Mending a broken Colombia with stitches

Virgelina Chará is originally from the Municipality of Suárez (1953), in the department of Cauca, displaced and victim of the Colombian armed conflict, defender of human rights and candidate in 2005 for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She is an insurgent woman, Afro-Colombian, mother of seven children and a fighter.

Today she leads a project of healing, reconciliation and memory through sewing.

She works in the space of the Unión de Costureros, on the second floor of the Casa de la Paz, a reconciliation center for victims of the conflict and ex-combatants, located in the heart of the Colombian capital.

“The Union of Seamstresses was born within the framework of memory pedagogy in 2014, and provides information and training tools.

Here, the citizens, in their full autonomy, tell their stories”.

While explaining everything that the Union of Seamstresses has already achieved, such as the Wrapping of the Memorial at the Centro Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación (in September 2018) and the Wrapping of the Castillo de las Artes in 2021 (the first center for art, culture and memory of Bogotá), reveals its new and ambitious project for 2022: to do the same in September the Palace of Justice of Bogotá.

A community and symbolic act that will be celebrated just 37 years after the M-19 guerrillas took the building by force, causing a conflict that led to the burning of the building and the death of more than 100 people.

There will be 166,000 square meters of fabrics embroidered by the so-called "itinerant seamstresses" from around the world to cover the Palace of Justice, giving life to an artistic installation with a strong visual and emotional impact.

Casa de la Paz, where the Union of Seamstresses is located, which promotes actions with fabrics to ask for reconciliation in a Colombia still with the open wounds of the conflict.

Diego Battistessa

Chará details that the process is supported by the sale of products: clothing, dolls and accessories that are handcrafted by the members of the Union.

A woman of firm words and contagious laughter, she has not allowed herself to be bowed down even by the psychological consequences of the confinement decreed during the covid-19 pandemic and she has decided to overcome this trauma by sewing a book.

"A text without words where the fabric is a testimony of everything we have experienced in our neighborhood in the hardest months of confinement," she says as she shows this work of art.

In a video recorded in the framework of the rural week in 2021, Chará specified the symbolism and meaning of the sewing exercise:

When they ask me why to sew, I answer that we are mending this country that we have broken by the conflict, generating awareness and knowledge at the same time, and telling Colombia that we want the truth.”

She speaks with the force of those who have experienced the violence firsthand, which has not ceased in the last 60 years, not even after the signing of the Peace Agreements between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC.

She remembers that the first time she had to move was in 1985, when she was forced by threats from armed men to leave her town to go to the capital of the department, Santiago de Cali.

Upon arrival in Cali, she went to live in the eastern part of the city, in the Aguablanca district, which housed most of the people displaced by violence who sought to rebuild their lives in this great city.

That was just the first migration of many.

Chará's work is integral, multifaceted and horizontal: she is also an artist, she writes poetry and songs, which she herself later sings or recites.

In 2000 she was forced to change her residence again.

According to her account, she denounced violent groups that, supported by some soldiers, were dedicated to recruiting young people in the neighborhood.

Fearing for her life and considering the serious threats against her person, Chará had to leave with all her children, leaving Cali in the direction of Bogotá.

In the capital, the threats against her life have not ended, but all this has not stopped her, and her charisma and determination have led her to become a recognized leader throughout Colombia.

She is a woman who creates spaces for memory, community work and actions to confront violence against women at all levels: especially that generated by displacement and war.

Chará is currently the executive coordinator and legal representative of

AsoMujer y Trabajo, an organization that works with women victims of displacement, especially those forced into prostitution, and relatives of the disappeared.

On the organization's website you can read: “Our initiative consists of the entire issue of recovering the ancestral legacy of black communities.

In the whole issue of raising the self-esteem of women who have been in an emotional crisis due to the rupture of the social, family and political fabric that they have had due to the impact left by displacement, sexual abuse, prostitution, disappearances or the recruitment.

It is a political commitment launched, an initiative from the victims, from our organization and from the knowledge of the victims...”

Doll sold in the workshop to finance the Union of Seamstresses.Diego Battistessa

Chará's work is comprehensive, multifaceted and horizontal: she is also an artist, she writes poetry and songs, which she later sings or recites.

With lyrics that call for respect for life, diversity and an end to the conflict in the South American country.

Reconciliation, truth, peace and social transformation.

All this represents Virgelina Chará, a woman who works tirelessly to sew a country that is broken and now seeks to recompose herself.

She fights and sings for the truth:

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