Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres: archives and poetic repertoires of the memory of a nation in war and transformation

ABSTRACT

Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres: archives and poetic repertoires of the memory of a nation in war and transformation – This article analyzes from a perspective of research in political performance, the process of creation and production of the play Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, composed of victims and survivors of the war in Colombia, who share in common have suffered state crimes. Taking this case as the object of study, it investigates the methodological routes of creation that these women have created to transform their own stories of pain and resistance into archives and poetic repertoires. Which we postulate as forms of production and transmission of incorporated knowledge, about the memory of a nation marked by violence.

Keywords:
Performance; Gender; Memory; Archives; Répertoires

RESUMEN

Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres: archivos y repertorios poéticos de la memoria de una nación en guerra y transformación – Este articulo analiza a partir de una perspectiva de la investigación en performance política, el proceso de creación de la obra teatro Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, integrada por víctimas y sobrevivientes del conflicto interno y la guerra en Colombia, quienes comparten en común haber padecido crímenes de Estado. Tomando como objeto de estu-dio este caso, indaga las rutas metodológicas de creación que, estas mujeres han creado para trans-formar sus propias historias de dolor y resistencia, en archivos y repertorios poéticos. Los cuales pos-tulamos como formas de producción y transmisión de conocimiento incorporado, sobre la memoria de una nación marcada por la violencia.

Palabras-clave:
Performance; Género; Memoria; Archivos; Repertorios

RÉSUMÉ

Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres: archives et répertoires poétiques de la mémoire d'une nation en guerre et en transformation – Cet article analyse, du point de vue de la recherche sur la performance politique, le processus de création et de mise en scène de la pièce Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, composée de victimes et de survivants de la guerre en Colombie, qui ont en commun d'avoir subi des crimes d'État. Prenant ce cas comme objet d'étude, il étudie les itinéraires méthodologiques de création que ces femmes ont créés pour transformer leurs propres histoires de douleur et de résistance en archives et répertoires poétiques. Que nous postulons comme formes de production et de transmission de savoirs incorporés, sur la mémoire d'une nation marquée par la violence.

Mots-clés:
Performance; Genre; Mémoire; Des dossiers; Répertoires

Introduction

This text emerges as the outcome of a doctoral investigation, which was orchestrated within the realms of education in Cultural Studies and Political Performance Studies (Taylor, 2011). As a result of these confluences, this article guides a reflection on how sociocultural processes are involved in the construction of our conceptions about the world, in the fabrication of subjects, identities, and ways of being, living, and thinking in contemporary times (Kirchof; Wortmann; Costa, 2015, p. 8). In this case, we delve into the methodological paths that women, victims, and survivors of internal conflict and war in Colombia have created through performing arts to transform their embodied history of conflict atrocities into poetic archives and repertoires of a nation in war and transformation.

This work is framed within a Colombian context characterized by a sociopolitical reality of more than six decades of war and internal violence conflicts involving different armed actors such as left-wing guerrillas, the military army, paramilitary groups, and organized criminal gangs (BACRIN), among others. This social problem has left thousands of victims across all levels and social strata in Colombia. The consequences have been devastating, particularly affecting those living in rural areas, such as the indigenous, Afro-descendant, and peasant populations. These communities, already grappling with significant social inequality, have borne the brunt of recurrent violence, manifested in countless murders, massacres, political persecutions, kidnappings, and disappearances, among many other human rights violations occurring in these war-torn scenarios (CNMH, 2018)¹.

From this context, we analyze the collective creation process of the Colombian play Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, which is composed of women who are victims and survivors of various state crimes in Colombia. We delve into the performative, poetic, and political forms and strategies used during the creative process to elaborate, process, and transform traumatic memories of violence and internal conflict into poetic archives and repertoires. These archives and repertoires (as we will see later) have become constituted as the material of evidence and a means of denouncing systematic state crimes in Colombia.

