This Saturday, September 12, some 500 women from the Colombian department of Bolívar and beyond will walk 10 kilometers (about 6 miles) from the central park of María La Baja to the Plaza del Milagro in Mampuján, a rural community in the Montes de María region. The march is part of “No Es Hora de Callar” (“It’s Not Time to Stay Silent”), an initiative led by journalist Jineth Bedoya Lima together with the newspaper El Tiempo, aimed at honoring victims of violence in areas hit hardest by Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict.
The route retraces painful history: in March 2000, paramilitary fighters under commander Rodrigo Mercado Pelufo, known as “Cadena,” forced the residents of Mampuján from their homes overnight, killing 11 people and displacing roughly 300, most of them women and children. Survivors also endured sexual violence, forced abortions, and years of threats.
According to Colombia’s Victims Unit, 3.7 million women nationwide have been affected by the conflict, with Bolívar ranking fourth among the country’s regions in the number of female victims. Local officials, including Bolívar’s governor and its Secretariat for Women, are joining the walk alongside the Mampuján Museum of Art and Memory and women’s collectives such as Las Tejedoras de Mampuján, a group of textile artisans who transformed their trauma into storytelling through embroidery.
Since 2024, the regional government has opened two women’s support centers and a shelter that has protected 80 women and children from domestic violence.
To learn more about this story, read the original article on El Tiempo’s website.
Source: Retorno simbólico en Mampuján para honrar a las mujeres víctimas de violencias (eltiempo.com). English version produced with AI assistance.
Image: Ahron de Leeuw, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).