The oft-ignored incidence of sexual violence in Colombia’s conflict

Six every hour, 149 per day, 54,410 per year.
 

That’s how many women on average, according to a recent study, were direct victims of sexual violence in Colombia from 2001-2009 in areas with presence of armed actors (military, paramilitary or police).
 

Violence against women has remained a seldom-discussed consequence of Colombia’s conflict. This study, however, seems to be generating a bit more attention to the issue. So too, hopefully, is the recent denunciation by ONIC, the National Indigenous Orgainzation in Colombia, of the trafficking of indigenous girls.

Indigenous adolescent girls, ONIC Secretary Luis Evelis Andrade revealed, are being kidnapped from their villages, raped and/or forced into prostitution. Some girls are returned to their homes after a few days. Others never return.

What makes a city? Or, The sounds of Bogotá

It turns out that a friend I had been hoping to see upon my return to Colombia moved to Houston a few months ago, so I won't get to see him. When I asked, via email, how he was liking life in the USofA, he admitted that he's finding Houston hard to adapt to. Among the most difficult things, he said, is the fact that he feels like people look at him like he's crazy if he attempts to walk somewhere, instead of racing from air-conditioned house to air-conditioned office to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned house, ad infinitum. 

As a Colombian, he wrote, “The concept of city that I have is very different than this. I believe that a city is a network of genetic, cultural, phenotypic, and environmental information of a specific area that is totally dynamic and symbiotic, and inhabited by our species.”

His email arrived just after I had finished writing in my journal about the noises of Bogotá. That morning, I had been awakened by some combination of the hot morning sun rendering my curtains useless, taxis roaring down the street outside my single-pane window, the local bar blaring merengue as workers cleaned up from the previous night's almost-New-Year's-Eve revelry, and the head cold that had come to settle in my nose. I turned over and tried to fall back asleep, but to no avail.

Despite my desire for a few more winks, the chaos that awoke me exemplified one of the things that I have come to identify with Latin American cities--or at least Bogotá, since it's the one I know the best: the cacauphony of sounds continously bouncing off the dirty concrete walls and cracked sidewalks.

On any morning spent sitting in my apartment or walking to the corner store (of which there really is one on every corner, if not more than one), I am likely to here many, if not all, of the following sounds:

I'm Back in Colombia

After four days of travel (included being sent back to San Francisco for two days!), I made it to Colombia on the 22nd, greeted by mariachis-for-hire at the Bogota airport. (Ok, so the mariachis weren't for me, but it was an amusing welcome admist the chaos that is the Bogota airport at 10pm on a major holiday travel day.)

I have returned to work with FOR, the organization I worked with the last time I was in Colombia. I will be here for at least a few months to help out with a gap in staff and to train new staff. I'm excited for the opportunity to dive back into this meaningful work, to see friends, to conduct interviews for some articles I'd like to write, and to gain a new perspective on the place and the work after 10 or so months of being in the U.S. And to write more blog posts!

This marks my third holiday season in a row spent in Colombia. My first I spent in the Peace Community, eating bunuelos and dancing vallenato with campesinos in rubber boots. Last year, a visiting college friend and I traveled to where the desert meets this Caribbean ocean, La Guajira, and were treated to the traditional Christmas meal of goat cooked in goat fat (I tried it...).

The Hidden Side of Violence in Ciudad Juárez: Student Shot by Federal Police

This article was published today on The Women's International Perspective, where I have previously published several articles about Colombia. It's similar to the previous post, but geared at a wider audience. Enjoy!

• A mural worked on by Juárez artists during the Foro. The left side is a depiction of civil society. The right depicts death and destruction by the federal forces and other violent actors. Photograph courtesy of the author. •

“Ciudad Juárez won’t be a big deal. You spent two years in Colombia!” my friend reassures me.

“Yeah,” I reply with nervous knots in my stomach, “but isn’t Juárez one of the most dangerous cities in the world?”

The violence wracking Mexico, largely fueled by the country’s drug war, is magnified in the border town of Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. So even though I spent two years as a human rights accompanier in Colombia visiting some of the country’s most dangerous regions, the concentration and apparent randomness of the violence in Juárez left me apprehensive about my upcoming trip.

Just days before my departure the last weekend in October, four maquila factory workers were killed and fifteen more injured when gunmen shot up three company buses carrying the workers home. The following weekend, 20 more were killed. Since 2008, the murder rate has surpassed 6,500 in a city of about 1.5 million.