad 34, 35,

43n20, 160

Comando Élite de Ataque: “Amargos Recuerdos” (“Bitter Memories”) 32–34; “Desaparecidos” 35–37 combos 22, 29

Comisión de la Verdad (Truth

Commission) 11: 16n7, 16n12, 159;

Aka testimony to 55, 56; Hay futuro

si hay verdad final report 84, 101n6;

Mi Cuerpo es la Verdad 98–99,

100–101n6

Commission for Negotiation and

Dialogue 133

commodification of city–woman 81–82 communality 3

communitarian feminism 2, 3, 12,

15–16n3, 129–131, 150n2, 152n19

community care 129–130 Comuna 13, Medellín 10, 11, 20, 25–30,

48–49, 158–159; Agroarte Colombia

see Agroarte Colombia; barrios 25;

Cementerio Parroquial La América

see Cementerio Parroquial La

América; control by groups outside

the law 26–27, 28, 29–30; escaleras

eléctricas 40, 41, 44n27; forced

disappearances 27–28, 35–37; forced

displacement 28–30, 37–38; graffiti art

34–35, 35, 38, 39, 40; Graffitour 40;

hip hop in 30–39, 41, 58–61; Parque

Biblioteca Presbítero José Luis

Arroyave 34, 40, 44n22; state forces

operations in (Orión and Mariscal)

10–11, 27, 33–35, 43n19, 48, 72, 158,

159; as strategic location 26; as

tourist attraction 40–41, 44n28;

women's collectives in 48, 49–50,

56–57, see also Mujeres Caminando

por la Verdad

Comuna 14, El Poblado 25

comunas, Medellín 25–26; stigmatization of residents 26; as strategic locations 26; see also Comuna 13, Medellín

“Conmoción en Medellín por caso de mujer asesinada y tirada al río” (Quiñónez) 93–96 Constantinos brothers 23

Convivir groups 7–8, 16n7 Corpo AITUE 132, 137–139; “Callejón

con salidas” (“Alley with exits”)

initiative 138

Corporación Jurídica Libertad 28

Corporación para la Investigación y el Trabajo Comunitario Aitue see Corpo AITUE corporeality 2; see also body/bodies Cortés, Julieth 158, 160n3 COVID-19 pandemic 9–10, 13, 116, 129

Cruz, Dylan 13, 116

Cuartas, Gloria 84, 101n9 Cuerpos Gramaticales (Grammatical Bodies) 11, 61–62 cultural management (gestión cultural) 15n2, 150n5 cumbia 20

Curiel, Ochy 15n3 Dame tu canto ciudad (City, Give me

Your Song) (Quiñónez) 90

Davis, Natalie Zemon 57

Daza Orozco, Mery, ¡Los muertos no se cuentan así! (That's How You Count Dead People!) 84 de-industrialization and emergence of

hip hop 21

decolonial feminism 2–3, 12, 15–16n3, 83

decolonization 3

Deleuze, Gilles 3

Delirio (Delirium) (Restrepo) 81

democracy 2; participatory 73n1;

precarious 5

Dennis, Christopher 21, 22

depatriarchalization 130, 137–138, 157

“Desaparecidos” (Comando Élite de Ataque) 35–37 Desarme Rock Social: “El baile contra

motosierra” (“The Dance Against the

Chainsaw”) 118–120; “Despierta”

118, 120, 125n20; “La herida del

adiós” 120

“Despierta” (Desarme Rock Social) 118,

120, 125n20

deterritorialization 3

Día Nacional de la Memoria y la

Solidaridad con las Víctimas 72,

152n17

disappearance see forced disappearance

Index displacement see forced displacement Los Divinos (The Divine Boys)

(Restrepo) 81

DJing 23

Don Quixote (Cervantes) 111, 112, 115,

121, 122

Las Doñas 56–57 drugs/drug violence 21, 22, 26, 30, 108,

137; drugs cartels 8, 26, 42–43n11,

108, 110; “ollas de la droga” (“drug

pots”) 137

El Duke 38, 69

Duque, Iván 7, 9–10, 13, 16n11, 115,

116, 117

Duzán, María Jimena 117

Echeverría Ramírez, María Clara 3–4 education 97, 98; sexual 138

Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL) 133

Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM) 74n18 equality 157; gender 78, 136, 144

Escobar, Arturo 3

Escobar, Melba, La casa de la belleza (The House of Beauty) 80, 100n4 Escobar, Pablo 26, 41, 110

