Anniversaries and Key Dates: A Re-Reading of Albalucía Ángel’s Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón in the Framework of the Day of Victims, and Vice Versa

Aniversarios y fechas clave: una relectura de Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón de Albalucía Ángel, a la luz del Día Nacional de la Memoria y Solidaridad con las Víctimas y viceversa

Aniversários e datas-chave: uma releitura de Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón de Albalucía Ángel, à luz do Dia Nacional da Memória e Solidariedade com as Vítimas e vice-versa

 

Claire Taylor*

University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

 

http://dx.doi.org/10.25025/perifrasis202516.36.03

 

Fecha de recepción: 14 de febrero de 2025

Fecha de aceptación: 13 de junio de 2025

Fecha de modificación: 7 de julio de 2025

 

Abstract

This article offers a feminist-informed critical re-reading of the Colombian author Albalucía Ángel’s novel Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón (1975). It proposes a series of re-readings of the novel in the context of April 9—a key date in the life of the protagonist, Ana, and the date designated today as the National Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims. The analysis reveals that the gendered concerns raised by Ángel half a century ago anticipate contemporary discourses on the Colombian armed conflict, especially by those women’s activist groups who have advocated for a deconstruction of the patriarchal underpinnings of the conflict. The article also re-reads the National Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims through Ángel’s critique of the primacy of the Gaitán narrative in the novel and her attempt to interweave the Gaitán narrative with a feminist counter-narrative.

Keywords: Albalucía Ángel, novel, Colombia, April 9, Gaitán, gender, patriarchy, armed conflict

 

Resumen

Este artículo emprende una lectura feminista de la novela Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón (1975) por la autora colombiana Albalucía Ángel. Propone una serie de relecturas a la luz del 9 de abril, fecha clave en la vida de la protagonista, Ana, y fecha en la que se celebra el Día Nacional de la Memoria y Solidaridad con las Víctimas. El análisis demuestra que los asuntos de género que Ángel planteó hace medio siglo siguen vigentes en los discursos contemporáneos sobre el conflicto armado colombiano, sobre todo los que proponen las mujeres activistas que han abogado por una deconstrucción de los fundamentos patriarcales del conflicto. Asimismo, el artículo sugiere releer el Día Nacional de la Memoria y Solidaridad con las Víctimas a la luz de la crítica que hace Ángel de la primacía de la narrativa gaitanista en su novela, y su intento de entretejerla con una contranarrativa feminista.

Palabras clave: Albalucía Ángel, novela, Colombia, 9 abril, Gaitán, género, patriarcado, conflicto armado

 

Resumo

Este artigo realiza uma leitura feminista do livro Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón (1975), da autora colombiana Albalucía Ángel. Propõe uma série de releituras à luz do 9 de abril —data-chave na vida da protagonista Ana, e data em que atualmente se celebra o Dia Nacional da Memória e da Solidariedade com as Vítimas. A análise demonstra que as questões de gênero levantadas por Ángel há meio século continuam presentes nos discursos contemporâneos sobre o conflito armado colombiano, especialmente naqueles propostos por mulheres ativistas que defendem a desconstrução dos fundamentos patriarcais do conflito. Da mesma forma, o artigo sugere a releitura do Dia Nacional da Memória e da Solidariedade com as Vítimas à luz da crítica feita por Ángel à primazia da narrativa gaitanista, e sua tentativa de entrelaçá-la com uma contranarrativa feminista.

Palavras-chave: Albalucía Ángel, romance, Colômbia, 9 Abril, Gaitán, gênero, patriarcado, conflito armado

1. Introduction

This is a particularly opportune moment, I argue, to undertake a feminist-informed critical re-reading of Albalucía Ángel’s novel Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón (1975), not only because the 50th anniversary of the publication of this novel is being celebrated, but also because we are witnessing the transformation of the key date that functions as a hilo conductor of the novel: April 9. In this article, I propose a re-reading of the book in light of the transformations the date of April 9 has undergone, understanding this date both as a foundational moment in the life of the protagonist, Ana, and as one of the founding moments in the national frameworks for recognizing the victims of the armed conflict today. As my analysis will reveal, the gendered concerns raised by Ángel half a century ago can be seen reflected in, and to some extent pre-empt, current discourses on the Colombian armed conflict, especially by those women’s activist groups who have advocated for a deconstruction of the patriarchal underpinnings of the conflict. At the same time, I will argue that Ángel’s critique of the primacy of the Gaitán narrative in the novel and her attempt to interweave this patriarchal narrative with a feminist counter-narrative remain relevant today, with the national day once again framed around masculine models of heroism.