This research represents a theoretical and political commitment to embodied knowledge, approaching performance studies as an interdisciplinary methodological lens that incorporates various strategies from the human sciences to examine embodied practices and expressive behaviors (Taylor, 2011). Through the lens of performance studies, we observe how they operate to understand social mobilities configured in the body as repertoire and memory (Taylor, 2011). In this perspective, we take performative practices as both the object/process of analysis and a means of generating and transmitting knowledge through embodied practice. Additionally, bodily practice, in conjunction with and linked to other cultural practices, provides a form of knowledge (Taylor, 2014). Performance studies cover different nuances that are complexified by their interdisciplinary nature (shared with areas of knowledge such as human sciences, biological sciences, cognitive sciences, and the arts). In this sense, performance studies are attributed with an intersectional character, prompting an examination of “what exists in the middle to go beyond epistemic delimitations and disciplinary divisions to confront similar phenomena” (Taylor, 2013, p. 28).

Building upon these premises, we reflect on performative practices and the relevance of self-reference levels, from which the members of the play narrate. Thus, we analyze the articulation “between representation and presence in the poetic elaboration and theatrical dramaturgy of the tragic experience” (Satizabál, 2015, p. 252). This relationship becomes more complex when we understand that the members of the play narrate from the pain of their bodies, from their insides, “pains and traumas that do not arise from the scenic action but from reality itself” (Satizabál, 2015, p. 252). Throughout the observed process, we examined how the creation of archives and repertoires took place using personal objects and the affective memories of the members of the play. We investigated the operation of these objects as a powerful input for the creation of the performative repertoires that make up the work of Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. Additionally, we examine how these repertoires activated different levels of memories and their connection to a significant issue of structural and social violence resulting from the internal conflict in Colombia.

Image 1
Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. Source: Trípticos de Viviana Peretti 2017².

From a perspective of performance studies, we understand these archives and repertoires as sources of knowledge that convey wisdom through the temporal and spatial relationships that unfold in the representation (Taylor, 2017a). In this case, they serve as raw material (Levi, 1990) regarding the poetic memory of the violence and resistance of women who are victims and survivors of social violence in Colombia. In this way, we acknowledge the creation of these materials as “archives in resistance”, as they resist being confined to archiving by transforming into tangible evidence that emerges in the presence of poetic action. This evidence not only represents the memory of conflict and social violence in Colombia but also encapsulates the lives of those absent. Furthermore, we present these poetic repertoires as methodological forms of creation, capable of being replicated in different contexts and mobilizing social transformations.

Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres

For this analysis, we focus on the creative process of the Colombian play Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, directed by playwright Carlos Satizábal³ in collaboration with poet, playwright, and actress Patricia Ariza. His work resulted from a collective creation⁴, involving actresses⁵ with systematic training and women who were victims and survivors of the war in Colombia. The women participating in this theatrical creation share the common experience of having suffered various crimes in which the State, supposed to guarantee security, failed to do so. Instead, it is the culprit and responsible for the disappearance and deaths of their children, friends, and family members. This aspect is crucial for understanding the purpose and distinctive nature of the production because “the women who converge here do not feel repaired by the institutions, which is why they seek other forms of catharsis and denunciation” (Castañeda, 2018, p. 8).

Image 2
Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres – Tramaluna Teatro. Dic 02 2021. Source: Photo from Juan Domingo Guzmán⁶.

The title of the play, as well as its thematic content, alludes to classical Greek theater and the tragedy of Antigone written by Sophocles. The central drama experienced by Antigone, in terms of justice and ethics, is archetypally akin to that of Colombian Antigone’s: standing against the totalitarian state, asserting the right to the body, burial, and memory of their loved ones – siblings, children, parents, comrades (Satizábal, 2015). The figure of Antigone emerges as the embodiment of courage, embodying feminine rebellion that defies Creon's law and dares to uphold “the founding rites of life over war” (Gónzalez, 2020, p. 134). Like Sophocles' Antigone, the women converging here are propelled by the purpose of bringing visibility to and denouncing the crimes they have endured.

From the place of self-reference, the members of the play denounce the crimes they fell victim to, crimes that are not isolated but rather underscore the violence experienced and perpetuated in the context of the internal war conflict that has persisted in Colombia for over six decades. This is exemplified by the so-called “Falsos Positivos”, a euphemism used to conceal the State's murders of young people from mostly poor rural and peripheral regions, falsely presenting them as guerrillas killed in combat. This was a systematic practice and strategy that reached its peak during the presidency of Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010). Regarding this crime, the “Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz” in Colombia (JEP) issued a report in 2021⁷, acknowledging that at least 6,402⁸ civilians were murdered nationwide between 2002 and 2008. These murders were falsely presented by the Uribe Vélez government as combat casualties and war management measures. This case was long overlooked by the media and state actions, and it was precisely some of the mothers who were victims of the murdered youths, participating in Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, who began publicly denouncing and bringing visibility to this case. They succeeded in demonstrating (after nearly a decade of work) that these were not isolated cases (as the public was initially led to believe) but rather a state-driven war policy.

Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres also condemns the genocide against the political movement Unión Patriótica (UP). This movement emerged in 1985 as part of a proposal in which the FARC guerrillas and different leftist groups attempted to negotiate peace with the government. However, this proved unsuccessful, and from the outset, members of the movement began to be assassinated, resulting in over 500 militants disappearing and the murder of 6,000 of their social leaders. The Colombian state sought to keep this crime in impunity, persecuting and stigmatizing the survivors of the movement. This was the case for two members of Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, whose relatives and comrades were murdered by the state. In addition to enduring the irreparable loss of their loved ones, they had to face decades of persecution and various violations of their fundamental rights. It is noteworthy that only in January 2023, after thirty years of litigation, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights condemned the Colombian state for the extermination of Unión Patriótica⁹. It is important to mention that before joining the Antígonas collective, these women spent a significant part of their lives in anonymity, living in exile in other countries, changing their identities, and even disappearing from their families to protect their lives and the lives of their loved ones – in other words, to ensure their survival.

Image 3
Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. Source: Photo from Viviana Peretti, 2017¹⁰.

The paths of individual and collective resistance and repair that Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres has forged have been crucial for acknowledging these crimes in various forums. Additionally, it has contributed to raising awareness and understanding of the issue within society, prompting the public to recognize the State's involvement in these crimes.

Archives and Poetic Repertoires of Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres

Following Taylor's postulates (2014), archives and repertoires operate as sources of knowledge, transmitting wisdom through the embodied relationship mediated by time, space, and context. Archives are understood as documentary sources (books, photographs, maps, letters, archaeological remains, and videos), encompassing all materials that purportedly resist change and can be seen as enduring forms of knowledge (episteme). On the other hand, the repertoire refers to practices and experiences rooted in the body and everyday life (praxis), functioning as embodied memory: performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, song, and, in essence, all acts conceived as ephemeral and non-reproducible forms of knowledge. Repertoires convey bodily practices that acquire meaning within contextual frameworks. Thus, repertoires constitute a system of embodied knowledge, transmitting knowledge that forms an embodied understanding, where learning occurs from and through the body.

Image 4
Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. Source: Photo from the Tramaluna Archive Teatro¹¹.

The methodological implications of this departure from logo-centric logic, which has historically constituted the most traditional ways of comprehending knowledge and transmission systems, draw attention to the valorization of an expressive, embodied culture. This shift redirects the focus of writing toward embodied culture. As Taylor (2017b), suggests Instead of concentrating on patterns of cultural expression solely in terms of texts and narratives, we should think of these as scenarios, which are not reduced to gestures and embodied practices to a narrative description. Analyzing the experience of Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres from this perspective is a commitment to embodied knowledge. It seeks to comprehend how the theatrical elaboration of material and immaterial memories of the play's members operated as methodological devices of creation, potentially replicable in other contexts to generate alternative narratives of truth. This approach recognizes the power of testimony as a source of knowledge (Levi, 1990) and regards performance as a routes to transcend testimonial narration, leading to the creation of poetic and political archives and repertoires that shed light on different aspects of women's experiences in times of war.

In this way, we observe the process of theatrical creation to connect manifestations of embodied memory from a traumatic social event, such as the war in Colombia, with the forms of resistance exhibited by women who are victims and survivors. In this exploration, we bring into discussion two fundamental movements that serve as inputs for creation and restoration: the creative strength of mourning (lamentation, grief) and the power that resists silence (transforming knowledge that was archived into public action of resistance and denunciation). In this sense, we understand that the creation of poetic repertoires, on a practical level, expands the notion of the traditional archive. It becomes public, permeated by time, space, and the significance it assumes within the theatrical representation (Taylor, 2017b). In this research, we refer to these creations as “resistance archives”, recognizing that they act as evidence of the past, refusing to be forgotten with each assertion for life made by every performance of the Colombian Antigones.