La Escombrera 50, 51, 57, 61, 70, 71;

mural in Cementerio Parroquial La

América 69–70, 70

Esk-lones 38; “Aquí estoy bien” (“I'm fine here”) 37–38; “Esta es la 13” (“This is the 13”) 31–32 ESMAD (Escuadrón Móvil

Antidisturbios) 13, 116, 117

“Especial: territorio, cuerpo, tierra” 130

El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried

Mirror) (Fuentes) 51

Espinosa Miñoso, Yuderkys 2, 3

“Esta es la 13” (“This is the 13”) (Esk–lones) 31–32 Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el

verde limón (Ángel) 80

Estallido Social 10, 13, 117

Eurocentrism 2, 129

Europe 2, 3

“false positives" scandal 8–9, 16n9, 110,

124n7

FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias

de Colombia) 6–7, 8, 101n8, 107,

110, 133

femigenocide 79

feminicide 9, 12–13, 82, 83, 93–96,

97, 98–100, 100n5, 157; artistic

165

representations against 79–82;

defining 78–79

feminism: communitarian 2, 3, 12,

15–16n3, 129–131, 150n2, 152n19;

decolonial 2–3, 12, 15–16n3, 83; in

hip hop 139–149

Fernández-Matos, Dhayara Carolina 136

Festival de Poesía Alternativo 101n11 Festival de Poesía de Medellín 101n11 Festival del Porto de Medellín 66

film, Un tal Alonso Quijano (2020) 14,

105, 111–115, 118–123

FL Colombia 58

forced disappearance 6, 8, 9, 27–28, 35–37, 44n23, 50–51, 110, 140–142 forced displacement 6, 9, 10, 11–12, 22,

28–30, 37–38, 42n4, 89–90

forgetfulness 125–126n20, 158

Fournier, Marisa 129

Fregoso, Rosa-Linda 79

Frente Nacional 80

Fuentes, Carlos 51

Fuentes, Luz Bibiana 80

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia see FARC Fundación Ratón de Bibliotecas,

Medellín 142

Fusil o toga: Toga y fusil (Rifle or Robe:

Robe and Rifle) (Giraldo) 84

Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer 80, 105–106, 124n4, 152n17 Galán, Luis Carlos 108

Galería de Memoria, Bogotá 159

Galería Viva (Live Gallery) 11, 53, 65

Gallego, Leonardo 27

Garcés Montoya, Ángela 145

García Márquez, Gabriel 133, 151n10;

One Hundred Years of Solitude 83,

95, 158

Garzón, Jaime 109–110 Gaviria Trujillo, César 110

gender equality 78, 136, 144

gender roles 145

gender-based violence 12–13, 139;

artistic representations against 79–82;

defining 78–79; in universities 114,

124n11, 125n12

El genocidio de la UP (Golden) 152n14 gestión cultural (cultural management) 15n2, 150n5 Giraldo, Father Javier, Fusil o toga: Toga y fusil (Rifle or Robe: Robe and Rifle) 84

166

Index

Gloria Cuartas: Por qué no tiene miedo

(Gloria Cuartas: Why Isn't She

Afraid) (Sandoval) 84

Golden, Chirrete, El genocidio de la UP 152n14 Gómez Hurtado, Álvaro 107

Gómez, Libia Stella 105, 112, 124n8

Gómez, Pedro Nel 74n11 González Gómez, Lina Marcela 4

González–Martínez, María Nohemí 136

“La Gorda de Botero" sculpture

(Fernando Botero) 81

El Gordo 38

graffiti art 23, 150–151n6; A la memoria

(To Memory) 38, 39; Bogotá,

legalization of 131; Orión nunca más

(Never Again Orion) 34–35, 35; Red

Feminista Antimilitarista 98, 98;

Todos somos inmigrantes 40; see also

Arias Florián, Guayra Puka

Grupo de Memoria Histórica 5, 26, 29,

33, 52, 84

Grupo de Trabajo 63, 66, 67; “Memorias

del silencio” working group 72

Guarnizo, Paola 149–150 Guatemala, communitarian feminism 130

Guattari, Félix 3

guerrillas 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 26, 27, 29, 32–33,