2. Situating Estaba la pájara within the “Novelas de la Violencia” and April 9

Born in Pereira, Risaralda, in 1939, Albalucía Ángel is one of Colombia’s most prominent novelists of the twentieth century. Estaba la pájara is, without a doubt, her best-known and most critically acclaimed novel—the one that earned her the Vivencias Prize in 1975—and which has attracted the most scholarly attention to date. Widely acknowledged as her “obra más representativa” (Galeano Sánchez, “La masculinidad” 238), scholars have highlighted how this novel rejects a testimonial or realistic narrative (Elston 44) and reworks the discourses of the Colombian nation, blending national history with a personal, family story and incorporating marginalised voices (Caicedo de Cajigas 95; Guerra Cunningham 13), with its “desordenada apariencia” functioning as an “alegórica del caótico período de historia colombiana en que se enmarca” (Mora, “El Bildungsroman” 73), and with Ana as its central thread (Figueroa 183). Many have also commented on the importance of the figure of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán and how Ana’s memories are interwoven with the date April 9 (Mora, “Lectura de Albalucía” 111; Gladhart 94; Silva 58; Cortés-Evans 119). Most scholars, thus, agree on April 9 as the key temporal framing of the novel, but what has not yet been fully explored is how this date has since been re-signified in contemporary Colombian mnemonic practice, and how this has gendered implications, as my analysis below will demonstrate.

Classifying this complex novel has proved difficult, as scholars see it in various ways—as a “testimonio” (Jaramillo 211), a “novela documental” (Gerdes 1997), a “Bildungsroman” (Mora, “El Bildungsroman”; Ortega 32), a narrative “closer to poetry than prose” (Jehenson 107), while some claim it defies categorisation (Angvik 268). Indeed, Estaba la pájara is not easily pinned down; it is simultaneously a testimony to a period of violence, a personal narrative, a reflection on Colombian history, and a collection of contestatory sources and voices. It comes in the wake of a series of “novelas de la violencia” in Colombia (since the 1950s), which tended towards realistic depictions and documentary presentations of events.

The term “novela de la violencia” was, as Marino Troncoso notes, coined by Hernando Téllez in the early 1950s in his writings for the “Lecturas dominicales” section of the newspaper El Tiempo (30). Manuel Antonio Arango has identified 74 such novels published between 1951 and 1972, defining it as a genre “eminentemente comprometido” (12). Augusto Escobar notes the emphasis in these novels on events rather than language, character development, or narrative structure (1996), whilst Lucila Inés Mena identifies a movement in these novels from “una producción inicial de naturaleza testimonial” to a more reflexive stance in later works (97). Coming towards the end of the “novelas de la violencia,” Estaba la pájara reveals some of the features identified by Mena of the later works; it, indeed, differs from the more traditional “novela de la violencia” in its examination of the phenomenon of la violencia from the point of view of a child growing up in Colombia and also in its highly experimental formal structure, with a multiplicity of voices and sources, a disruption of teleological movement, and experimentation with different writing styles. It is, thus, as scholars have noted, not a “simple novela de violencia” (Figueroa Sánchez 22) or a “simple acopio documental” (Valencia Solanilla 471). Ángel’s novel proposes a disruption of official historical accounts through the insertion of voices that express alternative class —and gender— based viewpoints. Here, I argue that our understanding of this novel as not a “simple novela de la violencia” can be enriched by focusing on April 9 and gender. To do so, I first provide an overview of this date in its original meaning; subsequently, I explore its reframing in the framework of Law 1448 and then analyse how we can re-read this novel in so doing.

As noted above, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán—the presidential candidate representing the Liberal Party who was assassinated in downtown Bogotá on April 9, 1948—stands as one of the historical reference points in the novel. A charismatic leader whose politics “share[d] features of populism” (Braun et al. 8), Gaitán represented a “Liberalism of the Left” (Galeano Sánchez, “Una reflexión en torno” 7) and was famously outspoken against the vested interests of the ruling elite, regardless of whether they were nominally Conservative or Liberal. When the news of his assassination spread, a popular uprising erupted in Bogotá, with a mob lynching the presumed murderer and crowds attempting to gain entry to the Presidential Palace and, subsequently, sacking and setting fire to numerous buildings in central Bogotá—a phenomenon that came to be known as the Bogotazo. An iconic date in the Colombian national imaginary, April 9 is, as Ricardo Sánchez Angel remarks, “considerado por historiadores, analistas sociales y políticos como un momento definitorio del rumbo del país” (15).

