With the provision of technological, audiovisual and artistic equipment to the groups grouped in the Casa Loma Foundation, the Victims Unit supports the reconstruction of social fabric in this village of Medellín with a new strategy.

If in the past illegal armed groups exercised terror in the village of La Loma with murders, disappearances, massive displacements and even "invisible borders", for seven years the spaces are disputed by music, graffiti artists, dancers and young people who "shoot" with their cameras.

There are eight collectives grouped in Casa Loma Foundation, made up of many victims of armed conflict, who make visible the artistic and cultural movement with their project La Loma is not how they paint it, which helps to destigmatize this semi-rural area that borders the 13th commune. Medellin Even with their workshops, seminars in schools and nurseries for children and youth, provide life opportunities that are opposed to crime and other problems.

To support its work, the Victims Unit, with the support of USAID and IOM, provided a technological and artistic endowment consisting of audiovisual and photographic equipment, elements to adapt a recording studio (microphones, tripods, wiring, video panels). soundproofing), inputs for muralism and graffiti, digitizing tables and uniforms for dances and theater.

This strengthening meant an investment of almost 60 million pesos and is part of a new model to promote social and artistic processes that the communities are already carrying out, which guarantee the cultural rights of victims as a strategy of integral reparation and guarantees of non-repetition.

Susana Tabares is one of the leaders of the Lotier group that brings together those passionate about photography. Many like her suffered massive forced displacements between 2011 and 2013. She remembers that "many families returned and we started with our fingernails and we young people wanted other alternatives of life that were not shooting with a weapon but shooting with a camera".

Excited after unpacking the new cameras and lenses, she says that "it allows us to make visible the cultural actions that are bigger than the violence that lived the territory and that more children and young people can take a camera and have better life options".

Support for changing violence by culture

Cristian Álvarez, representative of Casa Loma Foundation, who also suffered violence, now says that "with these teams we are seeing that the Victims Unit supports us to support the neighborhood and prevent new victims, and that the visions change towards culture, music, dance, photography and being able to live from what one loves ".

The director of the Victims Unit in Antioquia, Wilson Cordoba Mena, said that "we will continue to focus on this type of project that reconstructs the social fabric affected by violence and displacement, and that generates life and business projects for continue to multiply them in their communities now with our support".

This sum is compounded by the psychosocial accompaniment by the Unit, which focuses on emotional recovery, the handling of experiences of suffering and the construction of new life projects.

(Fin/JCM/LMY)