Charo Minas Rojas has a long history of challenging Colombia’s patriarchal society. In 2014, she led a group of Afro-Colombian women on a 350-mile march from the Cauca region to Bogotá followed by a sit-in that eventually forced the government to recognize their land rights against illegal mining.
Recently she was at it again. At the peace talks in Cuba between the government of President Manuel Santos and the Colombia Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Rojas said she broke into the negotiations demanding that women, Afro-Colombians and victims have a seat at the table since they were among the most affected by the half-century-long conflict.
“One of the biggest crimes in war is keeping crimes against women invisible,” Rojas said in an interview following a United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women panel in New York some months later.