Following the Bogotazo, a wave of Liberal-Conservative violence swept across the country from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, in a period known as La Violencia (which gives the “novela de la violencia” its name)—a time of decentralised and widespread violence, murders, and intimidation that disrupted millions of lives, with the countryside thrown into chaos and a soaring death-toll of approximately 200,000 people killed (Oquist 322). Most scholars concur that the period of La Violencia ran from 1946 to 1966, and most agree that Gaitán’s assassination, while it sparked widespread violence, was not the start of La Violencia itself; they trace its origins earlier to 1946. As Schuster explains, “the events of El Bogotazo were nothing but the first climax of La Violencia. In fact, there were already reports of vigorous fighting from the countryside since 1946” (38). Regarding the end of La Violencia, most scholars consider it to conclude in 1966; however, it is worth noting that Paul Oquist—one of the leading scholars on La Violencia—while viewing the period as lasting from 1946 to 1966, also designates a subsequent phase which he terms “late violence,” covering the Frente Nacional years up to 1974 (Oquist xi and 6).

Recently, this key date has been incorporated into a new national narrative through its enshrinement in Law 1448 of 2011, which, in article 142, declared April 9 as the Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims. Gabriel Jaime Murillo Arango comments on how this choice of date for the commemoration of victims “conjuga la rememoración del duelo por las víctimas de ayer y el de las víctimas de hoy” (313), while Schuster argues that it was motivated by a desire to embed April 9, 1948, into a new national narrative, in which the assassination of Gaitán and the Bogotazo are reframed as the beginning of a cycle of violence that extends into the contemporary armed conflict. Exploring how Gaitán as a figure “nos recuerda la lucha del ‘pueblo oprimido’ contra la élite oligárquica” (“El 9 de abril en la memoria” 49), Schuster points out how Gaitán becomes a key figure in this new, reworked national narrative. Indeed, this new national narrative, which connects April 9, 1948, to the present, reflects what some scholars have highlighted: namely, that the roots of the contemporary armed conflict can be traced back to La Violencia (see, for instance, Molano Bravo 5; Schuster, “El 9 de abril en la memoria” 37; Fischer et al. 230-231; and Meger and Sachseder 958, amongst others). Given how this date has been reworked in the present and given the arguments of these scholars regarding the relationship between La Violencia and the contemporary armed conflict, in what follows, I will suggest a series of re-readings that emerge when we consider Estaba la pájara in light of what April 9 means today. I will present a number of parallels between past and present and between the novel and contemporary reality, such as Joaquín Estrada Monsalve’s account and Álvaro Uribe’s national security policy; pájaros and chulavitas and the paramilitaries of the current armed conflict; Valeria and Ana’s experiences of sexual violence and the arguments of the Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres (RPM) and others regarding the structural patriarchal violence underpinning the armed conflict; and, finally, Ángel’s critique of Gaitán’s gendered discourse and April 9 today.

3. Estrada Monsalve, Official Hypotheses, and Seguridad Democrática

Firstly, regarding the novel’s inclusion of alternative voices as a counterpart to the official narrative of April 9, this section compares Ángel’s treatment of Joaquín Estrada Monsalve with Álvaro Uribe’s Seguridad Democrática discourses of the contemporary era, revealing similarities in the representation of national security and military reward. The first of the novel’s two epigraphs is taken from Estrada Monsalve’s El 9 de abril en palacio, which serves as the source for many of the historical quotations embedded within Ana’s narrative in the main body of the novel. Minister of Education under Mariano Ospina Pérez’s Conservative government (1946-1950), Estrada Monsalve joined the president and his wife in the presidential palace in Bogotá on April 9, 1948, and during the following days. His eye-witness account of those days is, as many scholars have noted, notoriously partial; it is one of the “apasionados y muchas veces inexactos” testimonies of this period (Melo), a Conservative perspective on the events (Oquist 130), and forms part of a “bibliografía partidista” (Ortiz Sarmiento 383-384). Largely responsible for the dissemination of the “official hypothesis” of the Bogotazo (Melo Ruiz), Estrada Monsalve’s account blames Gaitán’s death and the violence of the crowds on “un complot comunista,” exonerating the Conservative government (Vega Díaz 231).

