Asina laughed, Kumo kusa tá? (Hello, how are you?), greets Juana Alicia Ruiz, 53, in the Palenquera language, the one she learned from her elders and which proudly carries the stories and traditions of the first free people of America, founded by fugitive African slaves.
This is how he communicated with his ten older brothers, in the large ranch where he was born and lived his early years, in the town of Catival, between San Basilio de Palenque and the town of Mampuján. This is the subregion of Los Montes de María, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, an area that, years later, was hit by guerrilla and paramilitary incursions, which forced its inhabitants to flee and women to allow systematic rapes in order to preserve their lives and those of their loved ones.
The joy of remembering his childhood is evident in the sound of Ruiz’s voice, when he speaks of a territory where, although devoid of light and modernity, nothing was missing. They ate armadillos and rabbits that their father hunted and accompanied them with bananas, cassava, yams and rice that they grew nearby. Everything was smoked or salted, because refrigerators were not known, and they marinated with the lard of the pigs they raised: “There was no problem. With my mother, we went to the ravine to wash ourselves. The soap was the foam that we got from the leaves of the carito and the clear one was the ash.”
This happiness began to break at the age of six, when her mother took her to Caracas, in search of a better future, while the rest of the children were left in the care of the older ones. He was abandoned on a hill in the El Manicomio neighborhood, one of the poorest in the city. Her mother left her with ladies who paid little attention to her, while she worked as a servant. He only saw her for a few hours every fortnight, when he was given a break. Three years later, they began the journey back to embrace with their brothers, which was the most desired and healing thing. Then they settled in Mampuján.
He was 28 when, on March 11, 2000, the lives of his family and 244 other people who lived in the city, two hours from Cartagena, were torn in two. During the night, three trucks arrived with 60 paramilitaries. “There were selective and collective massacres, displacements, deaths of leaders and many women were sexually abused. We were spoils of war, a way of punishing men. We had to leave with what we had on us, leaving all this heritage of our ancestors and what had been built since 1882. A single group of men broke the organizational structure that we had, they devastated our history in a single day.”
The pain of what happened did not abandon her and her neighbors, because beyond the violent penetration of the body, they felt that their soul had been penetrated: “A rape silences a woman, humiliates her, undermines her.”
Breaking the cycle of violence
Two years later, these women began to think about how to overcome this trauma: “Because we don’t give children to war. Unfortunately, in countries like Colombia, which have suffered and continue to suffer violence, men and women are prepared for war, but not for peace. We had to break this cycle.
They wanted to remember without anger, without pain and without desire for revenge, to transmit a culture of peace to their children. “I did not want my daughters to be raped as they did to me, but rather for them to receive a legacy of peace. We, 33 women, met to talk, to see how we could overcome ourselves. We requested psychosocial training from the Mennonite Central Committee, because in such anguish, that, a helping hand, a word of encouragement, is more useful than a packet of rice or a spray of oil.”
That’s when psychologist Teresa Geiser and her husband Carlos arrived and taught them strategies for overcoming trauma and increasing resilience. She was a textile artist and began giving them art lessons. stitchingas an embroidery technique is called in the United States: “We suggested to them that we create real stories, in which we would see ourselves and feel represented,” recalls Ruiz.
They discovered that it was necessary to externalize fears to exorcise them, and thus began the fabrics which, as if they were paintings, told what had happened to them. “This led us to have peace with ourselves, with God, with our family, our husbands and our children, with the community and with the State, which we hated because it participated by actions and omissions in the massacre, the crisis and the displacement. »
A question arose from the early days of knitting: can wounds be healed with stitches of love and threads of hope? Ruiz answers today categorically: “Yes, it is possible. We have decided to get rid of this hatred that binds you to the aggressor. Every time we hate someone, we remember the pain and also the cause. When we decide to heal and forgive, we are doing ourselves a favor. As long as we have bitterness, we will foster it and be linked to it.”
Thus was born the Association of Women Weaving Dreams and Flavors of Mampuján, led by Ruiz. The process and results began to spread through word of mouth to other communities. Women from Sucre, Chocó, Antioquia and even Bogotá asked them to visit them: “We went to train other people in this therapeutic technique. They have already invited us to Peru, Nicaragua, the United States, Canada, Northern Ireland and Switzerland.
Seven kilometers from the city, the Mampuján Museum of Art and Memory operates, which exhibits its fabrics and tells the story of resilience, through interviews, audios, photos and cooking sessions. The pieces of the Women of Mampuján have been exhibited in different contexts: in the Nation and Memory room of the National Museum of Bogotá; at the BAT Popular Art Salon, associated with the Salon National des Artistes; in Expoartesanias. At the beginning of this year, the stay in which they exhibited and sold their works at Colombiatex, in Medellín, became one of the flags of the fair.
“With bonds of love, points of mercy, we have transformed painful events into joyful matters of organizational strengthening and at this moment we consider ourselves enterprising and strong women, no more pain or tears. We do not reach out to ask, but to give”, reflects Ruiz.
Don’t look at them with pity, but keep giving them opportunities, that’s what they want. Today, in addition to fabrics that now tell happy everyday stories, they produce handmade fabrics; They also sell jams that they make with local fruits and are already registered with Invima. Last year, Ruiz received the Human Rights Defenders Award from then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for his relentless pursuit of justice.
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