2023-04-24 01:59:17
After working for more than 14 years in social processes with youth from Chocó, Katherine Gil became the director of the DPS in that department. Although she is also very young, she I already knew quite well the difficult reality that the boys live there, because of the lack of opportunities and the permanent temptation for some of them to join illegal armed groups.
Even so, what one of these said to her left her speechless. youth whom they sought to remove from violence, when he proposed that she pursue her dreams through the arts and culture programs in which she works. “My future is jail or the cemetery, I don’t have any more,” he told her.
Tired of their young people being trapped in this fate, the Chocoanos themselves have been working for years on alternatives so that young people have opportunities other than violence. One of these programs is young creators, of which Katherine Gil has been a part.
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“For us, this number of murders of adolescents, young black men, mostly men, is not a coincidence. More than 90 percent of the murders are against adolescents and young people. For us it has been very unfortunate to see how young people have double quality of victims and perpetrators”, says Gil.
He young creators program focuses on seeking that dance and theater become spaces to protect life, but at the same time to talk about what is lived in the territory.
As part of this effort, dance and theater shows have reached important national and international stages, to tell the world, as Gil affirms, that “the Chocó has what”.
Two years ago, precisely, on April 23, 2021, with the help of art, the social organizations of Chocó drew attention to what was happening in the department, with an artistic activity that they called the gallery of extinguished dreams.
“On April 23, three minors were murdered for crossing an invisible border. We did 19 performances with which we evidenced the brutality of war on the bodies of young people. One of them consisted of bodies lying on some beds, at six in the morning, at the entrance to the mayor’s office, with messages such as ‘I dreamed of being a footballer’, ‘I dreamed of being an artist’. It was to say: we need an institutionality that is present”, says Gil.
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The activity had an immediate effect: it drew the attention of authorities and the media and In the following 10 days not a single murder was reported in Quibdóafter practically one was reported in the city daily.
Today, with the support of the USAID Inclusive Justice Program, We have been working with mother victims to overcome impunity and recover the memory of those who were affected by the violence and, in coordination with the office of the vice president, Francia Márquez, it seeks to develop a comprehensive agenda to generate opportunities for youth in the region.
Mothers who recover the memory of their murdered children
Mothers are essential to rescue their children from violence, but also to rescue their memory from stigmatization.
The Study Circle Foundation work on a project to promote access to justice for mothers of young people who have been victims of violence in the region.
The first thing these mothers have to face is the prejudices that are used to justify what happened to her; sometimes even from some state officials.
“For mothers it is very painful that sometimes they are pointed out, that they are questioned, that they are judged because they have murdered their son. Many people get used to believing that if a person is murdered it is because they were bad, because ‘they were doing something’, because they ‘owed it’ and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way”, explains Karina Ramírez.
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To participate in the project you must be crimes committed in the territory in the last five or six years and that the victim was a boy or girl, youth or adolescent. They started with 50 cases, but soon realized that they had to expand it to at least 150. It is estimated that there are at least 600 cases to be clarified in recent years.
The mere fact of working together is already a first step towards becoming stronger. “Some were friends, they were neighbors, they studied together, and they are in this space. They are summoned by a situation that is tough, it is difficult, but at the same time it is a support”, says Ramírez.
“What we are trying to do is help these women grieve, so that they can reconstruct their children’s memories, understand that their children were not criminals, as has been wanted to be seen, but that these children, these young people who have murdered , which are more than 600, have a history of lack of guarantee of their rights that have made them live in the midst of risks that expose them to the fact that the armed conflict reaches them”, adds Nhora Álvarez, national director of the Círculo Foundation of studies.
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