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Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres – Tramaluna Teatro. Dec 02, 2021. Source: Photography by Juan Domingo Guzmán¹².

Scene I

Soft music and dim amber light. Projection of a texture resembling dry soil. From one side of the stage, a group of women emerges, standing close together. They wear black dresses with a burgundy ribbon around their waists. They walk backward with very short steps. Each of them holds an object in their hands. They reach the center, gaze at the audience, and present the object. They return to their axis, facing the audience, walking backward in the same manner as they entered, without lifting their feet off the ground, taking very short steps. They lean back again, diagonally, hiding their faces in the crook of one arm and the other arm raised, hand open, as if warding off a threat. They stop. On the floor, they create a circle with the object and then rise.

Actress one: (Takes a step forward, holding branches of sweet herbs and yellow roses). Good evening, ladies, and gentlemen, I am in this women's tribunal. I come to protest. I come to denounce. I come to complain.

Lucero: (Takes another step forward, holding the white shirt of her son). We demand justice for our children murdered in the so-called false positives operation. Actress Two: (Takes a step forward, holding her brother's shoe). My name is Antigone, and for more than three thousand years, I have been trying to find a way to bury my brother, Polynices.

María: (Takes another step forward, holding audio cassettes that belonged to her son). During Álvaro Uribe Vélez's presidency, my son was murdered, but I swear this won't be the end of it!

Fanny: (Enters the scene from the side, holding an oil portrait of her father). Twenty-three years ago, they massacred my family, and this crime remains in complete impunity. That's why I'm here, in this women's tribunal.

Mayra: (Holds an indigenous flute in her hands, runs forward, and sings). Death came for me, and I told her: damn it, show some respect.

Orceny: I am a member of the Patriotic Union, and we return to triumph.

Luz Marina: (Holds a teddy bear that belonged to her son). They have us going from court to court, from paperwork to paperwork, and nothing has happened.

Actress three: (Holds a small bouquet of yellow roses). This women's tribunal seeks for this country to one day reach the day of NEVER. NEVER.

All: (Ad libitum, simultaneously, dispersing across the entire stage, towards the white legs). Never again deaths, never again false positives, never again massacres, never again unburied children, never again (Satizábal, 2020, p. 18-19)¹³.

In their hands, the Antigones display items that once belonged to their family members. Each one carries their objects, using them to present their cases to the imaginary tribunal – which is the audience itself. Luz Marina Bernal presents her case with toys and clothes belonging to her son. María Sanabria holds various items that belonged to her son, including notebooks, photos, and toys. Lucero Cardona carries a container with different objects, such as books, lipsticks, and toys. Fanny Palacios firmly clutches a large, old-looking frame containing a painting of her father. Orceny Montañez holds a box filled with photos of her husband and his colleagues who were disappeared and killed during the genocide of the Unión Patriótica.

These objects make appearances throughout the Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres and, within this research, are considered archives. They became part of the play due to a proposal from its director, who noticed that during his visits to his Antigone colleagues, they always showed him toys and clothes that had belonged to their family members. According to Satizábal (2015), the impact these objects had on him made him think that it was necessary for people to approach the concrete history of these individuals. By bringing the presence of the absent to the scene through these objects, it serves as a reminder to the attending audience that behind each object, there was a human being with tastes, affections, and stories that also deeply affected families left devastated by their murders. Thus, these objects play a central role in constructing the corporeal, poetic, performative repertoires that constitute the theatrical actions of the play as personal monologues. These monologues are interconnected through unison choral dances, representing how the movement, action, and pain of Antigone continue to replicate in the diverse Colombian Antigones.

The development of these poetic repertoires occurred through various scenic tasks and theatrical improvisations in which personal objects served as devices for recreation. Additionally, these objects, already carriers of affective memories, also operated to bring the presence of absent bodies onto the stage. In this way, these objects functioned as material transmitters of the lives of the absent individuals and as a means of connecting the experiences, joys, pains, and struggles of the play's protagonists within the context of war and armed conflict. They presented to the audience lives marked by years of persecution during which they were forbidden to express themselves or denounce. These inputs within the play serve to reveal fragments of an untold, unrecognized, denied truth – the truth of a pain left by the war in Colombia. It accompanies us as a society and, at the same time, has been eradicated, prohibited: a pain that is not spoken about (Núñez; Millán, 2020, p. 41).

