Women who forgot the war to become entrepreneurs
The traces of violence and forced displacement are not erased from the mind and life of *Daniela Clavijo, after more than three years from the moment she had to leave her farm in Teorama , due to the attack by illegal armed groups that ordered his family to vacate this territory of Catatumbo.
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The reason: the dispute to blood and fire to dominate territories at the service of drug trafficking and extortion collection.
Clavijo's husband was taken, along with other men, from a pool hall where they were sharing. Fear quickly gripped the woman, along with her two children, including a young man who was 17 years old at the time.
“I had to protect my son from being taken away by those armed men. Then I had no choice but to leave for Cúcuta,” Clavijo recalled.
With the reins of her two children and without hearing from her husband, Daniela decided to get ahead in the capital of Norte de Santander, far from her life in the countryside and the fruits of the earth. She worked as a domestic worker in a family home and little by little she got a living for her family. Although, they say, her husband returned to Catatumbo, she never heard from him again.
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Violence on the borderThe days for *María López were no different from those of Clavijo. The incursion of a group known as 'Mano Negra', a paramilitary affiliate, reached her farm in Simitarra (Santander) and forced her to flee with her family, forgetting her work in the fields and the few things they had.
Resisting to be part of the conflict and shielding his loved ones from serving that armed group, left him no choice but to have to pack his clothes and flee, just as the handful of men warned him, with long weapons, in this rural area of Santander.
López and her family found a safe haven in Cúcuta when they arrived in this border area in 2005. However, with few options and job opportunities, they tried to earn a living in Venezuela, constantly crossing the border.
However, death and excessive violence were also noted in the neighboring country, to the point of having to avoid this territory for a while.
