Women's horror remembered through accounts of abuse .
Women's horror remembered through accounts of abuse .
Monday, 01 October 2012 09:16 Joey O'Gorman
The horrific experiences of women during the paramilitary occupation of a little town called El Placer in southwestern Colombia have been collected and published in a report in honor of the fifth "Week of Remembering" in Bogota.
In the Putumayo department the rural town of "El Placer," which translates as Pleasure, was the setting for more than half a dozen years of violent abuse and torture until the paramilitary demobilization in 2006. The collective accounts by the Historical Center for Memory, "Women coca and War in Lower Putumayo," is the result of 18 months of collecting the harrowing testimonies of the survivors.
The women tell the story of their town, "a land of natural resources," but unfortunately the kind of natural resources which attracted gangs and armed groups that turned the area into a war zone between the leftist FARC guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitaries.
The town had been under the control of guerrillas and drug-traffickers until 1999 when it was invaded by the paramilitaries who moved onto local farms and for the next seven years proceeded to terrorize, murder and torture the people, accusing them of being "civil guerrillas."
More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/26272-womens-horror-remembered-through-accounts-of-abuse.html