132; see also FARC

Guzmán, Nataly 130

Habitante 13 158–159 Harvey, David 73n4 “La herida del adiós” (Desarme Rock

Social) 120

Herrera Puyana, Ángela María 121

hip hop: agrarian 61; in Colombia

20–22; different meanings 21; and

experience of marginality 21, 24, 31;

feminism in 139–149; and North

American de-industrialization 21;

origins in Bronx, NY 21; as praxis of

memory 24; see also hip hop in

Medellín

hip hop in Medellín 11, 22–24; 4Eskuela

afterschool program 159; beginnings

23; Comuna 13 30–39, 41, 58–61;

public support for 24; recordings and

videos 24, 34, 35–36

Historia de un entusiasmo (Restrepo) 133

historical context 6–10 Hsiao, Yuan 5

human rights 3; violations 8, 9, 78, 79;

women's 78, 79

Las Igualadas YouTube channel 114,

124n10

The Implicated Subject (Rothberg) 73–74n10 individualism 129

Institución Educativa Eduardo Santos,

Comuna 13, Medellín 158

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 43n14 Inter-American Court of Human Rights 134, 151n12 Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) 42n4 intersectionality 91, 96

Jaramillo Ossa, Bernardo 107, 134,

151n13, 152n14

Jardín Cementerio Universal, Comuna 5, Medellín 74n11 Jeihhco (Jeison Castaño) 10, 11, 23, 24,

38, 41, 42n9

Jke (Henry Antonio Arteaga Ospina) 23,

24, 42n7

Jomag (Joan Mateo Ariza) 53, 74n13;

Todos somos inmigrantes 40

Juárez Rodríguez, Javier 48, 50

“juntanza” 15

Juntas de Acción Comunal 73n1 Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, JEP (Special Jurisdiction for Peace) 9, 27–28 juvenicide 117, 125n18, 157

Kolacho, Héctor Pacheco Marmolejo

38, 41

KOMPAZ (Kultura y Arte: hOmenaje y

Memoria por la Paz) event (2023) 150

Lagarde, Marcela 78, 79

Lalinde, Fabiola 43n14 Lalinde, Luis Fernando 43n14 land possession/dispossession 2, 5

Lara Bonilla, Rodrigo 108

Latin America: capitalism 2, 35–36; state violence 5–6 Lauradesdibujada 93–94 Law 1448 of June 10, 2011 see Victims and Land Restitution Law Law 1761 of 2015 (“Rosa Elvira Cely” law) 100n5 Liceo Gilberto Alzate Avendaño,

Medellín, 4Eskeula program 159

“Lipoescultura” artistic intervention (Ospina) 81–82

Index literature, representations against gender-based violence in 79–81 Llanos, Patricia 97, 98 Lluvia de Orión 39 Londoño, Julio César 125n17Londoño Uribe, Santiago 66 López, Claudia 116 López, Manuel 158, 160n2 Lucena, Daniela 51 machismo 80, 97, 114, 131, 138–139, 150 MacKinnon, Catharine 79 magical realism 131, 158 marginality, hip hop and experience of 21, 24, 31 Marín, Juliana 158–159 Marín, Martha 118 Martín, Gloria, “Mujer” 152n19 “Más Amor” (“More Love”) (Aka et al.) 58–61 massacres 9 maternar 140, 153n22 Medellín 20–21; commodification and mutilation of 81–82; comunas 25–26; control by groups outside the law 29–30; hip hop see hip hop in Medellín; intra-urban displacement 28–30; Pacto de Fusil (2012) 30; see also Comuna 13 Medellín Drug Cartel 8, 26, 42–43n11, 108, 110 Medellín-Cartago pipeline 26 Medina, Álvaro 106 Medina, Andrés Felipe 38, 44n26 Medina, José David (Medina THE Barrio) 10, 11, 33, 35, 70–71 Memoria de la infamia 153n24 memory 14, 58, 158; acts of 11; Bogotá as place of 105; Cementerio Parroquial La América as place of 64–65, 67–69, 72, 75n21; hip hop as praxis of 24; music and reconstruction of 20–21; see also forgetfulness; remembering Metamorphoses (Ovid) 92 Metan-o LM 58 #metoo movement 124n11 militias 8, 21, 26–27, 55 Miroff, Nick 8 mirror symbols 51 misogyny 2, 13, 130 modernity 2 Montero, Sergio 116 Montoya, Santa Laura 73n7