In the excerpt used as the epigraph for Estaba la pájara, Estrada Monsalve describes his task as “asegurarle a la memoria puntos fijos de reconstrucción y para que, en caso de subsistir, no todo quede sepultado bajo el silencio de las ruinas morales y físicas” (Ángel 117). However, this performative gesture of ensuring “puntos fijos” enunciated by Estrada Monsalve is, in fact, subsequently undercut by the novel itself: the novel proceeds precisely to go against Estrada Monsalve’s purported “puntos fijos” and, instead, aims for a recovery of alternative voices and an opening out of the narration. Moreover, Ángel’s novel takes a deliberate stance against Estrada Monsalve’s moralising tone and, as the novel progresses, encourages us to understand the partiality of his account and pick apart his moralising rhetoric.

This is achieved firstly through incorporating Ana’s narrative and that of the secondary characters into the novel, which increases the reader’s awareness that Estrada Monsalve’s account is far from objective. Ana’s experiences of La Violencia reveal a much more complex picture than that espoused by Estrada Monsalve in his “official hypothesis” of the Bogotazo. Secondly, this fact—that we are encouraged to pick apart the rhetoric of Estrada Monsalve’s official account—is reinforced by the increasingly self-conscious way in which Ángel presents extracts from it as the novel progresses. While passages from Estrada Monsalve’s book are initially inserted into the novel without preface or any indication of their source, as the novel progresses, the presentation of the extracts from his work becomes more self-conscious, with phrases like “sigamos al Ministro” (Ángel 204) and “pero no nos salgamos del asunto y dejemos que el Ministro nos siga con su crónica” (Ángel 205) creeping into the narrative. Through this self-conscious framing, with its overt signalling of the textualization of history, Ángel foregrounds the constructed nature of Estrada Monsalve’s account, drawing our attention to how particular facts are shaped into a partisan narrative. In doing so, Ángel’s literary technique here deliberately foregrounds the process Linda Hutcheon describes as the textualisation of history, in which the past is “already ‘semioticized’ or encoded, that is, already inscribed in discourse and therefore ‘always already’ interpreted (if only by the selection of what was recorded and by its insertion into a narrative)” (Hutcheon 97).

Ángel’s framing of the extracts from Estrada Monsalve and her overt signalling of them as textualised serve to shed light on the constructed and partisan nature of Estrada Monsalve’s account. If the official version provided by Estrada Monsalve refuses to countenance events that he considers “fuera del asunto,” then this novel, by contrast, questions precisely this definition of what is and what is not the “asunto”—that is, whose terms and whose agenda shape the very notion of the “asunto.” By deliberately highlighting this process of selection and silencing, the text encourages a critical stance on the excerpts we read; indeed, as I have argued elsewhere (Taylor), the whole of Estaba la pájara can be seen as a writing project that “sale del asunto,” because it does not deal with the official, Conservative point of view, but with the perspective of a young girl, and includes a multiplicity of voices that contradict the “official hypothesis.”

I therefore read Ángel’s open emphasis on the textualisation of history as a critique of Estrada Monsalve, urging the reader to identify the gaps and blind spots of official state-sponsored discourse and, in doing so, to unpick not only class-based assumptions but also gendered ones, fomenting thus in the readership a critical stance on the Conservative version of events. If such is the aim of Ángel’s exhortation to dissect Estrada Monsalve’s official account of 1948, re-reading this exhortation today in light of what April 9 means in the present, the reader might be encouraged to re-examine her work in reference to similar, more contemporary “official hypotheses,” seeking to discover illuminating parallels. For example, in Ángel’s text, the following extract from Estrada Monsalve can be read:

Doña Bertha nos reparte a todos sendas cuchillas Gillette, para afeitarnos… Las barbas trasnochadas darían una impresión de gentes enfermizas y nerviosas. Salgo a rasurarme y bajo al patio a conversar con los soldados. Están sonrientes, orgullosos de sí mismos. Varios de ellos me muestran su colección de lo que ellos llaman vainillas premiadas, es decir, las cápsulas que lograron hacer blanco… hoy hemos ganado la independencia del despotismo rojo de Moscú. (Ángel 204-205)

This extract highlights some of the features identified by the scholars above, such as an emphasis on the heroic actions of the Conservative government and leaders, class-based prejudices, the casual mention of items that confirm status and wealth (“cuchillas Gillette,” a luxury item at the time), and the identification of a communist plot (“ganamos la independencia del despotismo rojo de Moscú”). Yet, beyond these recognisable features that represent the official hypothesis of the time, it is possible, I argue, to discern patterns that continue in contemporary “official hypotheses” today. By this, I mean that if Ángel encourages us to read between the lines of official accounts, we should do so diachronically and synchronically and turn our attention to similar recent “official hypotheses.” I argue that in this quotation, re-read in light of April 9 as the Day of Victims, the “vainillas premiadas” can now recall the perks given to the military to generate larger body counts of dead guerrillas in the recent past.

