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Mabel Lara: “I am a black woman with a success story. In Colombia it is the exception "

2022-01-11T03:24:16.252Z


The Afro-Colombian journalist heads the list to the Senate of New Liberalism, the reborn party of the murdered political leader Luis Carlos Galán


Mabel Lara during the interview this week, in Bogotá Andrés Buitrago

Mabel Lara (Puerto Tejada, Cauca, 41 years old) is a well-known face in Colombian homes. Either with her straight hair or with her frizzy hair - as curls are called in Colombia - with which she decided to present the news from 2018, after 16 years in front of the cameras. It has been through the press, radio and television. A journalist with a master's degree in Political Science and another in governance in Georgetown that led her to move to Washington a year and a half ago, in the middle of the US presidential campaign, different parties had courted her for years in search of the drag in the polls of that recognition. She had rejected all offers to enter politics until December, when the New Liberalism struck a blow by announcing her by surprise as the head of its list to the Senate for the March legislatures.

A ruling by the Constitutional Court last year revived the New Liberalism, the party of the popular political leader Luis Carlos Galán, assassinated in 1989 in the middle of the presidential campaign. Its leaders, led by the sons of Galán, have opted for having their own candidates for Congress, despite the fact that they are part of the Centro Esperanza Coalition for the presidential elections. Mabel Lara is the coveted first line of what is known as a “zip” list, which intersperses women and men, in which she is accompanied by the former defender of the People Carlos Negret, the academic Sandra Borda and the social leader Yolanda Perea. Also Carlos Fernando, the youngest of the Galán. “This is about processes, and collective processes. It is not a stepping stone. I am leaving a successful, recognized and very hard career. It cost me a lot, with all that I am, to get there ”,Lara affirms. She is sitting in the dressing room of a studio in western Bogotá, taking a break from the candidates' campaign photoshoots. Emphasize that they are a team, united and diverse. "The idea is to inspire."

Ask.

Why did you decide to change journalism for politics?

Answer.

I had been preparing myself because I knew that this moment was going to appear in my life.

The limitations of journalism sometimes, when you have a political subject who all the time wants to confront, wants to do, make you feel bad.

I worked in a news program that I think is the riskiest in Colombia, and despite the complaints, one realized that not much was happening.

That starts to generate constant frustration.

Since they made so many proposals to me to get into politics, and for more than a decade I said no, I thought that if this was going to happen, I was going to prepare.

And I went to the academy.

After my election year in Washington I said to myself: why not?

Why not bet on it?

This proposal convinced me.

Q.

What do the ideas of New Liberalism and Luis Carlos Galán, murdered more than 30 years ago, represent for a 41-year-old Afro-Colombian woman?

A.

You have just summarized it. I am a woman, black, young, from a town, with a success story, in quotes, but that is the exception and not the rule. I believe that in Luis Carlos Galán, in his legacy, I have found the perfect refuge to let out my liberal view of life. Philosophical and political. The country does not know, but Luis Carlos Galán was in my town, in Puerto Tejada, before the concentration where he was assassinated. There he was with the blacks from the north of Cauca whom I represent. And it has everything to do with it because it talks about social justice. Black people, women, we know what the concepts of freedom mean, and that is harbored in the New Liberalism.

Q.

You have said that the first proposal to enter politics was made by former President Álvaro Uribe in 2012. Why did you reject that invitation then?

R.

For three fundamental points.

First, I was pregnant, and I have balanced very well what private life means to me.

Second, because it does not represent my philosophical and political view of life.

Third, I have also been a defender of the peace process, and I could not belong to a caucus that did not defend those principles.

Q.

How do you rate the Government of Iván Duque?

R.

It is a mediocre government.

He has lacked empathy.

It is also a presumed government, it has lacked sensitivity, it does not read the country or understand the moments.

I feel like it's in a bubble.

And we are paying that price for choosing such a young, inexperienced man.

It has lacked greater decision and forcefulness at a time when we needed a leader to protect us, and not to separate us.

P.

Until now you have been focused on the territories, is your strategy to win the vote of the Colombian Pacific?

How to land your recognition in votes?

R.

Those of us who have not exercised electoral politics do not know how to do it, because I am an opinion candidate. But I am doing what I have to do, and that is to understand that Twitter does not choose in this country, and that those of us on Twitter are in a bubble of disinformation –sometimes of information– where all the time we talk among peers, and among opponents to hate each other. and throw us the mother [insult us]. This country is not that of Twitter or Facebook, it is not the beautiful one that I have presented for a long time and it is on Instagram. You have to go through it. This list represents the periphery, starting with your list head. The north of Cauca, the south of the Valley, the Pacific coast have to be represented in these elections. People are jaded, blowjob. We are a bogocentric, hyper-centralist country. I have the conviction that it is with the Pacific coast.I have a proximity with the territories, I have been in this country, I know what happened in Buenaventura with the dismemberment, with the criminal gangs in Tumaco, I know very well the neighborhoods such as Pozón or Tierrabomba [in Cartagena de Indias]. The idea is also to inspire, and tell blacks, people, women: it's with you, you have to go out and vote.

P.

Colombian society has not been able to stop the murder of social leaders.

The department where you were born, Cauca, is one of the most critical places.

Why is the state unable to reach these regions?

R.

First, for lack of political decision.

Because of apathy and also, I feel, because of racism.

See those others with disdain and not be interested in the future of those born there.

P.

Is Colombia still a racist country?

R.

Hyperracist.

We are prudes, and people don't like it when you talk about these things because you feel attacked.

Racism ends up traveling the world, and how do our people travel if they don't have enough to eat?

