00:00The decision by the National Government to remove certain works from the National Museum related to women's struggles,
00:06LGBT and Comás movements and the peace and memory processes in Colombia
00:09It has implications for the way in which the country's history is represented.
00:14Is this an attempt to erase us from the spaces where our story is told?
00:18Of the 30 pieces that were reportedly removed by the Government,
00:21Some of them are related to women's history,
00:25the feminist struggle and the LGBT and Comás movements.
00:28These include the International Manifesto of the Campaign for Contraception and Abortion
00:33and the rejection of forced sterilization, developed in Cali,
00:36the newspaper Nuestras Mujeres, recognized for its contributions to the history of the struggle for women's rights,
00:42the djembe drum of the batucada, a lesbian touch, and shoes designed for a trans woman, among other things.
00:47These pieces were part of the Hacer Sociedad Room, opened in 2019 during the government of Iván Duque.
00:53One of the texts in the exhibition explained
00:55This room represents historical conditions of social and political organization of the country.
01:00It refers to processes of coexistence, resistance, and vindication.
01:04But does this only happen here?
01:05No, it's not a new phenomenon.
01:07Women have been excluded from various spaces of memory and historical narratives around the world.
01:11It represents a step backwards in the pursuit of building a space that will recognize the struggle for our rights.
01:17And we're not the only ones saying this. María Mónica Fuentes Leal, an international relations expert and specialist in art and culture,
01:22who worked for eight years at the National Museum, explains that these pieces represent the social and political struggles of
01:28Colombia.
01:28His retirement makes it difficult to understand how feminist and LGBT movements have contributed to winning rights
01:34and transform the country.
01:35The Minister of Culture, Paola Holguín, described the museum as a space that should not be used for alleged indoctrination.
01:41political.
01:42He stated that this was an action to protect minors from sensitive material.
01:46However, sources tell us that it is contradictory to invoke the protection of children,
01:50while they make invisible the stories that allowed them to recognize their own rights.
01:54Women's struggles are also part of national history.
01:58The right to vote, autonomy, political participation, and the sexual and reproductive rights that we exercise today did not appear
02:04spontaneously.
02:05They are the result of collective processes that made possible the conquest of rights and social transformations.
02:11The National Museum has a responsibility to showcase these processes and recognize the women who were protagonists of them.
02:16democratic construction of the country.
02:18For María Mónica, the removal of these pieces can be understood as a form of invisibility,
02:23because it reduces the public presence of these struggles.
02:25Furthermore, there is no clarity on how they will continue to be represented from now on.
02:29However, he clarifies that removing a piece from the exhibition does not necessarily mean eliminating it from the entire collection.
02:35museum.
02:36According to Julián Roa, former museological advisor of the National Museum of Colombia and the Museum Strengthening Program of the Ministry
02:42of Culture,
02:42We are talking about a national museum that belongs to all Colombians,
02:47in a society characterized by its deep and broad diversity.
02:50Therefore, decisions about their conditions and narratives cannot ignore that same diversity.
02:55Roa points out that there is a well-known phrase from a feminist artistic collective that is worth remembering.
03:00It seems that women can only enter museums naked.
03:04It is a recurring criticism of the way they have been represented in these spaces,
03:09primarily through female nudes painted by men,
03:12while their participation in political and social struggles throughout the
03:16history.
03:17Thus, our history is relegated, put up for debate, its display made uncomfortable.
03:21And by removing it, a part of the country's history is left untold, ignoring the importance of everything that
03:27We have achieved it.
03:28This is not an isolated incident nor exclusive to Colombia.
03:30In the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order directed at the Smithsonian Institution.
03:35The purpose was to eliminate from those institutions what the government considered an inappropriate, divisive, or anti-American ideology.
03:42It also ordered the restoration of parks, monuments, and statues that, according to the Trump administration,
03:47They had been removed or modified to perpetuate a false revision of history.
03:52The measure opened a debate about the intervention of political power in the construction of historical memory.
03:57By using such broad criteria as divisive or anti-American,
04:01The government left room to decide which stories could be shown,
04:05weakening the autonomy of historians and curators and opening the door to censorship.
04:09The consequences could especially affect groups historically excluded from the official narrative.
04:15These decisions were part of Trump's offensive against the alleged gender ideology
04:19and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
04:22References to trans people, histories, and commas were also removed from sites such as the Stonewall Monument.
04:28Ultimately, whoever controls memory decides which stories deserve to be told.
04:32And when the contributions of women and minorities are erased, the past is once again told from a single perspective.
04:37look.
04:38Almost always male and dominant.
04:40Igualadas, what do you all think about all this?
04:42We read them in the comments.
