Andariegas y luchadoras : narrativas de resistencia de lideresas sociales del Chocó

Abstract

In Colombia there is no significant literature that speaks of the role that black women have played in this nation that calls itself multiethnic and multicultural. Most of the time, great heroes of the country have been written about, almost always elite white men, and little is known about black women who have also made history from their agencies and resistance. That is why today I applaud the literary exercise, called Andariegas Luchadoras. Narratives of resistance by social leaders of Chocó, written by the teacher Sandra Soler Castillo and the historian María Isabel Mena García, who undertook an exploratory adventure through the department of Chocó in search of identifying the role that Choco women have played in the construction of the Colombian nation, and with the aim of reaffirming how with their actions these women have contributed to the fight against racism, sexism, classism and patriarchy. And, of course, to talk about the battles that these great women from Chocó have waged is also to talk about and get to know an apartment abandoned by the State because of the structural racism that has been raging against the black population. In this book, the decision to focus on Chocó is based on drawing that deep Colombia, which is conspicuous by its absence in Andean literature, imprisoned by the centralist canon that obscures the intensity of regional struggles. However, even the Chocoano accent, that is to say, the passage of these leaders through much of the national geography, makes them an interesting diaspora that covers the departments that make up the Colombian nation. We see them tell their stories.