The Tapestries of Mampujan

“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” –Osho

I am living and working in Libertad, but Mampujan is another community that I will be supporting during these next two years. To get to Mampujan, I have to take a motorcycle for an hour to the highway, then a man named Surdo (Lefty) helps me get the right bus for the right price to take me about another hour to the town right off of the highway to Cartagena: Mampujan.

Before 2000 most people had no idea that Mampujan existed. Now it is one of the most famous communities in Colombia on a national and international level. NGOs and governments from around the world are interested in Mampujan, its history, and human rights developments in the town.

Why is everyone so interested?

When I was in Mampujan between Christmas and New Year’s, I was fortunate to hear a bit of their story.

In March of 2000, paramilitaries arrived at Mampujan and told everyone to go to the town square. There they divided them in two lines, one of men and one of women. They said that they were going to kill them. They told me that then the paramilitaries changed the orders: instead of killing them, they commanded that everyone leave the town by the next morning.  Many people believe that this is the work of angels.

The people of Mampujan obeyed, grateful for their lives since similar encounters were happening in towns nearby and massacres occurred. They entered into many hardships in the following years. The displacement of an entire village added many stresses to the town that they were relocated to. Shelter, food, and basic necessities were difficult to access and for a long time the residents of Mampujan struggled.

Eventually, the people began to construct new homes and a new Mampujan by the highway where it is now located. Some people continue to return to their lands in Mampujan Viejo (Old Mampujan) to work, but the homes are now deteriorating and falling apart, with trees growing in them and no roofs. Still, most people hold on to the goal of returning to their homes that they were forced to leave over 13 years ago and reconstructing Mampujan where it originally was located.

There are many communities that have faced this same struggle in Colombia, but Mampujan has received so much attention because it is the first and only community to receive reparations through the Law 975, the Law of Justice and Peace, created in 2005. While the families have received the individual reparations due to them, they are still in the process of receiving community reparations and the restitution of their lands. It is a long and complicated process, but there are many different organizations working to support the community.

It was powerful to hear the stories of their displacement first hand. It was also amazing to be invited to participate with a group of women from Mampujan in another activity that separates them from other displaced communities: tapestry making.

 MCC and Sembrando Paz saw the effects that the trauma of being displaced was having on the people of Mampujan and wanted to provide psychological resources. What developed was a quilting project to provide a space for the women to process their trauma. The women of Mampujan took this initial project and adapted it to their needs; instead of quilting, they began to create tapestries telling their stories, starting from how their ancestors lived in Africa, to being brought to Colombia as slaves, to the development of their own communities here, to how life was before, during, and after their displacement. 

 
The tapestries are beautiful as is the process of creating them. They women sit, sew, share, and laugh. Many of the women say that they feel good when they are creating the masterpieces; they help each other talk through problems, share memories, and dream about the future. It is a group of strong women who support each other and help the community process what happened to them while sharing it with the world. 

It is a creative way to enhance the beauty of this world after trauma and tragedy. 

 

It truly is beautiful.