167

Montoya, Mario 27 Moraga, Cherríe 2 Morales, Evo 150n3 Mosquera, Doña Socorro 73n5 motherhood, as social and political movement 50 Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina 51 Mothers of Soacha 110 Movimiento 19 de Abril (M-19) 106–107, 107–108, 133, 151n11 Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (MOVICE) 27, 43n12, 50, 73n9, 152n14 Movimiento Ríos Vivos 74–75n18 ¡Los muertos no se cuentan así! (That's How You Count Dead People!) (Daza Orozco) 84 “Mujer” (Martín) 152n19 Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad (Women Walking for Truth) 11, 27, 43n13, 49, 50–54, 71, 72; mirror symbols 51; silhouette imagery 51 Mujeres Creando, Bolivia 152n19 Mujeres por la Paz (Women for Peace) (Arias Florián) 135–137, 136 multinational corporations 9 La multitud errante (A Tale of the Dispossessed) (Restrepo) 80 Muñoz, Germán 118 murals 14, 109; Brigadas Ramona Parra, Chile 132; Cementerio Parroquial La América 63, 63–64, 64, 65–70, 66, 67, 69, 70; Colectivo Dexpierte 125–126n20; see also Arias Florián, Guayra Puka; graffiti art Murillo Bejarano, Diego (“Don Berna”) 27, 42–43n11 Museo Escolar de la Memoria 158 Museo Nacional de Colombia, “Nación Hip Hop: Colombia al ritmo de una cultura" exhibit 149 music: cumbia 20; as embodied practice 21; punk 14, 118–120, 122; and reconstruction of memory 20–21; reggae 20; vallenato 20; see also hip hop “Nací Mujer” (Avella) 148–149 “Nación Hip Hop" exhibit, Museo Nacional de Colombia 149 “Nacimiento de una experiencia" thesis (Avella) 144 Naef, Patrick 44n28

168

Index

Navia, Carmiña 81

necropolitics 88, 125n18, 160

neoliberalism 2, 9, 22, 97, 115, 129

No + feminicidios campaign (Red

Feminista Antimilitarista) 98

“No Es Hora de Callar” (“Now Is Not

the Time to Be Silent”) campaign 139

No hubo tiempo para la tristeza (There was no time for sadness) documentary 16n5 Noctívago (Quiñónez) 84–86 “Nombres propios” (“Proper Nouns”) (Quiñónez) 86–90, 101n10

nonviolence 6, 14

Nora, Pierre 75n21

Noriega, Felipe 138

“Noviembre 6 y 7" installation

(Salcedo) 107

Nuevo Liberalismo 108

Obregón, Alejandro, Violencia 106

Observatorio Colombiano de

Feminicidios 99–100 Ocampo, Yamile 142–143 Oficina de Envigado (Envigado Office) 42–43n11

oil extraction 26

Olivera, Mercedes 78–79

“Olor a Tiempo” (“Scent of Time”)

(Aka) 55–56 One Hundred Years of Solitude (García Márquez) 83, 95, 158

Operación Mariscal (2002) 27

Operación Orión (2002) 10–11, 27,

33–35, 42n11, 43n19, 48, 72, 158, 159

Oquendo, Catalina 151n12

Ordóñez, Javier 116

Orión nunca más (Never Again Orion)

graffiti art 34–35, 35

Ortiz van Meerbeke, Gabriel 131

Oslender, Ulrich 9

Ospina, Mauricio 100n2; “Lipoescultura”

artistic intervention 81–82

Ospina Zapata, Albeiro 62–63, 75n19

Otis, John 16n8

Ovid, Metamorphoses 92

Pachamama 130, 150n3

Pacto del Fusil (2012) 30

Paisa culture 23

Paisajes Inadvertidos (Silva

Schlesinger) 111

Palabras de Luz (documentary) 53

Palabras de Luz (Salas) 53

Palace of Justice, Bogotá: “Noviembre 6

y 7” installation 107; siege of (1985)

106–107, 123n1, 133, 151n11

Palacios, Marco 160n1 paramilitary groups/paramilitarism 5,

7–8, 9, 11, 16n7, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29, 30,

32–33, 119, 133

Pardo Leal, Jaime 107, 134

Paredes, Julieta 129–130 El Paro Nacional strike (2019) 13, 115–116 Parque Biblioteca Presbítero José Luis

Arroyave, Comuna 13, Medellín 34,

40, 44n22, 62

Parra, Ramona 151n7 El Partido de las Doñas (The Ladies' Party) 56–57 Pastrana, Andrés 8

