Columbia's City of Women

When work began on building the City in 2003, masked and hooded men would drive past, threatening violence and murder. During the three years of construction, family members of Liga women were "disappeared" or killed. In 2005, Julio Miguel Espitia - who was guarding the City's brick factory - was murdered. Many women left out of fear. Yet, Lubis recalls, it was his widow, a member of the Liga, who resumed the building work first.

"Simona said; 'How can we stop? If my husband was working so that we could have houses, let's keep going towards this dream. We're going to build this City of Women'," Lubis remembers.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/12/colombia-city-women-1512110850...

That is wonderful.

It brings up all sorts of thoughts in my head. It's not exactly a feel-good story, those women are still incredibly poor, still living very precarious lives, still menaced by terrible violence. But when I read something like this:

Seletina, another leader, laughingly tells us: "I was very shy, but in the Liga I've gotten rid of some of this shyness … and now, well - I don't speak well, but at least I speak. I've left some of my fears behind."

Dayanera links this to a restoration of self-worth: "I'm not someone who went to university, but wherever I go now, I feel I have capabilities."

Lubis takes this sentiment a step further, declaring: "The Liga has been my school and my university."

I do feel hope. It sounds so trite to say it, but honoring simple human dignity seems to be the key to solving whatever besets us.

Of course the whole situation surrounding it is tragic and it's not as though building a community is going to magically erase the bad, but they did something big and worthwhile for themselves, to better their lives and give themselves something positive.

Thanks so much for this.

Bitterly ironic that today's NYT has an article on shopping for real estate in Colombia thanks to the weak peso.