For weeks, Yanette Bautista has had her bag ready to run for the Republican Congress. She’s on the phone in case that moment comes when the Colombian congressmen finally decide to bring to the front lines the bill she advocates and has been pursuing all her life: the bill that would protect the rights of supports women who search for the disappeared. Something comes up every day, this Wednesday, when the first topic for discussion was the failures of the taxi drivers. The project is being scrapped or postponed as if enforced disappearances were something that doesn’t matter, something minimal when the most conservative figures put the disappearances at 120,000 and the truth commission’s figure at 200,000 victims. “We have the record in Latin America,” emphasizes Yanette at her foundation’s headquarters in Bogotá.
In 1987 she was executive secretary in a multinational company and the fight for human rights was not part of her life project. That changed on August 30 of the same year, when her sister Nydia Erika disappeared by members of the army on the day of her 12-year-old son’s first communion. Nydia was an M19 fighter and was captured by gunmen of the XX. Brigade was taken to a farm where she was held captive, tortured and sexually abused. His body turned up days later on a highway near Bogotá. He was buried unknown and the family could not be certain of his identity until more than a decade later. The fight for justice is not over yet. The perpetrators are still at large.
“My sister’s forced disappearance has confronted me with a reality that I never thought existed and a different path that I had to follow, because knowing that reality I could not work as if nothing would happen in this country. I was never the same,” says Yanette, now 66, at the headquarters of the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation, which she set up to combat impunity and bring together seeking women. Her office is reached after entering Revoltosas, a clothing and jewelry store that these women use to survive, and it’s a bright space where images of more than three decades of protests stand out. One of them recalls that there are more disappeared people in Colombia than in Chile under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and ends with a sentence that questions society: “And who cares?”
Indifference, says Bautista, is the third aspect of impunity in enforced disappearances. The other two, he affirms, are the negligence of the judiciary, which has played a role in human rights violations; and the media, which failed to show the magnitude of this crime against humanity. For this reason, she believes it is time for Colombia to enact a law that fully protects the women who continue to seek, so that they are considered objects of special protection of the constitution and peacemakers. It’s called women because 95% of seekers are mothers, wives, sisters and daughters; the other 5% are parents.
Yannette Bautista (center), after the first debate in the plenary hall on the draft law.Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation
what is the law
In practice, the project aims to ensure that the state’s investigations focus on what happens to women who search for disappeared people. It’s not little. They suffer threats, kidnapping, extortion, reprisals, the recruitment of their underage children or sexual violence against the girls who remain defenseless while their mothers search for other sons and daughters, fight to recover the bodies, bury them and avoid impunity. Yanette herself received death threats and had to go into exile.
In this way, they aim to make the National Protection Unit prioritize the threats they receive; and that, by being considered peacemakers, they have a voice in the negotiations progressing towards total peace, the current government’s project of achieving simultaneous negotiations with various armed groups.
The bill, which was first debated in May and finally reached the plenary session of the House of Representatives this Tuesday, is the work of eight women’s organizations. It’s based on reports they submitted to the Truth Commission set up after the peace accords between the state and the defunct FARC, including one that indicates there are two seekers in every family, about 400,000 people. “On average, enforced disappearance affects the lives of five to ten loved ones per victim, and when Sumercé considers the indigenous and black worldview and their concept of the extended family, the universe of those affected can be larger, reaching 2 million people.” Yanette says, while taking notes to answer each question in detail.
The economic life of seeking women is often made invisible. Many lose their jobs because they make finding loved ones a priority, drop out of school, are displaced, and survive poorly. They are also betting on improving this situation through the law, which however would have no fiscal implications for the state as it incorporates them into existing public institutions and policies. “We’re not asking that seeking women get better treatment than others, we’re asking that they be a priority. That these women can dream of going to university and having decent housing, health and pensions,” she adds. She herself has dedicated her life to the quest, and while she is a recognized global leader — she has won the Schalom Prize from the Catholic University of Eichstätt, Germany, and Amnesty International’s Human Rights Award, among others — she will not have a pension.
After years of protesting and arguing, they decided to write and translate concrete proposals. They have done so with technical advice from the United Nations Office for Human Rights, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Pastoral Social and the Embassy of the Netherlands. One of the articles suggests that when they enroll, they have benefits for access to higher education and credit for their families, as well as access to housing projects and specific interventions to address the multiple health problems that have been exacerbated as a result of the violence endured. in search .
Yanette Bautista, at the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation headquarters. CAMILA ACOSTA
Another key to the project is the creation of a unique registry of women searching for enforced disappearances so that the Comprehensive Reparation Unit for Victims has accurate information about them; and actions to raise awareness of enforced disappearances in society. “If society would react or be ashamed of this crime and join our fight, at least we wouldn’t be so alone. We’ve been like this for a long time,” concludes Yannette Bautista, who was waiting for her bill and life project to come first in Congress and the country this Wednesday. At the last minute, Congressmen canceled the appointment of the Seeking Women.
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