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Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. Source: Triptych Photo by Viviana Peretti¹⁴.

The collection of objects was not an easy matter, as it represented for each of them the need to undertake various actions to approach them. In this way, they had to re-inhabit the duality of pain, anger, and those feelings that permeate loss, reopening stored boxes of belongings and reliving the subtlety of the lives of their murdered loved ones... going back in time. Like many of the thousands of victims the war in Colombia has left, these women have suffered different types of violence, geographic displacements, and persecution, among other hardships inherent in such a context. For telling their stories, and for seeking justice, they have been constantly silenced, threatened, and pursued. Several of them spent years in exile, and some even received guidance from state-appointed officials for psychological restoration, who repeatedly encouraged victims to erase their memories or things that reminded them of their children. Some of them expressed being advised not to talk about the issue as part of the healing process. According to María, one of the play's participants,

Just after the incident with the child, they sent us a psychologist appointed by the State. During our sessions, they would tell us: ‘You can't say that; talking about these things is not good for you. It's better to keep or burn all the photos and memories of your children because having them will cause you harm’. Those were the psychologists they sent us. This continued until we spoke with some organizations. When we talked to these organizations, they told us, ‘They shouldn't be telling you that. If something hurts you, you have to say it, express it. You know what you have to say; you have the right to communicate your pain and say what is hurting you’. The State wanted us not to say anything; they wanted us to say that we were willing to forgive, but that was not what I wanted (Interview with María Zambrano, 2021 apud Noguera Duran, 2022, p. 96-97)¹⁵.

This process of searching, selecting, and organizing archives involved each woman facing different realities. While, for some of them, it was normal to have things from their children all over the house, for others, finding these objects meant opening sealed cabinets and uncovering items stored in places from the past. In other cases, searching for these objects meant recognizing that, with the passage of time and the scars of violence, having even a single item of this kind was almost a treasure worth finding. Thus, this exercise entailed different movements in the action of bringing memories of the past into the present–some very joyful, others very painful. In the words of Luz Marina Bernal, a member of the play,

We spent about six months during which we couldn't vocalize a single word of what we were going to say; that memory hurt us. The premiere and the pre-premiere of the play were tough, and I still have to say that for me and many of us, it still is. When we are on stage, we break down, we cry for the song for the denunciation we are making, or for the object we have in our hands (Luz Marina Bernal apud Noguera Duran, 2022, p. 98)¹⁶.

Just like Luz Marina, the violence that women have experienced in the devastation that the conflict has generated has also generated a strange way of inhabiting the world: the desolating experience of violence and loss. In many societies, in the work of mourning, the antiphony of language and silence recreates the world amid tragic loss through transactions between language and the body (Das, 2016)¹⁷. Therefore, transitions between the body and language bring forth an expression of the world in which the strangeness of the world revealed by death, due to its uninhabitable condition, can transform into a world where it is possible to dwell again, with full awareness of a life that has to be lived in loss.

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Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. Source: Photo by Viviana Peretti, 2017¹⁸.

Different reasons have hindered the individual and collective processing of the pains, traumas, silences, and losses caused by war. Therefore, understanding this mode of performative elaboration is relevant within a path that seeks to provide strategies for dealing with pain and loss through the creation of spaces for encounters and bodily performance where victims of violence can construct places of agency for their reality. In this sense, Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres serves as a reference in these pursuits. Through their self-referential perspective (and all that it implies for the creative process), they have generated a powerful theater piece that presents a series of poetic repertoires in which their bodies and memories give rise to the embodiment of the myth of Antigone and the emergence of the Colombian Antigones. In each presentation of the play, they, the victims, and survivors, become Antigone, symbolically defying political power, and denouncing the injustice committed, echoing the cry of Antigone (Butler, 2001) as a mode of resistance to impunity in the face of the violence and struggles that women have faced in the war.