La Patria Boba (The Foolish Fatherland)

period 157

patriarchy 16n3, 50, 79, 97, 99, 130, 157;

ancestral 130; colonial 130; see also

depatriarchalization

peace, ethics of 3

peace accord (2016), government—

FARC 6–7, 27, 157

peace negotiations 133, 136

Peñaranda, Isabel 116

Petro, Gustavo 117, 131, 139

Pizarro Leongómez, Carlos 108, 124n4 Plan Colombia 8

“Poesía de Tierra” (“Poetry of the Land”) song (Aka and Medina THE Barrio) 70–71 poetry see Quiñónez, Marta Lucía “Poetry of the Land” (interview with Aka, 2021) 54–55, 57, 58–59, 74n14 Porto-Gonçalves, Carlos Walter 3

Preussand, Alexander 140

punk music 14, 118–120, 122

Quiñónez, Marta Lucía 13, 82, 83–96;

Alikanusha 90, 91; “Año Dos” 91;

“Las calles son ahora” (“The streets

are now”) 91–92; “Canto LI” 92–93;

Casa 90, 91–92; “Conmoción en

Medellín por caso de mujer asesinada

y tirada al río” 93–96; Dame tu canto

ciudad (City, Give me Your Song) 90;

Noctívago 84–86; “Nombres propios”

(“Proper Nouns”) 86–90, 101n10

Quiroz Otero, Ciro 115

racism 2, 13, 79, 130, 131

Radnitz, Scott 5

Index Ranacer de la UP (Renewal of the UP)

(Arias Florián) 133

rap see hip hop “Rapeando como una niña” (“Rapping Like a Girl”) (Avella) 145–147 La Red Élite Hip Hop collective 38

Red Feminista Antimilitarista (Feminist

Antimilitarist Network) 12, 13, 82,

97–100; art mission 97–98; Crearte

para la Paz program 98; educational

mission 97, 98; No + feminicidios

campaign 98;

Observatorio Colombiano de Feminicidios 99–100 Red Juvenil de Medellín (Youth

Network of Medellín) 97

Red Nacional de Iniciativas Ciudadanas por la Paz y Contra la Guerra (Redepaz) 50, 73n6 reggae 20

remembering 125–126n20 Renacer de la UP (Renewal of the UP)

(Arias Florián) 133, 134, 134–135,

152n15

resistance, body as site of 2, 13, 83

Resistencia hip hop in Colombia

(documentary, 2002) 22

Restrepo, Laura 80–81, 151n9; Delirio (Delirium) 81; Los Divinos (The Divine Boys) 81; Historia de un entusiasmo 133; La multitud errante (A Tale of the Dispossessed) 80 reterritorialization of body and city

96, 100

revictimization 52, 114, 132, 137, 159

Revolución sin Muertos (Revolution

Without Death) hip hop festival 38

La revolución del guetto thesis

(Avella) 144

Reyes Echandía, Alfonso 123n1 Riaño, Pilar 20–21 “The Right to the City” (Harvey) 73n4 Rincón Patiño, Análida 4

Ríos Monroy, Julián 16n9 risk, politics of 129

Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia 3

Rodrigues Gonçalves, Ana Beatriz 90, 96

Rojas, Nury 116–117 Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo 80

“Rosa Elvira Cely" law (2015) 100n5 Rose, Tricia 21

Rothberg, Michel 73–74n10 Russell, Diana E.H. 78

169

Safe World for Women 139

sainete plays 66

Salas, Doña Luz Elena 51–53 Salcedo, Doris: intervention in memory

of Jaime Garzón 109–110;

“Noviembre 6 y 7” installation 107

Salón Tejiendo Memoria (Weaving

Memory Hall) 50

Samper Pizano, Daniel 16n7 Sánchez G, Gonzalo 26

Sánchez, José A. 28, 49, 61

Sánchez Mojica, Beatriz Eugenia

28–29, 30

Sandoval, Marbel, Gloria Cuartas: Por qué no tiene miedo (Gloria Cuartas: Why Isn't She Afraid) 84 Santiago Ortiz, Aurora 150

