The struggle of Afro-Colombian women in northern Cauca is told in songs

If Eunice and Nancy Vergara could tell their story in songs, they would. They would tune the guitars, beat the rhythm with their palms and sing, the first as a contralto and the second as a soprano, that being a woman in Buenos Aires, Cauca, is an act of survival.

The repertoire would include their days as child laborers, when Eunice carried her little sister Nancy on her back to cut straw and sell it in nearby towns. “Two arrobas for 20 cents to be able to eat something,” they recall. Or when their dad, Azahel, was going to kill their mom, Leopoldina, and they both hung onto the shotgun and begged him not to do it, or they would throw themselves into the river. They would sing that when the adults were absent working deep in the jungle, they would turn off the stove and quietly climb onto a loft “in case the rapist hunters came by,” and that when they were a little older, the young men and gentlemen would invite them to “mingar,” as they referred to having sexual relations, in exchange for giving them coffee beans to sell for a few pesos.

But the Vergara sisters do not yet compose these songs. The talent they inherited from Azahel, an indigenous violinist, and Leopoldina, a Black singer, they have given to collective service. Both are part of ASOM, the Association of Afro-descendant Women of Northern Cauca, a organization where music is at the center of their work: it is the form, it is the tone and it is the color with which women prefer to tell their pains, their longings, their ways of resisting and even their history:

“In La Balsa on April 20,
of the year ’97,
220 women,
we met without a machete;
from Honduras to Alsace,
we all attended on time,
leaving our plots and uniting our minds.”

This is how the ASOM anthem begins, with a fragment that describes the genesis of this organization. In Buenos Aires, gender violence was experienced in the daily lives of many in many ways and without anyone reproaching it. Nancy refers, for example, to the difficulties women had in having economic autonomy, since many husbands were uncomfortable with them working to get resources that would guarantee, for example, better food for their children or the possibility of starting a business or a productive project. In that context, a strong leader named Clemencia Carabalí arrived at the corregimiento of Honduras, where the Vergara sisters still live today, who, concerned about this and other women’s rights, was looking for the future members of ASOM.

Nancy, one of the first to join, remembers that they began by making straw mattresses, the sale of which they sought to improve the quality of life of their families and ensure their economic independence. In the meantime, Clemencia and some allies who joined the process gave training that gave the members of ASOM the first notions about human rights, equity, participation, and protection of the natural resources of their territories. These ideas took hold very quickly in the women, to the point that in a few months Nancy became the first promoter of the organization: she went from region to region replicating what she learned and encouraging other women to join the organization.

However, with the arrival of the new millennium, the rural areas and corregimientos of Buenos Aires went from being peaceful towns, of people who cultivated food and worked ancestral gold panning, to being territories disputed by armed actors. The confluence of guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, and state forces put the civilian population at high risk and left thousands of victims of homicide, kidnapping, displacement, threats, disappearance, torture, and other abuses: 23,666, according to the Single Registry.

The memory of that part of history also became a song:

“The Afro-descendant women of Buenos Aires and our communities,
we were displaced, forcibly, from ’86, until today.
They insulted us, they humiliated us,
with sexual harassment because of our skin color (…)
The crops were lost, the animals died,
the women were hungry, because of this situation.
Oh my God! What pain to see the desolation,
when the women from the countryside left for the city
to work in family homes to raise their children.”

The armed conflict almost buried ASOM. In Honduras, for example, the women of the organization had to close a grocery store they had built collectively. In La Balsa, a corregimiento of Buenos Aires where the ASOM headquarters are located, the women had to meet in small groups and behind the backs of the armed groups that roamed the area, as meetings had been prohibited. In fact, the anxiety was so great that Clemencia Carabalí decided not to continue with the organization’s work. What she did not expect was that the colleagues she mobilized and inspired would prevent it. “We stood up and said no! We have to continue, we are here together, and together we will get up. We can no longer listen to fear,” Nancy recalls.

And so, despite the intimidation and obstacles that violence put in their way, the history of this collective continued with more force. ASOM no longer only moved its members, but their daughters, their daughters’ daughters, and women in other municipalities of northern Cauca and the Pacific coast of that department. Mónica Solís, Nancy’s daughter and Eunice’s niece, was one of them. As a child, she shared household chores with her mom so that she could go to the organization’s meetings, participated in the making of the straw mattresses they sold, and supported with artistic interventions at the assemblies. But her leadership was honed when she entered a training school for women on political, technical, and socioeconomic issues. Seeing her vocation, Clemencia herself summoned her and other young women to officially join ASOM.

“And all this has meant a lot, I feel that I have grown a lot. In any space, you can already have a debate on ethnic issues, and many people approach you to ask about gender-based violence so that you can give them clues about a path,” says Mónica, whose two children are part of the third generation of ASOM members as musicians of traditional rhythms and promoters of the organization’s youth platforms.

The generational handover of leadership is one of the priorities of this collective, which with 230 members and 10 work groups in Cauca, remains firm in its purpose of improving the living conditions of Afro-Colombian women so that they themselves can protect and defend their rights, those of their companions, and those of the territories they inhabit. They do it with learning processes, ventures, productive projects, alternative communication, and a lot of music. It is through songs, tambourines, the guitar, the violin, and the marimba that it has become easier for the women of ASOM to “talk, clean, get rid of pain, seek hope,” Mónica says with pride. It is not for nothing that in 2022 they created a songbook about peace and reconciliation, and with the voices of Eunice, Nancy, and Mónica, and the instrumental performance of their children and grandchildren, they sang their version of the armed conflict to the Truth Commission:

“Yes, yes, let’s seek peace sisters.
Yes, yes, let’s seek peace sisters.
We have the right to be Black
and to live in freedom
Yes, yes, to live in freedom.
That’s why I ask all the youth,
not to forget about peace
and we’re going to tell the truth.”

Excerpt from the song ‘Let’s seek peace’