Mampuján Weavers Women are a group of peasant women who helped the communities of Montes de María to overcome the traumas of the war, quilting tapestries with cloth figures. These tapestries, carried out by the ASVIDAS women's association, have been a tool for the management of mourning, healing, and repairing the wounds of the war.
"The first stitches were in pain, every time the needle came in to join the fabric, something broke in their hearts and the crying went on and on, then these women let go of the needle and dried their tears to keep back crying. The pieces had little shape: some mountains in the background, some roads, some trees and the stream, now people had to draw - each figure represented a neighbor, friend or relative, which was why it hurt so much, because what they were showing on the canvas, each her own story.
Creation and exhibition of tapestries: The tapestries illustrate the massacres and horrors of war and displacement. It was in their creation that the women understood that this healing experience was worthy of sharing, so they managed to get the UN to finance what they called the path for life which consisted of going through the same places where the paramilitaries had passed, sowing death and terror. On this revisit, they were looking for women to recall their pain and express it in a tapestry. They traveled through several paths of the Montes de María, arriving in Córdoba, Sucre, Antioquia, Chocó, Bogotá, Armenia, Duitama, and Paipa. They invited the women to a three-day ritual on the river, which included prayer, relaxation massages, lunch, and sewing sessions. And they evolved their idea so that in each group the women sewed three tapestries, one that would show her life before the conflict, another to tell the violent facts, and one more to visualise the future. In the end, the women exhibited their creations and their experience to the whole community.
Exhibitions: Several international and governmental organisations have organised exhibitions of the tapestries, which aim to make this work visible and popular, as well as a key element in the memory of the conflict.
Reconciliation, peace process, gender
Of the original group of 33, there are 16 women, who have continued weaving. They no longer do so to heal the pain they consider exorcised, but to go further and find their roots. Thus, they sewed several tapestries that represent their past: Free Africa, in which they show how they imagine their ancestors; Crossing, which represents how those ancestors traveled aboard a ship to be enslaved; Auction, to show how they were sold when they arrived on the continent; Rebellion, to represent this emancipating movement in Palenque; and others that show the daily activities of the maroons in their settlements and how the conflict went deeper into their communities until they reached Hacinamiento, which recounts the unworthy conditions in which they lived for almost a decade.
Women Weavers of Mampuján is one of the cases that exemplifies the content of Module 2: RESIGNIFY. Memory, truth and Communication in Communicating Rights in the Post-conflict. Toolkit and Strategies, a publication of the World Bank and UNESCO, with funding from the Nordic Trust Fund. The purpose of the publication is to offer those who work in post-conflict contexts, communication supplies, freedom of expression and access to information, which allow them to impact public policies and enhance the human rights of victims.
La Mujereras Tejedoras de Mampuján, ASVIDAS Women's Association, "Sowing Seeds of Peace" Foundation of the Mennonite community, United Nations
Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica website, June 25 2019.