Great idols who ended up being heinous sexual predators fell from their pedestals thanks to social networks and campaigns against abuse. The movement, which began with the fall of the filmmaker Harvey Weinstein, and ended up uncovering the pot in different Latin American countries such as Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia.
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In Colombia, protests began to take place in an artistic way, and #MeToo began to take over various cultural scenes.
The impact that the movement had in other countries meant that in Colombia and other Latin American territories the alarms went off regarding sexual abuse against women. Just in 2018, the feminist organization Sisma Mujeres published that every 24.5 minutes a woman was sexually assaulted, and that for every seven victims of sexual crimes, six were women in Colombia.
The issue of sexual abuse was nothing new, but thanks to the worldwide demonstrations that the movement inspired, protests began to take place in Colombia in an artistic way, and the #MeToo began to take various cultural scenarios. Plastic arts, dance, music became a voice that, to this day, fights for the rights of women in the country.
Murals made by feminist groups, galleries with exhibitions dedicated to the subject and hundreds of women artists use their talent daily to claim women’s rights. According to an article published in the magazine Direct Bogota, the feminist leader yulieth lopez who is part of the NGO Cosas de Mujeres, affirmed that the artistic reception that #MeToo had “put art and culture at the service of the struggles for female vindication.”
One of the most notorious cases in Colombia was that of the filmmaker Ciro Guerra, denounced by seven women who claimed that the attacks had occurred between 2013 and 2019 in three Colombian and three foreign cities, and during events such as the Cannes Film Festival, the Colombian Film Festival and the Cartagena International Film Festival. Guerra stated in a statement that “I have not committed any of the offenses that are pointed out to me.”
The movement also put the Mayor of Medellín in the eye of the hurricane Daniel Quintero, which was strongly pressuring different media outlets not to make public the complaints of two women who claimed to have been violated by him. The Foundation for Press Freedom spoke about it, expressing its concern at the pressure exerted by Quintero, arguing that public officials could not prevent the publication of investigations that affect them.
Thanks to the large demonstrations, the struggle in the streets and the power of social networks, #MeToo has been the door for women to dare to denounce acts of sexual violence by their partners, friends, and even their own relatives. Some celebrities of the Colombian show business like Silvestre Dangond, Johan Alvarez and Guillermo Galvez they were also denounced by their victims.
The most recent case was on February 22, when the girls’ school Marymount de Bogotá released a statement explaining that they were conducting an investigation into “specific complaints related to improper behavior within the community involving a particular teacher.”
Shortly after publication, a collective silence was broken. under the hashtag #MaryMountNoMásSilencioseveral students and former students began to denounce systematic harassment by the physical education teacher Maurizio Zambrano. Impertinente talks about cases of sexual violence in schools in Colombia, about the negligence of educational institutions and about working with victims.