Here, I am referring to President Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s Seguridad Democrática doctrine (2002-2008), which led to the phenomenon known as “falsos positivos”—more accurately, as a category of extra-judicial killings. Uribe’s policy created a series of incentives for the armed forces to eliminate purported guerrilla members, generating an “insaciable presión por bajas” (Vestri 291) and resulting in a high number of innocent victims presented as if they were guerrillas due to the pressure to produce “positive” results and boost body counts (Human Rights Watch 1).1 A re-reading of Albalucía Ángel’s critique of Estrada Monsalve’s “official hypothesis” in her novel in light of what April 9 represents today encourages us to, similarly, critique “official hypotheses,” such as those of Uribe’s Seguridad Democrática. As scholars such as Jasmin Hristov have shown, far from strengthening democracy, Uribe’s doctrine was about “the subordination of civil law enforcement to military security programs” and permitted “the suspension of individual and collective rights while granting state forces more autonomy and immunity from ordinary justice,” providing legal instruments that enable the state to “violate human rights without consequence” (31). Thus, if in its original context, Ángel’s novel encouraged the reader to scrutinise the official hypothesis of Estrada Monsalve’s doctrine, re-reading the book now in the light of April 9, we must dissect the concepts of “seguridad democrática” and “falsos positivos.”

4. Pájaros, Chulavitas, and Paramilitaries

The second re-reading I propose focuses on Estaba la pájara’s depictions of state-sponsored violence and their relevance to the role of paramilitaries (and the state) in the current armed conflict. Here, I build on Schuster’s suggestive arguments regarding the choice of April 9 as the Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims, when he claims that a series of parallels are implied between La Violencia and the contemporary armed conflict, including “las fosas comunes de los paramilitares modernos y aquellas de los chulavitas de los años cincuenta” (“El 9 de abril en la memoria visual” 49). Drawing on this, I propose a re-reading in which the chulavitas and pájaros in Estaba la pájara invite a re-interpretation in terms of paramilitary violence in the current conflict.

For instance, in the passage in the novel in which Ana, as a child, overhears a conversation in which an older man, Anselmo Cruz, tells of what is happening in Rovira, Tolima, we read:

A mi compadre Borja lo asaltaron cuando estaba recogiendo su siembra… cuando vino la Policía empezó los atropellos y mi compadre mejor tiró pal monte, antes de que lo mataran a él también… acabaron con la familia de los Rojas, sólo quedó el muchacho, Teófilo, y esa noche nos tocó ver una fosa donde los chulavitas habían apelmazado a diecisiete. A muchos los quemaron vivos y por allá en Balsillas dizque mataron más de trece. (Ángel 278-279)

Notably, the description of the actions here, as throughout the novel, when viewed in the context of what April 9 signifies today, can illuminate parallels with the contemporary armed conflict. For example, the fact that the police are complicit with the bandidos and are more likely to attack the poor campesinos rather than defend them could be understood in light of research by several scholars on the complicity between the Colombian state and the paramilitaries in the current armed conflict, in which, to use Hristov’s suggestive phrase, the paramilitaries act as a “paraextension of the state’s coercive apparatus” (170). Similarly, where the actions of the aggressors in this episode lead to an exodus from the land or the direct extermination of those who work the land, the chulavitas and pájaros that defended the interests of the Conservative oligarchy of the 1940s and 1950s, can now be re-interpreted in terms of the paramilitaries who, as scholars have shown, represent the interests of the (often transnational) elite of late capitalism, where paramilitaries have “greatly facilitated the implementation of the neoliberal model which has benefited large-scale capital” (Hristov 170). Finally, the reference to the grave with 17 corpses squashed can be seen in updated form in the fosas comunes where paramilitaries have dumped those they target (see, for instance, Rueda). Thus, the chulavitas and pájaros of the novel, read in the light of April 9 today, invite a reflection on the paramilitary violence of the present, and particularly the implication of the state.

5. Gender and the Continuum of Violence

The subsequent re-reading, I argue, involves gender and Ángel’s highly prescient comments on the relationship between individual acts of (sexual) violence and broader structural violence. Here, I suggest we can read the parallels that Estaba la pájara draws between the sexual abuse and rape the protagonist suffers and wider patriarchal structures, as pre-empting some of the arguments made by Colombian women’s victims’ groups from the 1990s onwards about the contemporary armed conflict.

