La Virgen Inspection of the municipality of Quipile. It is located only 80 km from Bogotá. (2016)
At the time when paramilitaries started operating in the area, the community could not leave from 6 pm to 6 am or they could not return to their homes. (2015)
Don Dario, one of the oldest inhabitants of the region. It has had to deal with the arrival of the guerrillas in the 80s, the arrival of the paramilitaries in 2003 and finally the incursion of the Colombian army that is established in 2008. Currently the chaos that have generated the three actors of the Colombian conflict are disputing the territory, forces many of its inhabitants to withdraw from the territory. (2015)
The Batallón Colombia located in La Mesa, Cundinamarca. They would have had a connection with the Autodefensas Campesinas of the Casanare paramilitary group since its arrival in 2003. Not only since the arrival of the guerrillas were forced recruitment in La Virgen, from that moment the soldiers of the Colombian army, made constant incursions to recruit young people of the territory to support its mission in the area. Since these young people had a better knowledge of the terrain. (2015)
In the pages of Raquel´s family album who has lived for more than 40 years in La Virgen are some images of the time were the coffins were the ones that crossed the streets of the town. (2016)
This shirt was used by some students from the Joaquin Alfonso Medina Institution, many of these children grew up watching how the armed groups recruited or murdered their families. (2014)
Children from the Joaquín Alfonso Medina Institution gathered in a classroom. (2014)
Some of the families in the region can not take their children to a school or day care centers since the war in the area has dimished job vacancies, so some children must help to the home sustenance since very young, also the number of malnutrition in these young people is very high, because of the difficult entry to the territory due to the armed conflict and the damaged roads, food does not arrive in large quantities. (2014)
Eighteen quilates of gold between the teeth, a legacy of a culture that some people try to forget. (2016)
The transport of most of the farmers in the area, such as María who daily takes from the farm where she works to the urban area of the town her merchandise to sell. (2015)
German was one of the first young people to suffer for the arrival of the armed groups, forced as every member of the community to have to collaborate with the side that arrived at the town, until one day a man known as "Guajiro", who According to the community was a member of the guerrillas, murdered German with a machete, cut him to the point of almost cutting off his head. around 47 stabs left him his killer. (2016)
In the town of La Virgen the work of the land is still done in a traditional way, but as its inhabitants have left the village, the big companies are those who have bought the land that they obtain at very low prices, these companies more industrialized brought all their machinery and their people from other cities, further diminishing the possibilities of employment in the community. (2014)
Eugenio González has worked almost all his life cutting sugar cane with just a salary of 20 to 30 thousand pesos per day, if it is a good day. His main concern is that in recent years the work has declined since the youngest people when they just finished their Studies, they move to look for other opportunities in the big city. (2016)
Hector Vargas without any protection in the middle of the mountain, almost falls when he was trying to secure the cane that is on the mule, these workers have no insurance at the time when they are doing their work, if they get hurt everything comes out from their salary, as in the worst days do not exceed COP $10,000 per day. (2016)
The mules of burden cover their eyes to avoid being frightened by riding the cane on their backs, without this they could be very dangerous for the life of those who are close to them. (2016)
Gonzalo has one of the less wanted jobs that those who work in the mills, he is the one in charge of the milling who is the one who takes the cut cane and puts it in the grinder in order to extract the juice from the cane, some have lost fingers To be trapped inside the machine. (2016)
Jorge Manuel with his imposing sickle must submit to the infernal heat of the mill´s ovens for hours, using the sugar cane´s leftovers as a fuel for the machines, here nothing is wasted. (2016)
"I serve in a glass the sweet veins of the cane, full of bitterness and shouts of shrapnel" (2016)
Nowaday don Adelmo, is one of the few peasants that manage to get some profit from the panela to survive, the market is very small and with the unpredictable nature´s changes this labor has been losing everytime, are the big landowners with more industrialized mills who monopolize the whole panela market in the area. (2016)
Don Ricardo, who is in charge of the panela molds, told me how almost a month ago he lost a finger in one of the mills where he also works. This shows the hard way that the panela, La Virgen and its people have to take to get the aguapanela drinken by the Colombians. (2016)
Long before the war hit them, the inspection of La Virgen de Quipile was the largest producer of sugar cane and panela at national level, the war of the different sides ended up with all this progress, and some of the village of the municipy became into ghost towns. (2016)
El Cruce is 10 km away from La Virgen, it is where every Saturday is the market of the panela, where all owners of the mills meet to sell their products. This process is one of the most complicated in the market of the panela, since many arrive very early to show their merchandise but some sellers do not buy until very late at night, when some are tired and end up yielding to sell it in Low prices, is a strategy that has greatly affected the panel production in La Virgen. (2016)
Those who manage to fill their truck at El Cruce with the panela immediately go to the city of Bogotá to deliver all the merchandise in the market square of Corabastos that is the epicenter of the national farmers market. (2015)
Already in Corabastos after having passed through at least 3 different people, the panela will have already gone from selling the box of 15 panelas that were sold in El Cruce to COP $70,000 to reach up to COP $200,000 in the market place, just by the switch of city, from here the boxes of panela are returned to pack and distributed by all the country, changed its price constantly since the rise of gas have caused a chaos in the national market creating monumental costs to the price of this nourish that accompanies families from every social classes. (2016)
During the 80’s and 90’s, the guerillas conducted a raid on La Virgen de Quipile in Cundinamarca, Colombia in order to obtain a strategic position that would benefit its war tactics by providing power over populations close to the big cities and control over the intermunicipal routes that connected them. Their arrival began in Viotá, another municipality in Cundinamarca, where fronts 42 of the Eastern Bloc of the FARC EP, led by the "Negro Antonio", took over the territory and carried out one of the largest forced conscriptions in the history of the war in Colombia.
In the following years, during the height of his political campaign, ex-president Álvaro Uribe Vélez made promises to eradicate the guerrillas at all costs. During his previous time as Governor of Antioquia, he defended the use of "Convivir", which were private security cooperatives that landowners used to counteract the control of the guerrillas. These types of paramilitary groups are currently under investigation for a staggering number of Human Rights violations. In 2003 in the Cundinamarca´s territory began to operate the Autodefensas Campesinas of the Casanare, led by "Martín Llanos" and his brother "Caballo". According to testimony of the community, this paramilitary organization had connections with the Batallón Colombia that was in La Mesa, which gave orders to the paramilitary group to use photographs to identify those who they deemed necessary to kidnap or murder.
Since its foundation La Virgen de Quipile has sustained the land with cultivation of sugar cane and the production of panela in the “trapiches”. This project, as a metaphor reflecting this sociopolitical context, is based on the journey of a panela block- from the hard labor of its production and the harsh reality that has been lived by the people of La Virgen, to its subsequent commercialization in the big city, to its eventual place in the homes of Bogotá, where there is no conscience about the bitter suffering of the region that produced it, only 80 km from Bogotá.
