There is a story by Borges in which a warrior says that “the clearest heroic deeds lose their luster if they are not praised with words.” That is, there is no immortal victory without a poet to narrate the achievement, or everyone Hero falls into obscurity without a good storyteller. This Wednesday marks two years of a historic victory for the Colombian feminist movement, the decriminalization of abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy, the longest period in Latin America, and at the same time a book is published that tries to tell the epic well: Conversations outside the cathedral, published this month by Penguin Random House. “What happens to many of us feminists is that we work and fight, but at the same time we do not create our record for history,” admits Ana Cristina González Vélez, doctor and justice pioneer, in the book Making a Movement. “I think men have become more aware of the value of telling history, and that’s a shame,” he adds. It's time to put together the record to fight for your place in history and better tell the performance. As Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro describes it, this is a book about “the memory of the Colombian green tide.”
Conversations Outside the Cathedral is a book of interviews that journalist Laila Abu Shihab conducted with González and her closest colleague Cristina Villarreal, who for years ran one of the few safe centers for women seeking abortions in Bogotá: Guide Me. “We formed a lot of partnerships, Cristina from a services perspective and I were closely linked to the feminist movement and advocacy, we were like two faces on one body,” González says of Villareal. Mixed between the voices of the two Cristinas are the voices of other activists, lawyers, congressmen, reggaeton singers or famous actresses who were crucial to the victory. There are also some men, but mostly women. The diverse choir accompanies the long road to victory: defeats, strategies, unexpected turns, debates, divisions, betrayals. But also an extraordinary degree of solidarity, a feminist way of working that is “collective and goes against egos and vanities,” writes the journalist.
Ana Cristina González, during a feminist mobilization in Bogotá. Victoria Holguín from Causa Justa
The first thing “Conversations Outside the Cathedral” tries to do is acknowledge those who don’t have it. Take, for example, university professor and sociologist Lucero Zamudio, who led the first ambitious study on abortion in Colombia in 1994, which found that induced abortions were the second leading cause of maternal deaths. “This study has never been repeated, neither on this scale nor with this depth,” says González. Another example was the politician Iván Marulanda Gómez, who as a voter tried to include the right to abortion in the new Magna Carta of 1991. “Friends, it is the right of Colombian women to give birth to children out of love and care. Commitment, and it is the right of Colombian children to be born surrounded by love and protection,” Marulanda told his colleagues in the Constituent Assembly. He was defeated: 25 yes votes, 40 no votes, 3 abstentions. Congress has since passed several initiatives to regulate abortion. Nobody has been successful.
In the fight for abortion rights there are no protagonists, but there are key figures. Mónica Roa, lawyer who achieved decriminalization in three cases in 2006. Or Sandra Mazo, who works to end abortion blame by leading Catholics for the right to choose. However, for Cristina Villarreal, the key person was her father: Jorge Villarreal Mejía, a gynecologist who launched a medical movement in favor of family planning and founded Oriéntame in 1977. “I learned everything from my father,” says the daughter, one of the leaders of the Causa Justa and the movement that preceded it, “The Table for the Life and Health of Women.”
Cristina Villareal. With kind approval
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But Conversations Outside the Cathedral is also a book about uncomfortable conversations. The tensions that existed among feminists after Roa's victory in 2006, for example, either because of her perceived excessive prominence or because of her strategy: she referred not to decriminalization, but to exceptions for three reasons. “They criticized us and said that what we asked for was very little and were just crumbs of justice,” says Roa. The women of La Mesa por la Vida y la Salud do not seem to be afraid of increasingly complicated debates. For example, one debate they cannot resolve together is how to regulate the right to abortion in cases of fetal abnormalities, because “any effort in this regard reinforces stereotypes and exacerbates discrimination against people with disabilities,” says González.
“There was a time when we decided every month or every two months, I don't remember exactly, we would choose a discussion topic and ask each other uncomfortable questions,” Villareal says. “One of these problems was abortions of female fetuses in India. At first it triggers a very strong reaction.” You have to read the book to find out how they solved this problem.
The protagonists are clear about the epic, so Conversations Outside the Cathedral is primarily a book for those who got lost along the way. But also to warn the unsuspecting. Two years ago, the United States Supreme Court overturned the ruling that guaranteed women that right to abortion for decades, and governments like that of Argentina's new president are promising to follow the same path. In Colombia, the so-called “pro-life” groups – which correct Cristinas and ask her to call her “anti-right” – continue to push for their victory against abortion rights. In feminism, victory is not fully achieved because the struggle is changed.
“I don't know if one day, I hope so, in a few decades, this conversation will seem very strange and incomprehensible to those who live at that time that a crime like abortion ever existed,” says one the protagonists of this book. “I am convinced that there is no moment when the fight ends,” says the other. The conversation continues for now.
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