For Ana does not just hear about acts of violence second-hand; she also witnesses and directly experiences individual acts of violence. This is firstly evident in the constant interweaving of two deaths in the novel: that of her childhood friend Julieta, who is run over by a tram, and that of her young adult friend Valeria, a left-wing revolutionary killed while participating in a student protest against Muñoz Sastoque’s regime (a pseudonym for Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, president of Colombia in a military dictatorship from June 1953 to May 1957). Images of these deaths recur throughout the story and become intertwined, exemplified in the following extract that spans through three paragraphs, where the death of Julieta fuses seamlessly with that of Valeria: “El cura hace una seña para que le dejen el cajón en el suelo, con precaución, advierte… ¿Reconoce el cadáver? preguntó el policía” (Ángel 387-389). The first part of this extract relates to the funeral of Julieta, as Ana carries the coffin to the grave, while the police officer’s question refers to the death of Valeria. This back-and-forth between Julieta’s funeral and Valeria’s corpse suggests not only how the childhood emotions experienced at the funeral of Julieta resurface at the sight of Valeria’s body—and indicates the compulsive repetition central to trauma—but also suggests, crucially, a continuous cycle of violence, which is further developed as the scene unfolds.

Just as the child Ana viewed Julieta’s corpse at the wake, the adult Ana is now obliged to face Valeria’s dead body, as she is required to identify the corpse at the police station. The fragmentation of the body witnessed at the death of Julieta (with the amputated yet paradoxically present limb) recurs in this viewing of the second corpse, as Ana contemplates the body: “Toqué las manos de forma espatulada... que yacían ahora inertes, silenciosas, sin más amparo que tu cadáver solitario” (Ángel 389). Here, the violence inflicted upon Valeria is conveyed through the fragmented body, with the figuration of the hands as distinct from the body—a fragmentation, also implying a wider fragmentation of the social fabric.

Moreover, a further assertion of power over the female body, even as it lies in death, occurs when the policeman touches the corpse: “Me manoseaba con los ojos mientras que con sus dedos manchados de nicotina te recorría la piel de arriba abajo” (Ángel 422). Significantly, the police officer’s gaze is conveyed in terms of pawing (“manosear”), as the action of his hands on the dead body is transferred to Ana’s psyche: Ana does not see the gaze; she feels it. In this way, Ángel establishes a connection between the direct act of violence against Valeria—the elimination of those with left-wing revolutionary ideals who were violently removed from the public arena—and the structural violences of patriarchy that normalise sexual violence against women. Indeed, the fact that this pawing is performed by a state official (a policeman) is not incidental: Ángel implies here that such gender-based violence is structural and institutional, with the policeman representing the patriarchal institutions of the state.

Secondly, the continuum between individual acts of violence and wider patriarchal structures is emphasised in the novel via Ana’s own experience when, aged 13, she is raped by Alirio, one of the labourers on the farm: “estaba hurgando hasta por dentro. Así no, ¡que me duele! No, no te duele, te voy a hacer pasito. Pero la penetraba con violencia, y ella sentía las manos sudorosas sobre su cuerpo tenso, ¡no! ¡yo no quiero!… Y se movía despacio pero eso sí dolía, y ella ¡no quiero…!, pero él, no te hace daño, quietecita, y le tapó la boca para que no siguiera… y era como si la estuvieran abriendo a cuchilladas” (Ángel 430). The depiction of the rape highlights the pain felt by Ana and the lack of consent, starting with the male perpetrator ignoring Ana’s refusal, then dismissing her thoughts and feelings (“No, no te duele”), and ending with directly covering her mouth so that she cannot even voice her refusal any more. Moreover, the scene also establishes symbolic links with the previously discussed episode depicting Valeria’s body by drawing implicit parallels between the “manos sudorosas” of the perpetrator of Ana’s rape and the “dedos manchados de nicotina” of the policeman pawing Valeria’s dead body. Thus, through these metonymic connections, Ángel’s novel suggests that incidents of violence against women are not isolated events but part of a systemic issue and reflect a broader, structural norm of violence targeting women’s bodies.

