The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
How women made Colombia’s future brighter
From a refuge for victims of gender-based violence to tours led by female guides, Sarah Marshall finds much to celebrate in a land once blighted by drugs
Heaving a cart stacked with sheaths of corn and bunches of plantains, 66-year-old Everlides Almanza trundled through the dusty streets of Turbaco as she had done every day for 18 years. Scrawny chickens pecked at heaps of discarded plastic toys on verandas and scruffy stray dogs lazed in the heat: a familiar scene in Colombia’s poorer neighbourhoods.
But a street sign indicated to me that this place was different. “Cuidado, el machismo mata,” it warned (Careful, machismo kills).
Everlides is 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 shelters victims of gender-based violence forced to leave their homes during a half-century of narco-fuelled conflict.
“We all worked together,” she says. “My daughter was a bricklayer and I cooked in the kitchen; others would look after the babies.”
At that time, Colombia was one of the world’s most dangerous countries, besieged by battles between Left-wing guerillas, Right-wing paramilitaries and government forces – all fighting over cocaine. Bombs were planted in cars, planes and beneath Botero sculptures. “You could hire a gunman in the 1980s for 20 dollars, the price of a pair of sneakers,” one guide told me.
Finally, a peace agreement was brokered between the government and guerilla groups in 2016. Murder rates have dropped to a third of their 30,000 peak in the 1990s, narco traffic – while still present – has significantly dwindled, and areas of the country are accessible for the first time in years.
The perception of women is changing too, attracting thousands of solo female travellers – including me. A decade ago, I wouldn’t have made such a journey alone – but now, inspired by a group of strong female figures who feature on new tours from Abercrombie & Kent, I felt ready to explore without a plus-one in tow.
The role of women
In the past, opportunities for women in Colombia – who were granted suffrage only in 1954 – were limited to mother, nun, housekeeper or object of sexual desire. Walking through the yellow archways of Las Bóvedas in Caribbean-splashed Cartagena, I mentally listed the female characters in my favourite Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels. Many fell into these categories.
Shaped by an era of Spanish colonialism largely responsible for cultivating Colombia’s culture of machismo, the enduringly romantic old town is locked in a time warp. Trumpets belt out salsa from open-air courtyards, dewy-eyed couples watch the sunset from stone ramparts and vendors sell sizzling patacones in cobbled streets.
Behind the pastel facades, however, scenes were different to those I had witnessed on a trip with my partner years ago. Buildings had been converted into boutique hotels and designer clothing stores, catering to an influx of tourists – largely cruise passengers, with up to six ships docking in one day. On the plusside, no-one batted an eyelid as I sipped my overpriced coffee, and I could wander into salsa clubs without the assumption that I was there to be picked up.
During a day tour run by local guides, I met Nina – a female solo traveller in her mid-thirties who was on a monthlong trip. “I have avoided some places in the larger cities, but I haven’t run into any problems,” she reassured me.
From Cartagena, I made the onehour journey to Palenque de San Basilio – the first free slave town of the Americas, given independence in 1713 – to meet some of the 3,500 residents. They included the iconic Afro-Colombian
palenqueras, famously depicted in the colours of the Colombian flag and carrying bowls of tropical fruit.
Women have always been respected in this self-governing society, responsible for helping slaves escape from Cartagena by communicating pathways through “maps” of braids on their heads. Here, simple concrete houses were covered in bright murals of female drummers. Inside one building, I found a painting of the first black female vice president of Colombia, Francia Elena Márquez Mina, a single mother and environmental activist elected in 2022.
A changing city
To appreciate how much Colombia has changed, I travelled to Medellin – once the murder capital of the world and a stomping ground for drug lord Pablo
Escobar, a flamboyant character with a fondness for Jacuzzis and hippos.
Rising from a narrow valley between two Andean mountain ranges, it hardly seems the setting for a bloodbath. Dual carriageways are flanked by sprouting bamboo and tropical birds flit between office blocks. However, during a walking tour of the Comuna 13 neighbourhood, once the epicentre of violence, rapper and guide Catalina recounted past horrors. A memorial to her family, all killed when she was eight, is inked on to her body in a series of tattoos.
“That is La Escombrera,” she said, pointing to a bald patch on the hillside – an unmarked grave for the hundreds murdered during Operation Orion, a 22-hour killing spree in which thousands of residents were caught in crossfire. Born from the depths of sadness, creativity thrives in Comuna 13. Buildings have been reimagined as graffiti-covered bars, hip art galleries and restaurants – mostly run by women.
Zipping down one of the escalators that connect different parts of the neighbourhood, we passed a woman carrying a sign denouncing domestic violence. She stopped to high-five Catalina and showed me a knife wound in her neck. Here, life is honest and raw.
Other areas previously off limits to outsiders are embracing tourism. In Moravia, once a rubbish dump, Moraviva is a female empowerment project set up by a mother and daughter team.
“Before, the garbage would reach 25 metres high,” said matriarch and local celebrity Marina Aguilar. After realising that “garbage is money”, she came up with the idea of recycling rubbish: plastic bottles became building bricks and cooking oil was repurposed as soap.
New areas to discover
I headed to San José del Guaviare, served by a daily 80-minute flight from Bogotá. On the edge of the Amazon rainforest, staring into the emerald abyss of Chiribiquete National Park – the size of Denmark and home to several uncontacted tribes – the town was once a gateway to coca plantations controlled by guerilla group FARC. Farmers have since converted to meat and dairy
production or tourism, guiding visitors to lakes frequented by pink dolphins and Cerro Azul – a rock covered in ancient petroglyphs. Once employed on a coca plantation, my guide Graciela Vergara now belongs to a community association managing visits to the rock paintings. “Coca was a better business,” she told me, “but the situation was too tense.”
Only 120 people per day can trek to Cerro Azul. Visitor numbers are yet to test that limit, but they no doubt will. Ochre sketches of sloths, tapirs and humans bowing to hulking creatures are rare connections to a past too easily swallowed by the ravenous jungle.
“Where are all 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.”
The FCO still advises against travel to parts of Colombia. For the latest advice, see gov.uk/foreign-traveladvice/colombia
A sign told me this place was different: ‘Cuidado, el machismo mata,’ it warned (Careful, machismo kills)