Asociación de Mujeres Afro por la Paz: Feminism with the Body and Face of a Woman

• Date: 01 July 2021
• Author: Julia Margaret Zulver
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211020742
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211020742

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 239, Vol. 48 No. 4, July 2021, 105–123

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211020742

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

105

Asociación de Mujeres Afro por la Paz

Feminism with the Body and Face of a Woman

by

Julia Margaret Zulver

The Asociación de Mujeres Afro por la Paz (Association of Afro Women for Peace—

AFROMUPAZ) is an organization of displaced Afro-Colombian women now based in

Bogotá. The organization represents a differential brand of feminism in the face of histori-

cal and ongoing violence and provides community, support, and employment opportuni-

ties for dozens of women and their families. Its “feminism with a woman’s body and face”

is part of the landscape of popular feminism in the region, but its specific social location

and its actions cannot be understood without a deliberate and critical understanding of

race.

La Asociación de Mujeres Afro por la Paz (AFROMUPAZ) es una organización de

mujeres afrocolombianas desplazadas ahora radicadas en Bogotá. La organización repre-

senta un tipo distinto de feminismo frente a la violencia histórica y continua, y ofrece

oportunidades comunitarias, de apoyo y de empleo para decenas de mujeres y sus familias.

Su “feminismo en cuerpo y cara de mujer” es parte del panorama del feminismo popular

en la región, pero la comprensión de su ubicación social específica y acciones requiere de

un acercamiento deliberado y crítico de la cuestión racial.

Keywords: Afro-Colombian women’s mobilization, Popular feminism, Forced displace-

ment, Colombia, AFROMUPAZ

Bogotá is the capital of Colombia and, with more than 11 million inhabitants

in the metropolitan area, has been a hub of internal migration due to displace-

ment during the country’s 52-year conflict. Victims of guerrilla groups, para-

military organizations, state forces, and criminal gangs fled to the city from all

parts of the country. Despite the signing of a peace accord between the govern-

ment of Colombia and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

guerrillas in 2016, security dynamics are worsening, and society’s most vulner-

able continue to face ongoing violence. This article shows how a group of vic-

tims of displacement uses a popular feminist mobilization strategy to overcome

Julia Zulver is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s School of

Global and Area Studies and the Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas at the Universidad Nacional

Autónoma de México. Her doctoral thesis examined women’s mobilization in Latin America with

a focus on Colombia and aimed to test and refine the parameters of high-risk feminism. This

research was supported by the Commonwealth Scholarship and a Social Sciences and Research

Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship. The author thanks the women of AFROMUPAZ for their

time and willingness to participate in this project. She also thanks Leigh Payne, Jonas von

Hoffmann, Janet Conway, Nathalie Lebon, and the other reviewers for their thoughtful comments

and suggestions.

1020742LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211020742LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESZulver / MUJERES AFRO POR LA PAZ

research-article2021

106 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

the triple problematic of healing from past violence and trauma, resettling in

an unknown space, and confronting present vulnerabilities. It goes on to point

out, however, that their intersectional feminism is inextricably linked to their

racial identities as Afro-Colombian women.

The following pages examine the case of the Asociación de Mujeres Afro por

la Paz (Association of Afro Women for Peace—AFROMUPAZ), which was

founded in 2000. In the midst of a hostile environment, María Eugenia Urrutia

established an organization for women who, like her, had fled from their homes

on Colombia’s Pacific Coast and arrived in Bogotá with no personal ties or

social links. The organization now represents the central community, support

network, and employment opportunity for dozens of displaced Afro-Colombian

women and their families. Because the women of AFROMUPAZ are clear that

their project for gender justice is based in their Afro-Colombian identity, the

article will examine the ways race and culture (and to a degree, class) guide

their actions and practices and influence their mobilization around a differen-

tial gender identity.1 It posits that AFROMUPAZ’s strategies and goals can be

partially understood as belonging to the broad spectrum of popular feminism

but that any examination of the organization is incomplete without under-

standing that its particular feminism is inextricably tied to participants’ racial

identities. It argues that the study of “popular feminism” must critically engage

with understandings of race and ethnicity to accurately describe the specific

types of mobilization taking place.

At the time of the research, the organization had been examined in detail in

the context of structural racism and sexual violence only once (see Marciales

Montenegro, 2015). This article will describe and explain AFROMUPAZ’s

mobilizational strategies to see how it achieves its goals of protecting displaced

Afro-Colombian women from further victimization and providing them with

a healing space to cope with the violence suffered in the past. The article pro-

ceeds as follows: First, the context overview paints a picture of Colombia’s

“geographies of terror” and explains that violence is suffered differently

depending on gender and race. Second, it outlines the research methodology

and introduces the fieldwork site and interlocutors. Third, it looks at the theo-

ries of popular feminism and Afro-Latina feminisms and posits that

AFROMUPAZ exists somewhere between the two, neither purely engaging in

class critique nor adopting the more radical rhetoric of other Afro-Colombian

feminist groups. Next, it describes the history, activities, and experiences of

AFROMUPAZ in detail, drawing links between their quotidian strategies and

popular feminism. Finally, it returns to the argument that while AFROMUPAZ

can be considered a popular feminist organization, this categorization is useful

only insofar as it critically engages with the gendered and racialized identities

of its participants.

GENDERED AND RACIALIZED GEOGRAPHIES OF TERROR

Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict has left over 8.1 million people dis-

placed (Unidad para las Víctimas, 2021). To understand the experiences of dis-

placement and resettling in a new city, I use Oslender’s (2008: 77) “geographies