In the play Antigones Tribunal de Mujeres, a distinctive scenic composition is achieved by intertwining the potency of the Antigone myth, reallife tragedy, and the performers' repertoires constructed from archives and memories. This artistic exercise allows the Antigones to summon on stage the material presence of their murdered relatives, presenting “embodied memories” that manifest as a language expressed through gestures, words, movements, dances, songs, and objects. Through these multifaceted elements, they convey a nuanced understanding of lives engaged in resistance. The Antigones craft monologues that delve into their affective memories and archives, employing diverse languages for expression. These monologues are interwoven with choral and choreographic sequences, wherein the bodies of the Antigones unite to convey the potency of bodies in alliance (Butler, 2018) and narrate the story of a tragedy systematically replicated throughout history. This emphasizes the harsh impact of war and social violence on vulnerable communities, particularly affecting women.

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Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. Source: Photo of Triptych by Viviana Peretti, 2017¹⁹.

The Antigones steadfastly refuse to forget what transpired, rising on every stage they have traversed over a decade of interrupted work to remind the tribunal in attendance of the events, the lack of memory, truth, and reparation–foundational aspects in the context of social violence and post-conflict construction. With each performance of the play, they have cultivated an act of presence that updates, creates, and transmits both material and poetic foundations of embodied knowledge concerning the historical memory of a nation that has experienced war. Moreover, the performative poetic action in theater becomes not only an exercise in poetic denunciation but also an initial gesture of restitution. Thus, this work not only constructs testimonial theater but also establishes spaces for transmitting a social memory that extracts and transforms cultural images from a collective archive, intending to recall what happened, to proclaim and reiterate a "never again." Repertoires that repeat in each presentation serve as a political action and a manifesto to break the cycles of violence historically experienced by women within the frameworks of war.

Final Considerations

From the narratives constructed here, we can observe how, during the collective creation process of the play, actions were undertaken to transform the objects belonging to the group members into archives and repertoires that transmit embodied memories about the experiences of women victimized by the armed conflict in Colombia. These archives, from this perspective, could be called (so to speak) resistance archives, as they refuse to be archived, transforming and resignifying them as material evidence of the memory of an absent being. Besides serving as articulators of affective narratives, these objects also function to temporalize the action, organize the past, and make it present action. In the case of the women comprising the Antígona Tribunal de Mujeres, it is possible to observe how their stories and their density converge in various dimensions of violence. An experience that has spatial, corporeal, semantic, and temporal dimensions, poetically elaborated to be transmitted as sensitive and sensory forms of knowledge. Therefore, this also configures itself as a political matter, as it leads to reflecting on how the production and transmission of meaning have traditionally been established. As Cadús (2020) suggests, if performance is not capable of transmitting knowledge, then only the literate and, therefore, those who hold power could claim memory, history, and social identity.

Analyzing the experience of Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres contributes to understanding, from the performing arts, through the performing arts, ways of elaborating and transmitting knowledge about the war in Colombia and the role of resistance and transformation built by women within the conflict. This analysis leads us to question Dantesque acts of violence, where reality surpasses fiction. Knowledge is poetically elaborated to uncover the truth of a war conflict that was silenced for decades and still needs to be known and transformed. We can observe how the creation of personal archives functioned as memory devices, capable of mobilizing bodies, voices, silences, stories, and narratives that cannot only be expressed through articulated words but require more sensitive spaces to be understood by civil society.

It is important to highlight the strength, power, and impact that Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres has generated for almost a decade of uninterrupted performances across Colombia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Their performances have been praised and applauded, not only for the power of their poetic denunciation but also for the space it has provided for other victims of social violence around the world to identify with them. The Antigone Colombianas, through their trajectories of resistance, have collaborated in the construction of women's and mothers' collectives advocating for peace, as well as becoming artists and social leaders. From their position of self-reference, amplified by the scenic exercise and the force embodied by the Antigones, they have become social leaders. Through their work on various artistic and activist fronts, they have positioned themselves as prominent figures in the fight for memory and social justice against state crimes in Colombia. Moreover, they inspire others to follow paths of poetic denunciation, as expressed by one of the participants in the play:

I gave birth to a son for life, and life gave birth to me for the struggle. That's why I seize every opportunity, on every stage, where I can speak of my story and the stories of the thousands of mothers who have lost their children in a war we didn't ask for. I wage my battle with my body and my poetry (apud Noguera Duran, 2022)²⁰.

Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres concludes with a slow ceremony in which Antigone surrenders to death, taking responsibility for proclaiming the laws of life over any other order, turning her mourning into a space of public, and thus political, denunciation. A ritual unfolds in which all the Antigones dance, bidding farewell and accompanying Antigone in her struggle. Antigone descends slowly on the stage, gently tapping her body with a bouquet of colorful flowers. In her final declamation, Antigone states, “Here they bury me alive, for burying our dead. I bury myself with their wandering bodies. And with their absent souls!” Accompanying this passage, the rest of the Antigones, through solemn movements, merge into a single body. Antigone accepts her fate, but instead of dying, she multiplies into Antigones who join her on stage, engaging in a choral dance as a symbol of resistance. Their objects are handed to the audience as part of the farewell ritual, reminding everyone that these individuals, annihilated by the armed conflict, also had a mother, a sister, and a lover, who will continue to demand justice until the end of the days. A necessary memory that needs to be known, felt, and transformed.

Notes

• 1
  Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, “La guerra inscrita en el cuerpo”, 2018.
• 2
  Available on Facebook, Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, https://www.facebook.com/TramalunaTeatro/photos/a.1767700446865553/1 767701686865429.
• 3
  Creation Art and Memory Scholarship 2014, Bogotá. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPR5UC17At0
• 4
  Theatrical creation technique that has a significant tradition in Colombian theater. Its main references were Enrique Buenaventura and Santiago García.
• 5
  Term used by the director of the play and the group to refer to actresses trained in performing arts, whose profession is the theater.
• 6
  Taken from: https://www.museocasadelamemoria.gov.co/events/antigonas-tribunal-de-mujeres-tramaluna-teatro/ Museo Casa de la Memoria > Eventos > Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres – Tramaluna Teatro. Disc 02 2021.
• 7
  See at: https://www.jep.gov.co/Sala-de-Prensa/Paginas/JEP-imputa-cr%C3%ADmenes-de-guerra-y-de-lesa-humanidad-a-10-militares-y-un-civil-por-'falsos-positivos'-en-Catatumbo.aspx. Consulted 25/08/2021.
• 8
  This phenomenon is currently listed as investigation macro case 003 the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP), a transitional justice system in force in Colombia after the signing of the Havana Agreement in 2016.
• 9
  Expanded information in the newspaper El País. Bogotá, January 30, 2023. View at: https://elpais.com/america-colombia/2023-01-30/la-corte-interamericana-de-derechos-humanos-condena-a-colombia-por-el-exterminio-de-la-union-patriotica.html
• 10
  Available at: Facebook Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1767700446865553&type=3
• 11
  Available at: https://www.facebook.com/TramalunaTeatro/photos.
• 12
  Taken from: https://www.museocasadelamemoria.gov.co/events/antigonas-tribunal-de-mujeres-tramaluna-teatro/ Museo Casa de la Memoria > Eventos > Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres – Tramaluna Teatro. Disc 02 2021.
• 13
  Teatro Vivo. Una literatura teatral desde la escena, Satizábal (2020). Playwriting text provided for this research by the author, therefore, it has the necessary reproduction authorizations.
• 14
  Available at: https://www.facebook.com/TramalunaTeatro/photos
• 15
  The full interview available at: https://www.lume.ufrgs.br/handle/10183/252125
• 16
  The full interview with Luz Mariana Bernal 2021: https://www.lume.ufrgs.br/handle/10183/252125
• 17
  Das Veena. Violencia, cuerpo y lenguaje (Spanish Edition). Fondo de Cultura Económica. Edición de Kindle. 2010.
• 18
  Available at: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1767702286865369&type=3.
• 19
  Available at: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1767700446865553&type=3.
• 20
  Interviews complete at: https://www.lume.ufrgs.br/handle/10183/252125 “Yo parí un Hijo para la vida y el me parió a mí para la lucha: elaboraciones poéticas y pedagógicas del dolor y la resistencia a partir del performance”.
• This original paper, translated by Matthew Samuel Dintenfass, is also published in Spanish in this issue of the journal.

Availability of research data:

the dataset supporting the results of this study is published in this article.

