We are those rural women those little girls who had to flee the product of war.
Perpetual refugees we’ve come back to rebuild Santa Marta.
To talk about Ventana Abierta is to remember the scars and painful processes product of the armed conflict; however, it also helps us keep alive the resilience of four rural women who have defended human rights and popular education since they were children.
Nowadays, the group is made up of exemplary community leaders who promote women’s rights and mental health programs. Collectively, they come from very different professional backgrounds, but they are all united in service of the same cause. Ventana Abierta favors, promotes, and carry out actions to defend the rights of women and people with disabilities. Their motivation is to build more just and equitable societies, free of violence and discrimination.
Working as Human Rights Defenders
Among other things, the organization holds support sessions for women affected by El Salvador’s permanent state of emergency, therapeutic workshops to foster coexistence and strengthen the bonds between women, spaces for the production of media content and communication campaigns for development.
Among the women who participate in the activities organized by Ventana Abierta, there are mothers whose children have been imprisoned under the state of emergency, young women whose mothers were apprehended, wives whose husbands have been jailed, women living in extreme poverty, and women who suffer from chronic illnesses.
Ventana Abierta has also “recognized the importance of providing emotional accompaniment to these women, given the toll it takes on them to confront a judicial system that is set up to capture, torture, disappear, and/or kill its victims. In addition, we realized it was necessary to highlight these issues in the community so we could render visible the impossibility of a path to peace and justice under this legal configuration, which has unleashed new ways to attack community members,” recounts Blanca Recinos.
Ventana Abierta works to ignite empathy for the suffering of others, to question the role of prisons and detentions in the context of inequality. A debate on necropolitics, which lives are deemed worthy of protection and which ones are set aside for extermination? “Clearly, it was necessary to center this marginalized group of people; they are the reason we continue to raise these issues in the community,” adds Martha Mijango.
Who participates and what’s different
Arely’s son was imprisoned under the state of emergency. Arely’s mother, Leonor, tells us the impact Gerson’s imprisonment had on her daughter. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even leave the house. But once Leonor began participating in the activities organized by Ventana Abierta, Arely began to feel more supported and motivated. Indeed, women now have a dedicated space where they can connect and be each other’s support. In this manner, they figure out ways to shoulder the burden of having imprisoned relatives and the anxiety of not being able to see them since they were captured.
“We are working to organize a collective struggle from an issue that is primarily seen as an individual problem. We need this struggle to be acknowledged and validated by the communities where these women lives,” concludes Blanca.
