Yurelkis Arrieta Gómez (María la Baja, Bolívar, Colombia, 1991) is the social leader of a community of girls and women whom she tries to “help defend their rights”. It does so in a context of armed conflict, more or less latent, for several decades. He suffered sexual violence in his own flesh in 2011 and seven years ago he began this task to “guarantee that these rights (human rights, as basic as they have been run over) are fulfilled with a gender, equity and equality perspective.”
yurelkis will be all this month in Tenerife to tell their experiences and involve the people here, especially to young people, from her bullerenguera therapy, the traditional music that she uses in her country to empower her compañeras in process. Heal with melody “It is healing through bullerengue, an ancestral song,” Arrieta values. She adds: “The proposal is to connect with our ancestors through sounds, reading, that way of expressing ourselves.”
Yurelkis emphasizes: «We propose to connect with our inner self and with the effects of our life». The intention is to recognize the violence experienced (there are many) throughout our lives in order to work on them (in the most positive sense possible). make yourself visible First, themselves and then, in parallel, what they have suffered. His – always in quotes, given the enormous capacity for individual improvement – personal trauma.
Yurelkis Arrieta clarifies that “this It is not a music group, but a healing therapy that is done from the heart to cure gender-based violence. In summary, “a denunciation tool, just like it already served our ancestors.” He concludes: «To tell our story through a song or, simply, a dance gesture».
Another key is empowerment through the production of coconut oil. Yurelkis and her colleagues have been leading the process since 2018 together with a group of women peacebuilders, in collaboration with Mamachama, the Tenerife collective that has brought her to the Island. Respect for the principles of the social and solidarity economy prevails: that aforementioned solidarity, work, commitment to the environment, environmental responsibility and equality.
Yurelkis is also documenter of cases of sexual violence. He brought to light 32 of them in the context of the armed conflict in the Montes de María region. To do this, he established listening circles, spaces of trust in which the testimony of victims of sexual violence that occurred in the context of the armed conflict by illegal groups and the army was collected. The vast majority of the victims are professionals, social leaders and teachers. Thanks to the documentation work, the existence of a modus operandi by which the body of women was used as a weapon of war was demonstrated. Yurelkis explains in this regard: «I told my story in front of other women so that they would be encouraged to denounce it. We got the institution to go to the communities and not the other way around. This removes barriers to reporting. A team was formed together with the Ombudsman, the Victims Unit and psychologists. The Colombian activist says: “The body of a woman is used to displace, destabilize and disappear communities.”
The tools are workshops such as Pedagogy of art for the construction of peace and memory, whose objective is to promote a critical citizenship committed to the defense of human rights, especially those of women. Also denounce their violation in different countries of the world and the situation of threat suffered by the defenders. A summary: «Pedagogy of art for the construction of memory and peace».
Threatened by his activity
Yurelkis Arrieta is threatened by armed groups that establish the municipality where you live as a key strategic environment. She herself underlines: «We have four accesses to enter and exit: land, sea, mountain and river. That makes us, unfortunately, attractive to them.”
This situation has caused a massive exodus, a forced displacement. Those resisting on the ground, such as Yurelkis, receive systematic threats in the form of anonymous leaflets. Mamachama brings her to Tenerife to show her project Pedagogy from the arts for human rights and the construction of peace.
This initiative will have a great participatory closure in Tenerife with music as the axis. It will be the next June 2 and 3 in Tegueste, together with local artists such as the singer Ida Susal or the group Arife. On June 8, he returned to the reality of risk in his country. But more protected.
