Amazonian Women's Power: Leadership and Protection Strategies in Contexts of Conflict and Violence

“In Caquetá, cows are more important than women, cows have better medical care, a better place to live, they have land, and Amazonian women have nothing in that sense. We [women leaders and defenders] expose ourselves to threats and as it is not possible to stop the strength of women, they have to be killed.” (Interview with environmental woman defender, 2022).

Caquetá is one of the departments (administrative region) that makes up the Colombian Amazon region, which historically has been a setting of armed violence, poverty, and governmental abandonment. In this context, women living in Caquetá are carrying out collective actions for the defense of their human rights and environmental protection, receiving threats, becoming stigmatised, some even killed. Their activities have meant a high risk to their lives. The pursuit of gender justice and the full exercise of their rights in this specific context has led to the development of different forms of leadership and protection strategies, which these women have called “poderío amazónico de las mujeres” Amazonian women's power. In addition, these women's collectives have developed their own ways of learning about human rights, women's leadership and peacebuilding. The question then arises as to how do women leaders in Caquetá protect themselves when defending their human and environmental rights, and what kind of leadership and protection strategies do they develop in contexts of conflict and violence? In this research I analyse the kinds of leadership and the protection strategies developed by the Departmental Women's Platform in Caquetá, a loose umbrella organisation that links women leaders and human rights and environmental defenders, some of which have been threatened and stigmatised in the region. This work aims to fill a gap in research on gender and high-risk women's leadership in remote and conflict-burdened places such as the Colombian rural Amazon.