"Children now play football on the field where the lives of the people of El Salado changed completely.
In February 2000, about 450 paramilitary fighters stormed this small Colombian town. They forced people from their homes into the field, and began to play drums and drink alcohol stolen from local shops. They then went on to torture and kill. Yirley Velazco was one of those gang-raped. She was 14 at the time.
The massacre at El Salado – which left at least 60 people dead and many more “disappeared” – was one of the most brutal events in Colombia’s decades of armed conflict.
Afterwards, Velazco, her family and other survivors fled to nearby cities and towns, where they often lived in deep poverty and faced stigma for having been forcibly displaced. Two decades on, only an estimated 1,200 of the 4,000 people in the community have returned.
Today there are no signs of the bloodshed on the football field and the children kick their ball over a faded peace sign painted on ground. 'When I pass by here, all the feelings come rushing back to me. I saw a lot of people get killed. It’s not easy to forget that. And there is still pain. There is still sadness,' says Velazco.
Velazco and 12 other survivors created a network, Mujeres Sembrando Vida (Women Sowing Life), to support victims of sexual and domestic violence in the northern Colombian region of Montes de María, an area still plagued by conflict.
Sexual violence is a common tactic used by paramilitaries, guerrillas and state military forces to sow fear and assert power.
'Sexual violence against women and girls is a kind of discrimination that comes from long-existing structures,' says Linda Cabrera, director of Sisma Mujer, an organisation that defends victims of gender-based violence in Colombia. 'What it has created is different kinds of traumas.'”
