Marlying Varguillas
In the midst of crises, powerful experiences emerge from women who teach by example to overcome adversity. This is the case of Marlyng Varguillas, a 35-year-old Venezuelan migrant who turned each problem into an opportunity, each individual learning into collective practice, each material achievement into social enjoyment. For her there is a before and after participating in the programs of the United Nations Population Fund -UNFPA- in the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
Marlyng, like thousands of women from the neighboring country, migrated into Colombia seeking horizons that would allow her to resolve her distressing situation, but she, in addition to wanting to solve her financial problems, had a hunch, she knew that this decision would change her life for the better. At first, when he arrived in Saravena-Arauca in 2017, crossing the border without papers -irregular crossings- it did not seem possible for her to have other options, she was even on the verge of falling into networks that traffic in women’s bodies. For this leader, prostitution was not an option, so she broke the bond that tied her to her adventure partner and engaged in selling a wide range of merchandise and domestic services; she took the decision not only not to go hungry again and to offer a better future for her little ones, but also to be able to help others and her fellow countrymen.
“… The first two days she made me some proposals that I didn’t like and I just left, she on her side and I on mine… I stayed in El Nula, a town on the Venezuelan side and came every day early in the morning, I would bring things to sell, bread, cakes, things like that... always with my baby who was 6 months old, sometimes it got late and I had to go back down that river at 6-7 at night and walk along the haciendas, that is quite dangerous, it is an area where there are armed people.” Said Marlyng.
According to data collected in the report What do the numbers say about human trafficking in migratory contexts in Colombia? By the Observatory of the Venezuela Migration Project and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), from 2015 to 2019, the number of victims of trafficking in persons identified in Colombia increased by 23%. As of May 4, 2020 alone, foreign victims in the form of external human trafficking exceeded the total number of foreign victims in the same modality by 20% in the entire 2019. For every man who is a victim of human trafficking, there are at least 3 migrant women who are victims of this crime. Furthermore, 63% of women who are recruited are between 10 and 30 years old.
In her comings and goings, Marlyng met people on each side of the border, with empathy and willingness to help, she gained the trust of people, to the point that they offered her a place to stay and rest in those days when sales were not good and couldn’t go home. In her journey she discovered her leadership and strength, every day her desire to help more people grew stronger, she was moved by the sad but hopeful gaze of other migrants.
Then she returned to Venezuela, because there he was studying a professional career, Agri-Food Production, she had only one year left to graduate and she had had to leave two of her three children with different family homes, but there was no work, so with few resources, she migrated with the intention of staying permanently in Colombia.
The people she had met while she was selling helped her, such would be the appreciation they took in her that a lady offered her a plot of land for her to take care of it without paying rent for almost one year, “another gave me a little kitchen, another a mattress and so on until I gathered enough to move us, it was a pretty nice process for me because I had the opportunity to help many people.” Marlyng never forgot the difficulties she had gone through and that is why she began helping many of her countrymen, she welcomed home those who had nowhere to sleep, up to 26 people came to stay in the plot.
With this experience, Marlyng became known, other women approached her and told her their stories of abuse and violence. It was when she learned about UNFPA, in Saravena, Arauca, where there is one of the two safe spaces in the department, “… they were running a program for women victims of abuse, since in the house I had a girl who was mistreated by her partner, and she was very fearful, so I decided to join the program to accompany her. The girl only accompanied me to the first meeting, but the people who were in charge of the program asked me if I wanted to be part of the leaders and I said yes.”
UNFPA safe spaces are places where young, adolescent and adult women feel physically and emotionally protected and where activities are carried out that allow them to socialize and rebuild social networks. There they receive psychosocial support, build capacities that allow them to face gender-based violence (GBV) situations and obtain information on issues related to women’s rights, GBV prevention, health and available services.[1] This interested Marlyng and found it useful. She survived the abuse, the violation in her own humanity and she knew that the abuse was also psychological and she thought these experiences could be used to help other women.
This migrant woman got involved in everything, she began to develop her leadership, which, as she says, had been dormant. She started looking for women who have survived or were experiencing violence, put what she learned into practice and also gained knowledge through the experiences of other people. “In the process with UNFPA I learned to be myself, to say what I think, what I feel, to assert my thoughts... I had a repressed personality inside me.”
Now, Marlyng organizes talks, plans activities to raise awareness in the community about the harmfulness of gender-based violence and is even asked to support local activities. She has a group of 13 women, all with different qualities, and UNFPA advises them with professionals in GBV and sexual and reproductive health matters. She also raised her self-esteem, she likes to feel acknowledged and appreciated for her work and the service she provides to the community. In her life project she is to form a cooperative or a foundation; therefore, she traveled to Venezuela to recover her papers and pursue a career in Colombia, but unfortunately not having all the documents and the lack of resources have not allowed her to fulfill the requirements to study and receive her official degree. Although this depressed her, she was able to recover and continue with greater enthusiasm at UNFPA; in the midst of the pandemic, she continues to support female GBV survivors who seek her because other people have recommended her, she tells them the routes and sometimes lends her phone because many do not have one to ask for help, her work is essential to save lives, “43,868 cases of gender and intrafamily violence have been reported so far in 2020, a situation that contrasts with the 175% increase in the number of calls for intrafamily violence to the emergency line 155”.[2]
In her desire to comprehensively help women, another topic that Marlying considers very useful, especially for young women, is that of reproductive care and sexual health. She herself admits that she did not plan her pregnancies, she did not have the means or the information she has now, and if she had had the opportunity to do so, things would surely be better in her life. “We received talks from UNFPA on that topic -said Marlying- it is important to talk about contraceptive methods, think ahead, plan, wait for the right time to do things...”
As of October 2020, 1.500 people have participated in the informative and pedagogical conferences on sexual and reproductive health carried out by the Humanitarian Response team of UNFPA Colombia; 2,600 women have been beneficiaries by having access to a long-term contraceptive method (subdermal contraceptive implant).
Marlyng thinks about everything women need, but she is clear that she could not help others if she had not done the process of forgiving, loving and valuing herself, “currently I look at myself in the mirror and I feel very proud of the woman I am, I say to myself Marlyng, thank you for letting you change, for letting go, thank you because I like you more as you are now, and I owe that to this program, I owe it to UNFPA, I believe that in my life there is a before and after arriving at UNFPA, and I would like to be able to move on, to continue doing this beautiful work with community women and to be able to exalt the name of my country first.”
[1] UNFPA Colombia.- Colombia Safe Spaces Experience.
[2] CPEM. (2020). Fifth Bulletin on telephone service lines to women in the context of preventive isolation measures due to Coronavirus in Colombia. Retrieved from:
http://www.equidadmujer.gov.co/oag/Documents/linea-155-boletin-5.pdf.
