by Carrying a wooden cart stacked with corn husks and bunches of plantains, 66-year-old Everlides Almanza walked through the dusty streets of Turbaco as she had done every day for 18 years.
Scrawny chickens pecked by mountains of plastic toys thrown on verandas and scruffy stray dogs lazed in the heat; a common sight in many of Colombia’s poorest neighborhoods.
But a street sign told me that this place was very different. “Cuidado, el machismo mata,” he said. (Caution, machismo kills.)
Everlides was one of 150 displaced women responsible for building Ciudad de Las Mujeres (City of Women) in 2003, a sanctuary on the outskirts of the coastal city of Cartagena that sheltered victims of gender-based violence who had been forced to leave their homes during half a century of the country. narco-fueled conflict.
“We all worked together,” she recalls. “My daughter was a bricklayer and I cooked in the kitchen; other people would look after the children.”
At that time, Colombia was one of the most dangerous countries in the world, beset by violent battles between left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries, and government forces – all fighting for cocaine.
Bombs were planted in cars, in a plane and even under Botero’s sculpture. “You could hire a gunman in the 1980s for 20 dollars; the price of a pair of shoes,” one guide pointedly informed me.
Finally, exhausted by years of pointless killings, a peace deal was brokered between the government and guerrilla groups in 2016. As a result, murder rates have fallen to a third of the peak of 30,000 in the 1990s, drug traffic – although it is still present – has fallen out. a significant reduction and areas of the country are accessible for the first time in years.
Women’s attitudes are also changing, attracting thousands of single female travelers – including me. Ten years ago, this is not a trip I would have taken on my own. But inspired and intrigued by a group of strong men and women who are on a new journey with Abercrombie & Kent, I was ready to explore without one plus one in tow.
The role of women
“Those years of violence deserve more respect for us,” claimed Marina Martin, another resident of the City of Women who helps members develop enterprises and obtain legal rights including property ownership – which is essential after the kill so many men. But redemption comes at a price. Putting title deeds in her own name, she admitted, caused her own divorce.
In the past, opportunities for women – who were only granted the vote in 1954 – were not limited to being a mother, a nun, a housekeeper or a sex worker. Walking through the banana-yellow arches of Las Bóvedas in the Caribbean-splashed city of Cartagena, passing trays stacked with coconut sweets and shoes-snières placed on stalls, I mentally listed the female characters of my best Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels with you. Many fell into these categories.
Created by an era of Spanish colonialism that is largely responsible for fostering Colombia’s culture of machismo, the enduringly romantic Old Town is superficially locked in time. Trumpets belt out salsa melodies from outdoor courtyards, bespectacled couples watch the sunset from stone ramps and vendors sell flashy patacones on the cobbled streets.
But behind the pastel facades, the scenes were very different from those I saw on a trip with my partner several years ago. Buildings have been converted into boutique hotels and designer clothing stores, catering to an influx of tourists – mainly from cruises of up to six ships in one day. On the other hand, no one batted an eye when I sipped my overpriced coffee, and I could enter salsa clubs without the automatic assumption that I was there to be picked up.
During a day trip run by local guides, I met Nina, a fellow solo female traveler in her mid-thirties on a month-long trip. “I avoided some places in the big cities, but I didn’t have any problems,” she reassured me.
From Cartagena, I took a one-hour trip to Palenque de San Basilio – the first free slave town in the Americas, granted independence in 1713 – to meet some of the 3,500 residents, including the iconic Afro-Colombian palenqueras , famously depicted in the colors of the Colombian flag while carrying bowls of tropical fruit.
Women have always been respected in this self-governing society, responsible for helping slaves escape from Cartagena by indicating routes through “maps” of braids on their heads. Here, simple concrete houses were covered in bright murals of female dryers.
Inside one building, I found a picture of the first black female vice president of Colombia, Francia Elena Márquez Mina, a single mother and environmental activist who will be elected in 2022.
A changing city
To understand how much Colombia has changed, I traveled to Medellin – once the murder capital of the world and the inspiration for drug lord Pablo Escobar, a flamboyant character who loves virgins, Jacuzzis and hippos.
Rising from a narrow valley between two Andes mountains, where dual carriageways sprout bamboo, tropical birds fly between office blocks and the metro system is praised for being first class, it hardly seemed like the a story for a blood bath.
But during a walking tour of the notorious neighborhood of Comuna 13, once the epicenter of violence, lesbian rapper and guide Catalina vividly recounts some of the horrors that happened. A memorial to her family, who were all killed when she was eight years old, is inked on her body with a series of tattoos.
“That’s La Escombrera,” she told me, pointing to a bald patch on the opposite hillside, an unmarked grave for hundreds murdered during Operation Orion, a 22-hour killing spree in which thousands of residents were caught in crossfire. between the military forces and guerillas. .
Born from the depths of sadness and frustration, creativity thrives in Comuna 13. Buildings are reimagined as graffiti-covered bars, hip art galleries and friendly restaurants – mostly run by women.
Moving down one of the various electric escalators installed to better connect the neighborhood, we passed a woman carrying a picket sign denouncing domestic violence. She stopped to high five Catalina and showed me a deep knife wound in her neck. Here, reality is honest and raw.
Outsiders were previously off limits, and other parts of the city are also accepting tourism. In Moravia, which was once literally a garbage dump, Moraviva is a women’s empowerment project founded by a mother and daughter team.
“Before the garbage would reach 25 meters high,” recalled the venerable matriarch and local celebrity Marina Aguilar, standing under a mural in front of her on the side of the community center. After realizing that “garbage is money”, she came up with the idea of recycling rubbish: plastic bottles were made into building bricks, car tires were repurposed into plant pots and cooking oil was repurposed into soap – one of many activities that can tourists try them.
Open again for discovery
Entire regions of the country have regained access after the peace agreement. Eager (like many Colombians) to discover these areas, I traveled to San Jose del Guaviare, and boarded a daily 80-minute flight from the capital Bogotá.
On the edge of the Amazon rainforest, staring into the emerald abyss of Kiribiquete National Park – a protected area the size of Denmark that can only be seen by plane and home to several uncontacted tribes where the small town was a former gateway to coca plantations controlled by a guerrilla group. the FARC. Farmers have since turned to meat and dairy production or tourism, leading visitors to lakes full of pink dolphins, rivers that run red with algae blooms and Cerro Azul – the jewel in a forgotten crown – a rock covered in petroglyphs that estimated to be 12,000 years old. .
Once employed on a coca plantation, our trekking guide Graciela Vergara now owns a community association that manages visits to the rock paintings. “Financially, coca was a better business,” she told me, as we climbed a winding path lined with floating vines and colonial roots. “But the situation was too tense.”
Only 120 people can walk to Cerro Azul per day. That limit is not yet being tested by the number of visitors (currently around 5,000 per year), but, no doubt, they will be soon. Ocher sketches of handprints, giant sloths, tapirs and people heading towards hunting creatures are rare links to a time too easily swallowed by the ravenous jungle.
“Where are the women?” I joked to Graciela, who led me to an image of several figures with swollen bells.
“They are creations,” she explained, proudly. “The universe would be nothing without them.”
But even after they become mothers, women have a very important role to play in shaping a safer, calmer and more peaceful Colombia.
Able to build cities, I have no doubt that they have the tools to build a better world as well.
