By Amanda Lucia Camilo Ibarra, Ruta Pacifica, Colombia
View full notebook in pdf format [SPANISH]. [*note]

Since 1996, the Ruta Pacifica, a feminist, pacifist, anti-military organization, has been organizing caravans of thousands of women from all over Colombia to the regions hardest-hit by conflict. Each caravan is a symbolic gesture against the war and a practical opportunity for women to come together to exchange ideas and demand an end to human rights violations. As a result of the ongoing civil war in Colombia, different areas of the country have become increasingly isolated from one another, as the roads and borders between them are frequently controlled or blocked by the various armed groups. By traveling these roads, the caravans of women break through not only the physical roadblocks, but the psychological barriers of despair and isolation that allow the war to continue.

Ruta Pacifica has achieved ten national mobilizations in the states of Antioquia, Chocó, Putumayo, Magdalena Medio, Bogotá, Cauca, and Bolívar with the participation of close to 20,000 women and a distance of more than 1,700 kilometers. One caravan, to the region of Putumayo, included 100 buses carrying 3000 women who, along with the residents of the area, marched in the streets of the main city and held a convocation about the effects of the war. In order to ensure the safety of the travelers, Ruta Pacifica carefully planned all stages of the mobilization. Before the group left, they developed a map of possible risks, and a contingency plan to deal with those risks.

This notebook shares how Ruta Pacifica implemented the mobilizations and involved the women in training sessions to learn about logistics, protection plans, and to clarify the political ideology they were marching to represent. Equally important in their plan of action was the evaluation and documentation of the marches. For the media and for its own assessment purposes, Ruta Pacifica compiled and archived physical, photographic and audiovisual evidence of each event. Among the results of this evaluation process were the development of an organic and systematic method of mobilization, a more cohesive ideology within the movement, and an improvement in regional and national communication. Ruta Pacifica found that after the caravans, its members had a better collective and individual understanding of what it means to be a pacifist and a feminist and created a more stable network of international connections.