Author: María Paula Alzate Afanador, cultural manager and project coordinator Fundación Prolongar
To survivors of anti-personnel mines
It is they who have taught me
that the body is a map,
and in their sketch, they dignify, survive.
They are survivors of a land
who never wanted to harm them,
and by chance in their steps,
undertook a journey,
they circled through the air,
to return like this, incomplete.
In their eyes there is forgiveness and hope
because they are children of second chances.
In some, repentance strengthens them,
in others, honor reaffirms their existence,
and in those, green prevails, its simplicity, clemency,
and in their eyes, justice.
I witness the gold that today covers their scars.
This time, they give one and with the other, the next step, without chance,
with effort to coexist,
enjoy the same air,
and to reconcile under the immense certainty that we are human.
In 2018, the Prolongar Foundation invited me to be part of a dream and without a doubt, it managed to seduce me with one of the professional challenges that has left me the most satisfaction in my life: coordinating between March and November of the same year, the project Strengthening reconciliation and coexistence through a museographic exhibition around antipersonnel mines and explosive remnants of war in Florence, Caquetá, winner of the II Call of the Living Peace Fund, implemented by the German Cooperation Agency GIZ. I then embarked on an eight-month journey in which I allowed myself to live multiple transformations.
Caquetá is the third department most affected by antipersonnel mines in Colombia (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica and Fundación Prolongar (2017), La guerra escondida. Antipersonnel mines and explosive remnants in Colombia, CNMH, Bogotá) and, therefore, the victims of this fact, have generated relationships based on resentment, distrust and fear. This project bet on him to transform through art, behaviors and prejudices towards the other and strengthen ties of coexistence and reconciliation in three populations considered opposed in the logics of war and that have been victims of antipersonnel mines: members of the Public Force, civilians and people in the process of reintegration.
Photographer: Diego Zamora
Broken part about to be repaired
through the Japanese kintsugi technique
The work with the three populations during the workshops was a moving process, in which we managed to consolidate an itinerant museographic exhibition called "Encounters that Reconcile" with more than 50 survivors of antipersonnel mines and in which I witnessed their transformation. The first trips to Florence were hard: it hurts to face the reality of the country from the different perspectives offered by the territory and the groups of the participants, but it also produces satisfaction because it reiterates with joy that there are entities in Colombia such as the Prolongar Foundation, which bet on peace, from the care and respect for difference. Belonging to one of them motivates me every day and fills me with pride.
Bringing reconciliation and coexistence to a metaphorical level is challenging: metaphor means not being satisfied with any expression; it fulfills its mission when it expands knowledge, because it forces a word to go beyond its meaning and provides an aesthetic value by sensitizing those who contemplate a work, read a poem or listen to musical notes.
Inspired by the Japanese philosophy and metaphor of Kintsugi ("golden patch" in English), the survivors demonstrated that reconciliation is a work of all that involves a step by step; a process in which everyone owns their time and decisions. Through the use of this metaphor they reflected on their individual and communal scars and identified the importance of golden glue as a beautiful element that unites us and reconciles each one with ourselves and with the other. By putting together the broken pieces of the broken vessels, there were no distinctions, on the contrary, they reconstructed what was fragmented, giving it a new value, and when finished, I include myself, we became more human. I realized how prejudiced I had been (I can still become one, but when I am aware of it, I try to put myself in each other's shoes) and the importance of working every day to welcome transformations as life opportunities.
It is essential to understand that an integral project requires a team willing to transform: regardless of the position we occupy, it makes us great to recognize that if the purpose is to transform lives, we must start with our own and that the work is not summarized in carrying out some functions and fulfilling a role, but in giving a meaning to what we do from our work and that of our colleagues. It is a process and this, an invitation to allow ourselves to be touched by the projects of which we are part.
I remember in one of our first team meetings, someone said we should start from the premise that we were all broken. It struck me that in a work environment we dared to talk about something so personal and I thought that broken I would not be. Why? if I have a quiet life, a resolute past and a promising future. Really, me?, Broken?
With the passage of the trips to Florence, sharing looks of regret, forgiveness and hope, hugs and smiles with the participants (also lumps in the throat and immense desire to cry), I realized that my body was also a map full of imperfections; I did not have a resolved past, but rather wounds, some superficial and others very deep, and that recognizing them as such made me freer. I realized then that the future is not promising, it is simply a necessary association at the same time to have control over it, and that in the present I had much to reconcile with myself, scars that I could cover with gold if I wanted. I greatly appreciate this project for giving me wings to stop along the way, breathe and try to do any action with a sense.
Two years have passed and many of the tools that I allowed myself to live in these workshops have helped me to solve situations that have been presented to me since then, such as the loss of a loved one, arguments as a couple, the relationship with co-workers and, above all, life with myself. On that path I have discovered that it is possible to heal, that transformations are potentiated when around them there are symbolic charges that strengthen them, that the metaphor evoked by Kintsugi can be approached from different stages of art, such as poetry, music, painting and even culinary and that it is not far away in Japan as an ancient practice.