Woman, Life, Freedom' book launched in Bogota

The Committee of Solidarity with Kurdistan of the city of Bogota launched the Colombian edition of the book Woman, Life, Freedom. From the heart of the free women's movement of Kurdistan.


ANF
BOGOTA
Sunday, 24 March 2024

Within the framework of the activities for International Day of Working Women, the Committee of Solidarity with Kurdistan of the city of Bogota launched the Colombian edition of the book Woman, Life, Freedom. From the heart of the free women's movement of Kurdistan. Vilma Almendra, an indigenous from Cauca, mother, activist and social fighter wrote the prologue of the book. She participated in the presentations and underlined the closeness of the struggles of Kurdish women and women of the Latin American continent.

One of the presentations was in La Redada, a cultural and libertarian space located in the center of Bogota, and another was in the Casa de la Paz, a space promoted by signatories of the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the extinct FARC-EP. The majority of participants were women who came curious to hear the stories that the Kurdish women's movement has to tell, in order to feed the struggles of Colombia and at the same time open dialogues and ties with the Kurdistan Liberation Movement.

In her interventions, Vilma Almendra mentioned the period of crisis humanity is going through at a global level and, at the same time, the reflection of this crisis in what is experienced in the territories of indigenous peoples, especially in the department of Cauca (in south-western Colombia), where permanent violence and war against peoples takes the lives of indigenous leaders, which represents a mechanism to break community ties and break the organizational processes of the peoples.

For Almendra, this crisis also generates a life without meaning or opportunities for youth, "who are increasingly permeated by the culture of the narco-state and the dynamics of illicit economies that break communities and their ways of life."

Despite this harsh context of war and violence, Almendra highlighted that “many communities insist on caring for and protecting life,” and hence the importance of recognizing each other to raise hope among all, since another world is already possible and is beating strongly in different territories where the Zapatista, Mapuche, and popular urban neighbourhood movements and women fight and, of course, the Kurdish women who set an example by becoming the vanguard that orients and guides towards another society outside the state, patriarchal and capitalist logic.

"We need to understand the importance of rewriting history, that was what made the free women's movement of Kurdistan strong," said Almendra, adding that this reality would not have been possible without the role that Abdullah Öcalan had in giving women the perspective to organize, find themselves and strengthen themselves as women outside the logic of capitalist modernity. "He is a wonderful man who we must see as the womb of the women's movement. That is why we must read his books and learn about his struggle to understand this movement for freedom."

Excerpts translated from the original Spanish published by Solidarity Committee with Kurdistan –Bogotá