Intervention in Bogotá 30 of November

According to Medicina Legal's data, between January and October of this year, there were 18,967 cases of alleged sexual crime against women in the country. ‘Alleged’, because they are still being investigated. The numbers increase in cases of other types of violence that are more normalized and less visible: in 2019, for example, Medicina Legal registered 34,183 cases of violence against women and 31,044 cases of interpersonal violence. These women could fill an entire football stadium.

In the most extreme case of violence, murders, the figures have increased compared to 2018: from 1,156 women to 1,229 women killed in 2019. There were no such obvious changes in how the murderers were dealt with: most remain cases without enough information, with unknown aggressors 15% of the time, and couples and ex-partners almost 10% of the time, according to Medicina Legal figures.

The entity talks about homicides against women, and not feminicides, because it cannot criminalize crimes. However, there are civil society organizations that have dedicated themselves to keeping track of femicides in the country. The Feminicidios Colombia Foundation, for example, published a report on November 25 where it registers 239 femicides in the country so far this year, of which 73.8% have been perpetrated by acquaintances of the victims.

Precisely, 239 of the almost 400 women who met at the Parkway on the night of November 30, carried the name of one of the women victims of femicide on their chest. Andrea Paba, on the other hand, was named after the person who raped her as a child. “I had never told anyone that they had raped me.

My mother knew because she entered the room at the time my cousin was raping me, but it was never an issue I wanted to talk about, I felt dirty. But I understood that I am not alone and that we must learn to socialize it. It is obviously horrible, but this is something that needs pedagogy.

Telling our stories helps other women to take the voice and, if they want, also tell their own story. I did it because of that. Also, why am I going to give so much power to the person who violated me so many years ago? At this moment, there is this support network behind me that supports me and encourages me to tell my story,” says Andrea.

Andrea, and the same members of LASTESIS, leave a clear message: performance is a part of the process, not an end in itself. It is the tool that allows to carry an important message: that the State has been complicit in violence against women because it has a justice system that does not protect or punish abusers; but also a State that is represented by a police force that has also violated women, as in Chile.

“In the Chilean case, there is an experience that has to do with a memory that has not yet been eliminated, which is that of the dictatorship and the experiences of violence that the State can exert on citizens,” said one of the members of LASTESIS to the BBC. “There are raped and abused when they are going to report that situation, are asked how they were dressed, for example, trying to blame the victim. So who finally protects you?"

Performer Nadia Granados agrees that “A rapist in your path” is only one step, but an important one in the path to materialize a concrete transformation in the recognition of gender based violence. “I would not think that performance as such is the one that achieves changes, but we are facing a transnational collective of women that is surely already generating a lot of transformations.

The power to shout together in this massive performance is a symptom of something bigger that has definitely changed and that has enormous power in the fight against the patriarchy which, in itself, is the root of the historical violence that plagues humanity,” says the artist.

Andrea Paba, on the other hand, assures that the most important aspect of “A rapist in your way” has been the discussions that the performance has led to. One, is precisely the wave of allegations of sexual abuse that have arisen as a result of the performance and that have led many women to tell their stories of abuse, based on one of the most popular phrases of the intervention.