Mujeres en la Guerra

It didn't take long in Latin America to remember why I devoted my master's degree to studying land rights and agrarian reform.  My Colombian friend Leyla, who shares many interests in common with me but is older and more experienced, spent the past few hours in my room telling me about the communities she worked in in the rural Colombian rainforest -- forced to grow coca to sell to narcotraficantes, then affected by the guerrillas, then the paramilitares, then the ejercito, and now still in quasi-slave labor for the drug trade.  For her male students who see no future as coca producers or in ranching, the face of opportunity is to join either the guerrillas or the ejercito.  Her best female student, who she offered to take to Bogota to live in her house and go to college, was not allowed to leave her family because then there would be no one to clean the house.  To the surprise of no cliche, she is now a prostitute.  In rural Colombia, abuse of women and sexual abuse of children is all too normal.  I have read that Ancash province of Peru--the province I am in right now--has the highest abuse rates in the country among rural people.  The girls Angie and I are working with come from the rural outskirts of Huaraz -- some travel an hour to come to school, and these are just the ones who can make it.  I don't know much about their home lives.

Leyla also recommended the book Mujeres en la Guerra about women involved in the violent conflict of Colombia.

In lighter news, I made my first big Spanish faux-pas today!  In class, we gave the girls personal journals and had them personalize the covers with words that describe themselves.  Helping them come up with words, I suggested feliz, bonita, inteligente, creativa, abierta-- happy, pretty, smart, creative, open.  Abierta, open.  When I said "abierta" one of the older girls looked up and asked "Abierta?" and told me "You don't say that here, it has a double meaning."  Which I guess to mean "loose/easy."  Whoops.

Angie has created a blog/website specifically for our project, in which we'll be publishing some of the writings of our girls, and reflecting on the process of the project.  Interested?  Check out:  http://www.escribachica.tumblr.com