In one of the most dramatic departures from the past, the LGBTQ+ community is actively engaged with the town’s police and has developed a training and awareness programme for officers. “One of the things that makes me happy in El Carmen de Bolívar is that my advocacy work has been heard, that we have made progress, and that we have changed society,” she says. Nawar, 26, a trans woman, is grateful to Caribe Afirmativo, saying the organisation taught her “to defend the human rights of the LGBT population”. One of the things that makes me happy is that my advocacy work has been heard, that we have made progress Nawar, 26ĭr Wilson Castañeda Castro, director of Caribe Afirmativo, says that alongside advocacy, training, and research, the group provides safe spaces for LGBTQ+ people in “periphery territories”, areas with limited government attention. Services include a soup kitchen and job training, as well as outreach work to support understanding of the LGBTQ+ population. This new perceived security and acceptance is in part the result of a campaign by Caribe Afirmativo, an organisation which runs a community centre in the town.
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“We’re conscious that armed groups are returning to the territory, but at this moment, there haven’t been any threats directly against the LGBT community,” says Tito, 30. Paramilitaries took over her house and used it as a base.Ĭorey, a 46-year-old gay man, says he feels much safer now, but has many friends who left out of fear of abuse from armed groups In El Carmen de Bolívar, La Pola, a 42-year-old trans woman, received similar leaflets, telling her to leave the area or be killed. “They said they were going to kill them for being gay, that they were going to kill them for not being part of mainstream society.” “They named people who were part of the LGBTI community,” she says. Yirley Velazco – a survivor of a paramilitary massacre and social leader in the neighbouring town of El Salado – remembers a helicopter dropping pamphlets in 1999 with a warning to LGBTQ+ people: get out now. Those who resisted risked being taken in a van known as the “ final tear”, as the people it picked up never returned. Sexual violence was rampant and meted out as a punishment. While such brutality was widespread in Colombia, in El Carmen de Bolívar and the surrounding region of Montes de María, it was made particularly public – including with forced boxing matches between gay men and transgender women. Many of the armed groups in the region – publicly aligned with the country’s conservative elite – began persecuting the LGBTQ+ community.
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Veronica, a 35-year-old lesbian from El Carmen de Bolívar