Santofimio Botero, Alberto 108

Santos, Juan Manuel 7, 136

Schwartz, Anke 3

sculpture, “La Gorda de Botero” 81

security agenda, Uribe presidency 7–9,

10–11, 27, 110

Segato, Rita 79, 96

self-care 129

Semana 114

Semillas del Futuro (Seeds of the Future) initiative 58–59 sexual education 138

sexual violence 12, 114

shared vulnerabilities 131

sicarios 22, 26, 97, 101–102n14

silhouette imagery, Mujeres Caminando

por la Verdad 51

Silva Schlesinger, Santiago, Paisajes

Inadvertidos 111

Sletto, Bjørn 131

Soacha, Bogotá 110

social media 117, 119, 124n11

social motherhood 50

social participation 72–73n1 Soja, Edward 12, 159

Soler, Miguel 121–122 Somos de Calle 39

Son Batá 39

Starn, Randolph 57

state violence 5–6 stigmatization of comuna

populations 26

Streule, Monica 3

student movement 115–117 Sutton, Barbara 135

170

Index

Un tal Alonso Quijano (A Certain Alonso

Quijano) (film) 14, 105, 111–115,

118–123; musical score 118–120

tattoos 158

Tejada, Andrés Felipe 68

Tejada, Rosaadela 43n19, 68

territoriality 4–5 territorialization 3

territory 3–5; women's bodies as 11–13,

96, 130

El Testigo: Caín y Abel (documentary) 43n20 “El Testigo. Memorias del conflicto armado colombiano en el lente y la voz de Jesús Abad Colorado” (photographic exhibit) 43n20 testimonio/testimonial discourse 11, 13,

15n1, 20, 24, 29, 31, 35, 63, 82, 83, 84–90

Tickner, Arlene B. 21, 24

El Tiempo 114

“La tierra del olvido” (“The Land of

Oblivion”) (Vives) 158

Todo Pasó 133, 134

Todos somos inmigrantes (Jomag

Ariza) 40

Torso de mujer sculpture (Botero) 81

tourism, Comuna 13, Medellín 40–41, 44n28 transformation, poetry as place of 83

TransMilenio transportation system,

Bogotá 121

“Tres mujeres guerreras” (“Three Women Warriors”) (Avella) 140–144 Tres mujeres guerreras/Three Women

Warriors documentary 140

Triana, Diana 130

Tronto, Joan 129

la trova 23

los trovadores 23

Umaña Mendoza, Eduardo 109, 124n4 Unidad de Víctimas 22, 42n5 Unión Patriótica (UP) 101n8, 107,

133–135, 152n14

United Nations: gender equality as

sustainability goal 78; ÚNITE

initiative 139

United Nations Security Council

Resolution 1325 on women, peace

and security 78

United States 2, 3; Black Lives Matter

protests 5; Plan Colombia 8; War on

Drugs 26

Universidad Nacional de Colombia 105,

114, 115

universities, gender-based violence in 114, 124n11, 125n12 Uribe, Álvaro 7–8, 16n7, 29, 119;

security agenda 7–9, 10–11, 27, 110

Uribismo movement 7, 13

Urrego, Gustavo Petro 10

vallenato music 20

Venezuelan refugees 22

VICE 114

victim-blaming 32, 114

victimization: of women 12, 52; see also

revictimization

Victims and Land Restitution Law 1448

(2011) 29, 42n5

videos, hip hop 24, 34, 35–36

violence 119–120; in Bogotá 105–111;

perceptions of 5; sexual 12, 114;

state 5–6; against women's bodies

12–13, 82, 138–139; see also

feminicide; gender–based

violence

Violencia (Obregón) 106

La Violencia 25, 57, 66, 80, 106

Vives, Carlos, “La tierra del olvido”

(“The Land of Oblivion”) 158

vulnerabilities 150n4; shared 131

War on Drugs, United States 26

The Washington Post 5

Whyte, David 9

women: forced displacement 22; and hip

hop 139–149; human rights 78, 79;

manual labor 63; oppression of

79–80; victimization of 12, 52; see

also gender equality; misogyny;

motherhood; women's bodies;

women's collectives

Women for Peace 135–136 women's bodies 98, 137; commodification

and mutilation 81–82; idealization

of 79; reterritorialization of 96,

100; as site of discipline and

punishment 82; as territories 11–13,

96, 130; violence against 12–13, 82,

138–139; see also feminicide;

gender-based violence

women's collectives 48, 49–50, 56–57; see also Mothers of Soacha; Mujeres Caminando por la Verdad; Red Feminista Antimilitarista

Index Yhiel 38 young people 13–15, 97, 158–159; and “false positives" scandal 8–9, 16n9, 110, 124n7; music 20–21, see also hip hop; punk music

171

student movement 115–117; Un tal Alonso Quijano (student film, 2020) 14, 105, 111–115, 118–123; see also children; juvenicide; sicarios Youth Christian Association see ACJ