Lifting a wooden cart piled high with corn sheaths and bunches of bananas, 66-year-old Everlides Almanza rolled through the dusty streets of Turbaco as he had done every day for 18 years.
Skinny chickens pecking at mountains of discarded plastic toys on porches and unkempt stray dogs lazing around in the heat; It’s a familiar sight in many of Colombia’s poor neighborhoods.
But there was a street sign that told me this place was very different. “Cuidado, el macho mata,” he warned. (Be careful, machismo kills.)
Everlides was one of 150 displaced women responsible for building Ciudad de Las Mujeres (City of Women) in 2003, on the outskirts of the coastal city of Cartagena, a shelter for victims of gender-based violence forced to flee their homes during the country’s half-century of poverty. narco-fueled conflict.
“We all worked together,” he recalls. “My daughter was a bricklayer and I was cooking in the kitchen; Others would take care of the babies.”
At the time, Colombia was one of the most dangerous countries in the world; It was beset by violent clashes between Left-wing guerrilla groups, Right-wing paramilitaries, and government forces; They were all fighting over cocaine.
Bombs were placed in cars, planes and even under Botero statues. “In the 1980s you could hire a gunman for $20; the price of a pair of sneakers,” a guide solemnly informed me.
A peace agreement was finally signed in 2016 between the government and guerrilla groups, exhausted by years of senseless killings. As a result, murder rates have fallen to a third of their peak of 30,000 in the 1990s. has decreased significantly, and some parts of the country are accessible for the first time in years.
The perception of women is also changing, attracting the attention of thousands of solo female travelers, including me. Ten years ago, this was not a journey I would undertake alone. But inspired and intrigued by a group of strong female figures who were on new tours with Abercrombie & Kent, I was ready to explore without a plus.
Role of women
“These years of violence have earned us more respect,” said Marina Martin, another resident of the City of Women, which helps members develop initiatives and secure legal rights, including property ownership; this was a necessity after the killing of so many men. But liberation comes with a price. He admitted that putting the title deeds in his name caused his own divorce.
In the past, opportunities for women, who were only granted the right to vote in 1954, were limited to being mothers, nuns, servants, or objects of sexual desire. As I walked through the banana-yellow archways of Las Bóvedas in the Caribbean-inundated city of Cartagena, past trays of coconut candies and shoe shiners perched on stalls, I mentally listed the female characters in my favorite Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels. Many fell into these categories.
Shaped by the period of Spanish colonialism that was largely responsible for the development of Colombia’s machismo culture, the enduringly romantic Old Town is superficially locked in a time warp. Trumpets blare salsa tunes from open-air courtyards, moist-eyed couples watch the sunset from stone ramparts, and vendors sell sizzling patacons on cobblestone streets.
But the scenes behind the pastel facades were very different from those I witnessed on a trip with my partner a few years ago. The buildings have been converted into boutique hotels and designer clothing stores that cater to the influx of tourists, mostly from cruises where as many as six ships dock in a day. On the bright side, no one batted an eyelid as I sipped my overpriced coffee, and I could wander around salsa clubs without the automatic assumption that I was there to be picked up.
During a day tour organized by local guides, I met Nina, a solo traveler woman in her mid-thirties on a month-long journey. “I’ve stayed away from some places in big cities, but I haven’t encountered any problems,” he assured me.
I drove an hour from Cartagena to Palenque de San Basilio (America’s first free slave town to gain independence in 1713) and met its 3,500 residents, including the famous Afro-Colombian palenqueras. It bears the colors of the Colombian flag and bowls of tropical fruit.
Women have always been respected in this self-governing society; They are responsible for helping slaves escape Cartagena by communicating routes through “maps” made of braids on their heads. Here, simple concrete houses were covered with bright murals of female drummers.
Inside one of the buildings, I found a painting of Francia Elena Márquez Mina, Colombia’s first black female vice president, a single mother and environmental activist elected in 2022.
A changing city
To really appreciate how much Colombia has changed, I traveled to Medellin, once the murder capital of the world and a haunt of drug lord Pablo Escobar, a flamboyant character with a penchant for virgins, hot tubs and hippos.
Rising from a narrow valley between two mountain ranges in the Andes, where bamboo-lined dual carriageways sprout, tropical birds flutter between office blocks and a vaunted first-class metro system, it hardly seems like the scene of a bloodbath.
But during a walking tour of the infamous Comuna 13 neighborhood, once the epicenter of violence, lesbian rapper and guide Catalina gave a vivid account of some of the horrors. A memorial to his murdered parents was inscribed on his body with a series of tattoos when he was eight years old.
“This is La Escombrera,” he told me, pointing to a bald patch on the opposite hillside, the unmarked graves of hundreds of people killed during Operation Orion, a 22-hour killing spree in which thousands of residents were caught in the crossfire between army forces and guerrillas. .
Creativity thrives at Comuna 13, emerging from the depths of sadness and disappointment. The buildings have been repurposed as graffiti-covered bars, hip art galleries and cozy restaurants, mostly run by women.
As we were unzipping one of several electric escalators installed to better connect the neighborhood, we passed a woman carrying a sign condemning domestic violence. He stopped to high-five Catalina and showed me the deep stab wound on her neck. Reality here is honest and raw.
Other parts of the city, which were previously closed to foreigners, are also welcoming tourism. In Moravia, which was once a literal garbage dump, Moraviva is a women’s empowerment project founded by a mother-daughter team.
“Before the trash was 25 meters high,” Marina Aguilar, a respected matriarch and local celebrity, recalled, standing under a mural next to a community center. After realizing the phrase “garbage is money”, he came up with the idea of recycling garbage: plastic bottles turned into building bricks, car tires repurposed into plant pots, and cooking oil turned into soap; This is one of the various activities that tourists can try.
Reopened for exploration
Following the peace agreement, all parts of the country became accessible again. Eager to explore these regions (like many Colombians), I took an 80-minute daily flight from the capital Bogotá to San Jose del Guaviare.
The small town, overlooking the emerald green abyss of Chiribiquete National Park, a Denmark-sized reserve on the edge of the Amazon rainforest visible only by plane and home to several uncontacted tribes, was an ancient gateway to coca plantations controlled by the guerrilla group. FARC. Farmers have since turned to meat and dairy production or tourism, directing visitors to lakes filled with pink dolphins, rivers flowing red with algae blooms, and the jewel in a forgotten crown, Cerro Azul, a rock covered in petroglyphs estimated to be 12,000 years old. .
Our trekking guide, Graciela Vergara, who once worked on a coca plantation, is now a member of a community association that manages visits to the rock paintings. “Financially, coca was a better business,” she told me as we climbed a spiral path knotted with ivy vines and twisting roots. “But the situation was very tense.”
Only 120 people can hike to Cerro Azul a day. Visitor numbers have yet to test that limit (currently around 5,000 per year), but they will undoubtedly do so soon. Ocher drawings of handprints, giant sloths, tapirs and people greeting large creatures are rare links to a past easily swallowed by the voracious jungle.
“Where are the women?” I joked to Graciela, who directed me to a picture of several figures with swollen bellies.
“They represent creation,” he explained proudly. “Without them, the universe would be nothing.”
But beyond motherhood, women have a crucial role to play in shaping a safer, calmer and more peaceful Colombia.
I have no doubt that those who have the ability to build cities also have the tools to build a better world.