Referencias

• BUTLER, Judith. El grito de Antígona Barcelona: El Roure Editorial, 2001.
• BUTLER, Judith. Corpos em aliança e a política das ruas: notas para uma teoria performativa de assembleia. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 2018.
• CADÚS, Eugenia. Re-montar Jirones de História: la danza y la memoria de la última dictadura cívico-militar argentina. Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, Porto Alegre, v. 10, n. 3, 2020. Disponible en: https://doi.org/10.1590/2237- 266091712 Acceso en: 26 oct. 2020.
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/2237- 266091712
• CASTAÑEDA, María José. Antígonas tribunal de mujeres: poética de una memoria reparadora. 2018. Trabajo final de grado (Ciencias Sociales) – Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Facultad de Ciencia Política y relaciones Internacionales, Bogotá, 2018. Disponible en: http://hdl.handle.net/10554/36234 Acceso en: 24 ago. 2022.
  » http://hdl.handle.net/10554/36234
• CNMH. Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. La guerra inscrita en el cuerpo Informe nacional de violencia sexual en el conflicto armado. Bogotá: CNMH, 2018.
• DAS, Veena. Violencia, cuerpo y lenguaje (Spanish Edition). México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016. (Edición de Kindle).
• GONZÁLEZ, Horacio. Antígona. La inhibición de acompañar a los familiares en velorios y entierros. Página 12, Buenos Aires, 23 abr. 2020. Disponible en: https://www.pagina12.com.ar/261547-antigona Acceso en: 24 ago. 2022.
  » https://www.pagina12.com.ar/261547-antigona
• KIRCHOF, Edgar Roberto; WORTMANN, Maria Lúcia; COSTA, Marisa Vorraber. Estudos Culturais & Educação: Contingências, Articulações, Aventuras, Dispersões. Canoas: Ed. ULBRA, 2015.
• LEVI, Primo. Os afogados e os sobreviventes Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1990.
• NOGUERA DURAN, Ana María. Yo parí un Hijo para la vida y el me parió a mí para la lucha: elaboraciones poéticas y pedagógicas del dolor y la resistencia a partir del performance. 2022. Tese (Doutorado em Educação) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em educação, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 2022. Disponible en: https://www.lume.ufrgs.br/handle/10183/252125 Acceso en: 15 feb. 2023.
  » https://www.lume.ufrgs.br/handle/10183/252125
• NÚÑEZ, Javiera; MILLÁN, Márgara. Tribunal de mujeres y Antígona González: memoria, justicia, archivo y verdad. Nómadas, Universidad Central – Colombia, v. 2, n. 53, p. 33-49, jul./dic. 2020. Disponible en: http://nomadas.ucentral. edu.co/nomadas/pdf/nomadas_53/53_2_Tribunal_mujeres.pdf Acceso en: 24 ago. 2022.
  » http://nomadas.ucentral. edu.co/nomadas/pdf/nomadas_53/53_2_Tribunal_mujeres.pdf
• SATIZÁBAL, Carlos. Memoria poética y conflicto en Colombia –a propósito de Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, de Tramaluna Teatro. Revista Colombiana de las Artes Escénicas, n. 9, p. 250-268, 2015.
• SATIZÁBAL, Carlos. Teatro Vivo Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Facultad de Artes, 2020.
• TAYLOR, Diana. El espectáculo de memoria: trauma, performance y política. Teatro del sur, v. 15, p. 33-40, 2000. Disponible en: https://www.amherst. edu/system/files/media/1429/El%2520Espectaculo%2520de%2520la%2520Me moria.pdf Acceso en: 24 ago. 2022.
  » https://www.amherst. edu/system/files/media/1429/El%2520Espectaculo%2520de%2520la%2520Me moria.pdf
• TAYLOR, Diana. “Usted está aquí”: el ADN del Performance. In: TAYLOR, Diana; FUENTES, Marcela. Estudios Avanzados de Performance México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2011.
• TAYLOR, Diana. O arquivo e o repertório: performance e memória cultural nas Américas. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2013.
• TAYLOR, Diana. El archivo y el repertorio. La memoria cultural performática en las Américas Santiago-Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2014.
• TAYLOR, Diana. ¡Presente! La política de la presencia. Investigación Teatral, v. 8, n. 12 ago./dic. 2017a.
• TAYLOR, Diana. El archivo y el repertorio: la memoria cultural performática en las Américas. Santiago-Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2017b. (Edición de Kindle).

Editor in charge: Ana Sabrina Mora

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  08 Apr 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  30 Apr 2023
• Accepted
  09 Oct 2023