In conjunction with Black History month, the MU Black History Month Committee and the Hispanic and Latin American Faculty and Staff Association hosted a screening of the film “The War We Are Living” on Monday night. The film is part of the award-winning documentary series Women, War and Peace that highlights the rising role of women as global peacemakers.
The film showcases the struggle of 1300 Afro-Colombian families of La Toma, Colombia who are not only fighting to protect their livelihood consisting of small-scale gold mining from being displaced by industrial mining, but also fighting to protect their lives from unscrupulous paramilitary. Following the lives of two local women, Clemencia Carabali and Francia Marquez, “The War We Are Living” tells the story of class conflict, racism and political corruption embroiled in a time of unrest post-civil war.
“I was impressed because I am from Colombia and my hometown is near Cauca, but even though I am black and I lived almost my whole life near there, I didn’t even know about the situation,” graduate student Luz Valoyes said.
The film screening was followed by a discussion led by graduate student Lindsey Saunders who spent four years in Colombia working with an organization that monitors U.S. policies and trying to change them to promote peace and equity.
“A lot of the work that we were doing was looking at the impact of the United States sending billion of dollars in military aid to a country that is already at war,” Saunders said. “ Is that actually helping to stop war or is it throwing gasoline on fire? And in many cases, that was what our conclusion was.”
Assistant professor Stephanie Shonekan shared her sentiments when asked what we can do to help the situation in Colombia.
“As a teacher, I see it in class everyday, and the challenge is what do young Americans know of the world, what do they know about Colombia, maybe Shakira but other than that, it really is an uphill battle because it is difficult to make this generation care,” Shonekan said. “But I know it is possible because it has always been young people who have led revolutions and so I know it is possible, but it’s just sometimes I get out of class feeling a little deflated.”
Saunders said the situation in Colombia is really complicated because it is part of a larger geo-politcal structure.
“Colombia is a difficult situation because Colombia in general is United States’ buddy in South Latin America because a lot of other governments have been central left governments as opposed to far right governments, and apparently the far right government that Colombia has had for the past 12 years now is our only ally in the region, so pressuring them is really hard to do because the United States don’t want to lose that tie,” Saunders said.
