Dragging a wooden cart full of corn cobs and bunches of plantains, Everlides Almanza, 66, stumbled through the dusty streets of Turbaco as she had done every day for 18 years.
Scrawny chickens pecked at piles of discarded plastic toys on porches and filthy stray dogs lazed in the heat; a familiar scene in many poorer neighborhoods of Colombia.
But a street sign indicated to me that this place was very different. "Cuidado, el machismo mata," it warned. (Be careful, machismo kills.)
Everlides was one of 150 displaced women responsible for building Ciudad de Las Mujeres (City of Women) in 2003, a refuge on the outskirts of the coastal city of Cartagena that housed victims of gender-based violence forced from their homes. abandoned during the country's half century. narco-fueled conflicts.
"We all worked together," she remembers. "My daughter was a bricklayer and I cooked in the kitchen; others would take care of the babies."
At the time, Colombia was one of the most dangerous countries in the world, besieged by violent fighting between left-wing guerrilla groups, right-wing paramilitaries and government forces - all fighting over cocaine.
Bombs were placed in cars, planes and even under Botero sculptures. "In the 1980s you could hire a gunman for twenty dollars; the price for a pair of sneakers," a guide told me seriously.
Finally, exhausted by years of senseless killings, a peace deal was reached between the government and guerrilla groups in 2016. As a result, homicide rates have fallen to a peak of 30,000 in the 1990s, and drug trafficking - while still present - has declined. has decreased significantly and parts of the country are accessible for the first time in years.
The perception of women is also changing, attracting thousands of solo female travelers, including myself. Ten years ago I wouldn't have done this alone. But inspired and intrigued by a group of strong female figures featured on new tours with Abercrombie & Kent, I was ready to explore without an asset in tow.
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The role of women
"Those years of violence have earned us more respect," claimed Marina Martin, another resident of the City of Women, who helps her members set up businesses and secure legal rights, including ownership of property - a necessity after so much men have been murdered. But emancipation has a price. She admitted that placing title deeds in her own name caused her own divorce.
In the past, opportunities for women - who did not gain the right to vote until 1954 - were limited to being mothers, nuns, housekeepers or objects of sexual desire. As I walked through the banana-yellow arches of Las Bóvedas in the Caribbean city of Cartagena, past trays of coconut candies and shoe shine stands on stalls, I mentally listed the female characters of my favorite novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Many fell into these categories.
Shaped by an era of Spanish colonialism that is largely responsible for cultivating Colombia's culture of machismo, the enduringly romantic old town is superficially locked in a time warp. Trumpets sing salsa melodies from open-air courtyards, dewy-eyed couples watch the sunset from stone ramparts and vendors sell sizzling patacones in the cobblestone streets.
But behind the pastel facades, the scenes were very different from those I had seen on a trip with my partner several years ago. Buildings have been converted into boutique hotels and designer clothing stores, catering to the influx of tourists - much of it from cruises where as many as six ships dock in one day. On the plus side, no one blinked as I sipped my overpriced coffee, and I could wander to salsa clubs without the automatic assumption that I was there to be picked up.
On a day tour led by local guides, I met Nina, a solo female traveler in her mid-30s who was on a month-long trip. "I've avoided some places in the bigger cities, but haven't encountered any problems yet," she reassured me.
From Cartagena, I made the hour-long journey to Palenque de San Basilio - America's first free slave city, which gained independence in 1713 - to meet some of its 3,500 residents, including the iconic Afro-Colombian palenqueras, famously depicted in the colors of the Colombian flag and carrying bowls with tropical fruit.
Women have always been respected in this self-governing society, responsible for helping slaves escape Cartagena by communicating routes through 'maps' of braids on their heads. Here, simple concrete houses were covered with colorful murals of female drummers.
In one building I found a painting of Colombia's first black female vice president, Francia Elena Márquez Mina, a single mother and environmental activist who was elected in 2022.
A changing city
To really appreciate how much Colombia has changed, I traveled to Medellin - once the murder capital of the world and a breeding ground for drug lord Pablo Escobar, a flamboyant character with a penchant for virgins, jacuzzis and hippos.
Rising from a narrow valley between two Andes mountain ranges, where four-lane highways are lined with bamboo, tropical birds flit between office buildings and the subway system is praised for being first-class, it hardly seemed like the setting for a bloodbath.
But during a walking tour of the infamous Comuna 13 neighborhood, once the epicenter of violence, lesbian rapper and tour guide Catalina vividly recounted some of the horrors that took place. A memorial to her family, all murdered when she was eight years old, has been inked on her body in a series of tattoos.
"That's La Escombrera," she told me, pointing to a barren spot across the hill, an unmarked grave for hundreds murdered during Operation Orion, a 22-hour killing spree in which thousands of residents were caught in a crossfire between army troops and guerrillas . .
Born from the depths of sadness and frustration, creativity flourishes in Comuna 13. Buildings have been reimagined as graffiti-covered bars, hip art galleries and friendly restaurants - mostly run by women.
As we took down one of the many electric escalators installed to better connect the neighborhood, we passed a woman holding a sign denouncing domestic violence. She stopped to give Catalina a high five and showed me a deep knife wound in her neck. Here reality is honest and raw.
Previously off-limits to outsiders, other parts of the city are also embracing tourism. In Moravia, once literally a garbage dump, Moraviva is a women's empowerment project set up by a mother-daughter team.
"Before the trash would grow 80 feet tall," recalls respected matriarch and local celebrity Marina Aguilar, standing beneath a mural of her face on the side of a community center. After realizing that 'waste is money', she came up with the idea of recycling waste: plastic bottles became building blocks, car tires were remade into plant pots and cooking oil was reused as soap - one of the many activities tourists can try.
Reopened for discovery
Entire regions of the country have become accessible again after the peace agreement. Eager to explore these areas (like many Colombians), I traveled to San Jose del Guaviare, with an 80-minute daily flight from the capital Bogotá.
On the edge of the Amazon rainforest, staring into the emerald abyss of Chiribiquete National Park - a protected area the size of Denmark that can only be seen by plane and home to several uncontacted tribes - the small town was a former gateway to coca plantations which were controlled by a guerrilla group. the FARC. Farmers have since turned to meat and dairy production or tourism, leading visitors to lakes teeming with pink dolphins, rivers turning red with algae blooms and Cerro Azul - the jewel in a forgotten crown - a rock covered in petroglyphs estimated to be 12,000 years old.
Our trekking guide Graciela Vergara once worked on a coca plantation and is now part of a community association that manages visits to the rock paintings. "Financially, coca was a better business," she told me, as we climbed a spiral path littered with draping vines and twisting roots. "But the situation was too tense."
Only 120 people can go to Cerro Azul per day. Visitor numbers have yet to test that limit (currently around 5,000 per year), but no doubt that will happen soon. Ocher sketches of handprints, giant sloths, tapirs and humans bowing to colossal creatures are rare connections to a past too easily swallowed up by the hungry jungle.
"Where are the women?" I joked to Graciela, who led me to an image of several figures with swollen bellies.
"They represent creation," she explained proudly. "Without them the universe would be nothing."
But even beyond motherhood, women play a very important role in shaping a safer, calmer and more peaceful Colombia.
They are capable of building cities and I have no doubt that they also have the resources to build a better world.
