Gloria Cuartas: Colombia's messenger of peace

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1998 by Araceli Ortiz de Urbina, L. Iglesias Kuntz

The former mayor of the Colombian city of Apartado, who has faced many threats to her life, appeals to social movements and the international community for support in overcoming violence and conflict

Why did Apartado become an extremely violent city in the early 1990s?

The first thing to bear in mind is the context of the conflict. A civil war has been going on in Colombia for the past fifty years. For a variety of historical and economic reasons, the Uruba region in which Apartado is located is extremely vulnerable. The arrival of guerrilla and paramilitary groups triggered a process of extortion and killings, and the region soon became ungovernable (see box). A very significant development came in 1991 when, as a result of negotiations on political rather than social issues, the guerrillas of the Popular Liberation Army (EPL) laid down their arms - as the M-19 movement had done previously. This meant that there was no social amnesty, either on the part of the landowners, the community or political groups.

How did you come to be mayor of Apartado?

Violence reached a critical level in 1994, when the guerrillas decreed that nobody could stand as a candidate in the municipal elections. Only two days before election day, scheduled for 24 August 1994, the Catholic church brought together political organizations and urged them to take part in the democratic process and not to give way to the threat of arms. Discussions began to decide who should stand. A long list of names was drawn up, but people were afraid. My name was put forward without any warning. There were a number of points in my favour: I knew the region and its people, I was not a member of any traditional political party, I was not an activist in any armed group, and my approach to work was more technical than political or partisan. The fourteen political groups involved reached agreement and I became the sole consensus candidate.

You were 34 at the time. Why did the 14 political leaders choose a woman - and a woman so young - to occupy such an exposed position in such a violent city?

I don't think I was nominated because they thought that a woman could do something more to solve the conflict; it was more a question of their evading their political responsibility. In Latin America, a woman in power is still regarded as inoffensive. She is not expected to bring about fundamental changes. A woman in a position of responsibility is a figurehead rather than a political decision-maker. My election was therefore more the outcome of a special situation than a planned gesture. When I started to take a stand on certain issues, within a month those 14 men left me stranded.

What sort of issues?

I had said that if I accepted the post of mayor I would do so without weapons or an escort and that I would talk with all the armed groups, whether they were guerrillas, paramilitaries, the army or the police. This sparked off a reaction nationwide because mayors were not supposed to talk with armed groups. I started out from the principle that you do not choose the people you govern, you have to accept them for what they are, even if they include people who live beyond the frontiers of society. There is no such thing as an ideal community; every community has its conflicts.

As mayor, you took the lead in the 'women against violence' movement. Did you decide to surround yourself with women or didn't you find any men prepared to take on the responsibility?

I didn't recruit women: they were already there, but they could not express themselves because of the conflict. It is not enough for women to occupy key posts. Everything depends on our attitude to the roles society entrusts to us. In Uruba, the women used to be silent. In those three years, we began to mobilize and recover our dignity, our voices and our love for our land. But there was so much death and violence that it was difficult for us to work out a political agenda. What we could do was get together and, in the face of a war devised by men for control of the country and the economy, make alliances to halt the killing of our menfolk. And when I say "our menfolk", I mean not only workers, peasants, soldiers and police, but also men in the armed groups operating outside the law, who are also sons, husbands, lovers, men of the people.

During your term of office, 1,200 people were assassinated and your life was continually in danger. Were you ever tempted to give up?

When they killed 17 of my colleagues, when they slit the throat of a child in school before my eyes, when I could feel death stalking the streets at night and I received threats by telephone, when I realized that everybody was a prisoner of fear, I did ask myself whether it was worth risking my life every day. There were two possibilities: either I could run away and let all the people be engulfed in terror, or else I could tell them: "The only way out is for us to unite."When someone telephoned me and said "We are going to kill you at nine o'clock tonight," I replied: "That still leaves me seven hours." This was not heroism. I preferred to live with my fear rather than burden the people with it and let them go on enduring the violence of guns with sadness and resignation.