So, there are some issues that must be resolved first to build on the road.

Q.

What is the main problem in Colombia?

R.

Inequality.

And then, the

importaculismo

[apathy, indifference, disinterest].

P.

The New Liberalism list, which also includes the social leader Yolanda Perea, contrasts, for example, with the controversy over the ethnic representation commitments that were breached in the Historical Pact, the coalition headed by Gustavo Petro, as claimed by Francia Márquez .

To what do you attribute your coveted first place on the list?

R.

I am a woman who represents the regions, a black woman who represents ethnic groups and also embraces the liberal principles of the New Liberalism of Luis Carlos Galán. It is a difficult bet in a political country. Why did they convince me to give up my privileges of being a recognized journalist and get into this? Because I feel that it is not speech, that here they are really playing it by the periphery, by the regions, by women. It is a list of female majority, very diverse. Regarding the Historical Pact, I do not want to compare myself in front of others, I have always said that we are neither better nor worse, we are workers. In this electoral contest, machismo has been seen, all the women have been mistreated, the leaders have been the most

rude

[brave], left and right.

So the politics is male and we have no chance to aspire?

I feel, however, that it is our time.

Q.

What do you think that there are no women among the presidential candidates of the Centro Esperanza Coalition, to which the New Liberalism belongs?

R.

That is terrible.

I have told them that they cannot all go out all very white and tell the rest of the mestizo country and women how the country is made.

And this is a debate that I have had with Juan Manuel Galán, our candidate of the New Liberalism, and with others.

Either they put us in this process or it fails.

It is with the regions and with ethnic diversity, or it is not.

Q.

You were already writing a book when you decided to run for the Senate, what is it going to be about?

R.

On the resistance processes of blacks and women in northern Cauca, with a component that has been key for me: the political decision to leave my hair in the air, frizzy and black in all its dimensions. That is the connector. It is telling this traditional country, this Latin America that sometimes does not allow us to recognize each other, that mine is a private battle that became a public triumph, a political act.

Q.

You caused a small revolution when you presented news with your natural hair in 2018, and a conversation of you at the Hay Festival the following year with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in the Nelson Mandela neighborhood of Cartagena is also remembered. Why has it been so important to claim curls, turbans and braids for black women?

R.

Because it has everything to do with our history and because for a long time they told us that we did not belong, that we were not well regarded. Even in this active citizenship, which we defend tooth and nail today, it is the flowering of what we have been battling in our private lives. Black women in this country, for example, are the most affected of those affected by the pandemic, according to the number of households from DANE [National Administrative Department of Statistics]. And in all the dimension that aesthetics and also beauty mean for women, these battles must be fought. It has been so important to me because I feel like it is part of my life's purpose. Over and over again situations appear in which I have to vindicate who I am, in the scenarios of power in which I have been. Because it's not just me, there are many of us.

Q.

What do you think now when you see your pictures with straight hair?

R.

That that was another Mabel Lara.

Another version of me.

I feel very powerful now, with my big hips, with the full identification of my blackness, with my messy, wild hair.

It's a version that helped the one here to grow.

I love her, I hug her, but I like this one better, I find it

cooler

.

We get along better with this version.

Mabel Lara during the conversation with EL PAÍS.

Andres Buitrago

Q.

What does the "rejuntancia" that Yolanda Perea talks about mean?

R.

She says that many times they criticize her and tell her that that word is not recognized by the academy. So, it has helped us to understand that when her grandfather called her in his town to sit down, to talk, to get together, it was to address family matters and to live in society, in their villages. I want to speak of Yolanda Perea as a symbol of dignity. She is a leader victim of sexual violence who all the time calls us to recognize that other country, from which I come, and that one can sometimes forget. There are some populations that need much more work than others. Yolanda represents me, hopefully she represents Colombians, and especially the victims. Rejuntancia is getting together, let's meet, embrace, recognize each other.

Q.

You lived the last year and a half in the United States, a society shaken by the capture of the capitol and the Black Lives Matter movement, among others.

A.

This is the result of that.

To see thousands of people in front of the White House - not black, not African American, many white people - demanding rights for black lives.

To recognize that societies aware of their moment in history have to embrace causes and struggles.

That is why Washington is so powerful for me, because it is the city of democracy, of freedoms.

I had to experience the taking of the Capitol, the campaign of Joe Biden and a woman like Kamala Harris, the debates, the presidential election.

It is a journalistic and personal experience that marked me.

Q.

Any lesson for Colombian society?

R.

That hate speech is not right, that it must be rejected outright.

That we are a tremendously unequal country, that we have to admit it but we have to get to work.

We have to seek the spirit of nation.

Take a look at what a woman like Kamala Harris means, with that dream for them beyond helping to build from diversity, the first woman to reach that position.

The phrase "representations matter" has penetrated my soul.

It is one of my flags.

And I think the seed of my experience in Washington led me to decide to go into politics.

P.

Do you admire any politics in Latin America?

R.

To Epsy Campbell, the vice president of Costa Rica, the most equitable country in the region at the moment.

"I'm not a politician, I'm an activist who gets into politics," she told me when I interviewed her on

Legado

, my Spotify podcast.

He comes from below, knows the local leadership, the work with communities.

Epsy Campbell inspires me.

Q.

How would you rate the moment Colombia is going through?

R.

As an opportunity, it is a watershed.

For the fearful, it is time to leave the country;

and for the brave it is time to stay to work, to assume our responsibility, to build a country.

After the peace process this was postponed for a while, but it is time for transformation.

We are in these elections deciding what will happen in the next decade.

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América newsletter and receive all the informational keys of the current situation in the region

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-01-11

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