It is this extended meditation on the link between the personal and the political in the novel that, I argue, can encourage us to re-read this novel through the lens of Colombian women’s movements and their stances on the contemporary armed conflict. Here, I refer to the work of the Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres (RPM), an organisation founded in 1996 in response to violent massacres in Urabá by the paramilitary group Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá, which involved violence against women, including rape. More than 2,000 feminist activists mobilized to organize a protest march to Mutatá in Urabá, which marked the founding of the RPM.

One of the most high-profile and influential activities of the RPM has been its alternative, gender-focused truth commission. Named the Comisión de la Verdad desde las Mujeres and active from 2010 to 2013, this commission collected testimony from about 1,000 women across the country, which resulted in an extensive, two-volume report whose findings were presented at the Havana Dialogues and played a significant role in the creation of the Gender Subcommission of the CEV (see Arias Rodríguez 197). In their report, as in many of their other influential publications, the RPM argues for understanding the relationship between gender-based violence and armed conflict as mutually imbricated, establishing direct links between patriarchal violence and militarism (see especially RPM 43-45), defining militarism as “una de las manifestaciones más descarnadas de la cultura patriarcal” (RPM 45), and criticizing the militarisation of everyday life (see especially RPM 363-365). Linking militarism to damaging models of hypermasculinity, with violence against women naturalized as a normal and inevitable part of conflict, the RPM’s sustained focus on the continuum of violence thus highlights how individual acts of violence against women are part of larger, structural violence to which women are subjected.

I argue that re-reading Ángel’s novel in light of what April 9 signifies today encourages us to see Estaba la pájara as exposing precisely this continuum of violence that the RMP has discussed. That is, Ángel’s portrayal of Ana’s rape against the backdrop of La Violencia, her linking of Valeria’s politically motivated death with the subsequent “manoseo” of Ana when identifying the corpse, along with many other similar parallels in the novel, reveal the continuum of violence that the RPM has identified as the underlying framework of the armed conflict. If the model of bellicose masculinity underpins the armed conflict, the militarisation of everyday life, and the treatment of women’s bodies as botín de guerra, as argued by the RPM and others, then we see this connection laid out avant la lèttre in Ángel’s novel.

6. From Estaba la pájara to the Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims: Re-Reading April 9 Today

As we have seen above, re-reading this novel in light of what April 9 means today is particularly insightful. But what could be the implications if we reversed this operation? In other words, how might we understand the Day of Memory and Solidarity with Victims differently, considering what Estaba la pájara offers?

In this reflection, I revisit the figure of Gaitán and those scholars who have highlighted how Gaitán has become another founding myth of the Colombian nation—a “representación nacional de carácter mítico” (Melo n.p.), who, after Simón Bolívar, has the most monuments dedicated to him in Colombia, as well as appearing on bank notes and in other commemorative functions (Schuster, “The Duty of Memory” 45). By designating this date as the Día Nacional de la Memoria y de la Solidaridad con las Víctimas, Gaitán and April 9 have thus become “un elemento central de una nueva narración nacional” (43), in which a complex historical period is reduced to just one date, and certain problematic aspects of Gaitán are downplayed, since “aspectos más negativos, por ejemplo, su retórica inflamatoria y manipuladora, su inclinación por el fascismo italiano o su desprecio por ciertas manifestaciones demasiado ‘populares’ no son tematizados” (49). In addition to the elements listed by Schuster, I would argue that another neglected negative aspect is the gendered dimensions of Gaitán’s discourse and that a re-reading of Ángel’s novel allows us to see this.

Numerous scholars have highlighted Gaitán’s skills as an orator and his ability to connect with the working classes through his speeches (see, for example, Sharpless 183; Fischer et al. 230; Sánchez-Ángel 17; Braun et al., among many others). However, a largely overlooked fact in the description of Gaitán’s powerful oratory is its gendered nature. If we analyse Gaitán’s speeches, they frame political subjectivity centred around men (and not women) as political actors. This is evident not only in the form of Gaitán’s repeated use of “hombre” to refer to humanity, the nation, and political actors (an admittedly common feature in most political discourse of the period) but also within other deeply-rooted patriarchal structures in his speeches.

