Deicy Patricia Carabali was still a school student when state-backed paramilitaries came to her village in the northern Colombian region of Cauca.
“On that first day, they murdered some friends of mine from school,” she remembers, recounting how paramilitaries killed and psychologically terrorised the local communities. “Afterwards, they used to come back to our community; each day, they’d force women to cook for them and sexually exploit some women [in the area].”
Forced into displacement from village to village more than once as a result, Carabali became a victim of a conflict that had already ravaged her country for decades.
Deicy Patricia Carabali
While the war originally broke out between the central government and leftist guerillas, which later reformed under the umbrella of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the war became more complicated through the involvement of foreign powers and powerful business interests. After years of negotiations, peace accords were signed between the Colombian government and FARC in Havana, Cuba on August 24, 2016. Although a popular referendum actually rejected the accords, both sides signed a revised deal that was then ratified by the country’s congress in November that same year. The war was over—or officially, at least.
According to Carabali, “the conflict in Cauca and in the country actually got worse after the signature of the peace accords.”
FARC rebels who rejected the peace deal, new armed groups and local drug and mining gangs filled the vacuum. With little support from the central government, local communities sought to defend themselves by forming “Maroon and indigenous community guards” defending life and territory by disrupting drug and mining activities and provide local security. Human rights defenders and activists like Carabali also work to protect victims of violations.
The work comes at a cost. Hundreds of community organisers known as “leaders” have been assassinated, while activists regularly see their names in printed pamphlets known as “death notices” that come with a threat and a bounty on their heads. Carabali lives with protection and has herself been threatened. “My name appeared in several pamphlets in our municipality,” she says.
Despite her experiences in the past, and the threats she receives in the present, Carabali has worked to defend the rights of victims and survivors in her local area.
“In 2005, when the government started the ‘demobilisation of paramilitaries of our region, we started a new period of activism, trying to listen to and gather as much information as we could—especially from women, victims of sexual violations, IDPs and women whose husbands had been murdered,” she explains.
Demonstration against SGBV in Colombia
Her organisation, Asociación de Victimas Renacer Siglo XXI, monitors and documents violations, conducts legal research, and provides services to women and victims of sexual violence.
She says she’s motivated by a profound sense of hope for something better in the future. “Despite everything that’s happened, there is something violence couldn’t take from us—our smiles and hope. Although the situation in Colombia is getting very difficult, we hold on to hope and believe everything will change.”
For Carabali, INOVAS is part of that hope. “The network is dedicated exclusively to victims and survivors: they know our suffering, and it has a structure that could help and defend victims.”
“We want this structure to support and link the work around the world to represent and stand for victims.”
Perhaps most importantly, Carabali feels that international networks like INOVAS create greater hope for outside pressure on states party to violations that should be responsible for compensation.
“It means that the international community can take care of the situation—because states on their own won’t.”
Deicy Patricia Carabali – Colombia
“It’s very important for us to participate in INOVAS so we can share the details of what happened in Colombia. We hope that victims will be compensated in the future—for our sakes, but also for our children.”
Many of these ideas are collected in an open letter, addressed to the world, that Carabali wrote, in which she recounts several stories showing the ways in which her local community has been transformed by both armed conflict and the global pandemic:
‘LETTER TO THE WORLD AND SOCIETY’
“What do they call normality? What do they want to return to? If this world was going to end before the pandemic, it was going to end because of corruption, it was going to end because of inequality, it was going to end because women and peoples were no longer wanted, it was going to end because there was racism, it was going to end because there was exclusion, it was going to end because students were not given reason…
Normality would mean to cease doing evil, normality would mean to stop polluting, normality would mean to return to River Atarrayar, normality would be to see the moon and see it now, normality would be for the people to sing again, normality would be when we were all at peace …
Today I want to write my letter as a form of protest, in the belief that my message will reach the ears of many, demanding that the government provide guarantees now, guarantees enabling us to protest, protest that will help us to guarantee our rights, effective guarantees that will change reality. A reality that will allow my children to live in peace, a peace that we all deserve and that should be granted to us, a peace that is not the absence of conflict, a peace that we can build between fellow peoples, in the face of our differences, but that we can overcome.
It is true that today we want to return to normality, a normality that does not impede my own mobility, mobility without the invisible borders I have to cross, normality in the middle of my farm sowing bananas and passion fruit, normality where I can braid my hair again, normality where the animals come to visit me, normality where I can go to the river to fish for guacucos, normality where I can use the waterfall. That normality now seems like a fairy tale, because now, given the violence, we can only imagine… To the department of Cauca I want to dedicate my most heartfelt poetry that I want to share with you. Cauca is a paradise, an earthly paradise, a paradise where many of us learned to fight because of our riches that they want to exploit, banishing us from our villages, from the hills and the mangroves, from the river and from the flatlands, from the volcano and from the pasture, from the sea and river and from any other spot. But we are here not to prove them right. We will continue taking care of the Cauca, Cauca of my heart. I will continue raising the flag, the flag that gives me purpose. My Cauca, my beautiful Cauca, Cauca of my song.”