Comando Colibri Feminist Self-Defense Group Struggles Against Injustice in Mexico teleSUR English
go to original March 7, 2016

Three years ago, a group of Mexican women decided to create a self defense group in Mexico City as a response to the daily violence that women deal with in the country.

The idea was to break with the logic of victimization of women and to overcome women's daily fear of being verbally harassed, sexually accosted in public spaces.

Colombian researcher and coordinator of the movement María Teresa Garzón Martínez says (to Argentinian outlet Marcha) the collective meant to “train for a fight that we will never give.”

“I had some personal experience of self defense (in Colombia), and I had the opportunity to do thai boxing here in Mexico City. With other girls, we proposed to my instructor to do workshops in the Viveros Park, without equipment. Later, the Bonebreakers Academy offered its facilities, and technical training from its instructors. Then we decided to take it to the next level and better organize certain aspects. We started training our own female instructors, and opening paid classes in order to cover our basic expenses.”

“We like to talk about the almost perfect victims,” a sentence they found in a Shakira's song. “Women, or a certain type of bodies that include women, have been socialized in the common representation that they are slimmer, weaker, more easily scared. According to this representation, women would not fight back in a situation of attack, making them the perfect victims for any assailant.

For this reason, we do play the victim role, but almost perfect victims, trying to make the game fail and turn in our favor. We need to unlearn many things and learn new ones, but with training women become more aware of the possibilities of their body.”

“Colibri” came from an African version of a common story, where the little bird fights alone the wood in fire: while the other animals ran away, the colibri goes to the opposite direction toward a lake and carry one by one drops of water to the fire. “We are sure that if we do what we are meant to do as women and as feminists, despite being the most vulnerable group of the world population, then we will be able to live in the woods again. We do not want to survive, we want to live life itself, and therefore make life more bearable to live.”

Read more about the women's groups that are changing and redefining Latin America at teleSUR

Photo: ComandoColibrí/Facebook

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