For instance, it is notable that in “Oración por la paz”—widely recognised as his most famous and successful speech (Galeano Sánchez, “Una reflexión en torno” 7; Millán 48)—Gaitán’s rhetoric, while attempting to bring the voices of the “silenciosa muchedumbre” to the attention of the ruling political elites, reinforces age-old gendered hierarchies. Delivered on February 7, 1948, to a crowd of between 50,000 and 100,000 people in the Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, and viewed by scholars as a speech “motivado por la angustia existencial del pueblo durante la crueldad, matanza, incendio, persecución y violencia institucionalizada” (Ariza Romero 18) and a call for non-violent civil resistance (Cante), Gaitán’s words, while urging the President to recognise the needs of the masses, reinforce gendered norms that exclude women from the public sphere. This can be seen, for example, in his words to the President near the end of this speech, which read: “Señor Presidente: Nuestra bandera está enlutada y esta silenciosa muchedumbre y este grito mudo de nuestros corazones solo os reclama: ¡que nos tratéis a nosotros, a nuestras madres, a nuestras esposas, a nuestros hijos y a nuestros bienes, como queráis que os traten a vos, a vuestra madre, a vuestra esposa, a vuestros hijos y a vuestros bienes!” (Gaitán n.p.). Notably, the “nosotros” does not include women: women are not assumed to be part of the “nosotros” of political actors. Instead, they are listed as others, after “nosotros,” alongside children and belongings (“nuestros bienes”), further objectifying women. Moreover, women only appear in their roles as “madres” and “esposas,” reinforcing thus the norms of heteronormativity and sexual complementarity: there is no political agency for women in their own right. If, therefore, scholars have (quite rightly) highlighted Gaitán’s success in oratory and his persuasive rhetoric, what has been overlooked so far is the fact that such rhetoric excludes women from the public sphere and political agency.

If that is the case in Gaitán’s most famous speech, then in those other—admittedly limited—cases where Gaitán does mention women, as Lola G. Luna has revealed, Gaitán’s discourse again reinforced patriarchal norms. Even though women were included in some Gaitanista committees, they played “un papel que ocupa un lugar segundario” (28) and were present “no como delegadas de sus barrios o pueblos, sino en representación de sus capacidades sexuales y virtudes de género” (29). Thus, although Gaitanism gave visibility to women and did include the right for women to vote in its political platform, ultimately, it “mantuvo la idea tradicional sobre el principal papel femenino, la maternidad” (33).

When re-reading April 9 today in light of Estaba la pájara, Gaitán’s discourses might be revealed to be just as heteronormative as the stifling middle-class societal norms that Ana protests against. In the novel, the child Ana exclaims that “nada en la vida es para niñas, definitivamente, cada vez que uno va a hacer algo, ¡no es de niñas!” (Ángel 415), revealing her growing awareness of the gendered societal norms that delimit the roles for women; likewise, when we read April 9 today, we might question how this day remains framed around a masculine hero. In other words, this novel can encourage us to critically re-read how April 9 functions today while highlighting the ongoing need to open April 9 to the voices of grassroots women’s groups, who challenge and go beyond the gendered norms of the original Gaitanista discourse.

7. Conclusions: Re-Readings Both Ways

As I have argued in this article, re-reading Estaba la pájara in the context of April 9 as a foundational moment for the narrative and the Colombian nation helps us understand how Albalucía Ángel’s arguments in this novel anticipate many of the concerns raised regarding the contemporary armed conflict today. As has been suggested, we can re-read her critique of the “official hypothesis” of Estrada Monsalve in relation to the need to analyse other, more recent “official hypotheses,” such as the Seguridad Democrática doctrine from the Uribe administration. Similarly, we can re-read her depiction of pájaros and chulavitas and their violent defence of the oligarchy’s interests during Fordist capitalism in relation to the violent implementation of neoliberalism by the paramilitaries in the present era. We can also re-read her sustained portrayal of gender-based violence and her linking of individual acts of violence against women to broader societal structures, considering what the RPM and others have since argued regarding the continuum of violence. In this way, Ángel’s observations in this novel anticipate some of the demands of women’s groups like the RPM today.

Nevertheless, we can also, as suggested earlier, understand April 9 as gendered and use Ángel’s novel to problematise the elevation of Gaitán as another national hero. When re-reading her novel, we might ask ourselves whether we still need to ask now, in twenty-first-century Colombia, why the national day for victims is centred around the masculine. This is not to say that Gaitán should be discarded or that April 9 is necessarily the “wrong” day to choose. Instead, the date itself—and perhaps the very idea of the need for another national hero—should be questioned. And this is precisely the work—the contestation of models of heroism—that grassroots women’s groups in Colombia, such as the RPM, actively engage in today.

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1. 1. While exact figures are difficult to obtain, Rueda Salas reports 1,400 cases of false positives under investigation in 2012 (62). Human Rights Watch identified 3,700 cases under investigation between 2002 and 2008 (5), and a recent press article estimated a total of 4,475 victims (cited in Marín Pineda 101).