“Carmenza Cardona Londoño, known as La Chiqui, perished in combat in Chocó in 1981. Her body was buried in the jungle and to this day, her whereabouts remain unknown. In Piedra Honda, a village near the place where she was buried, it is said that she is sometimes seen walking through the mountains, that she braids the girls' hair and appears in the shape of a butterfly on a Carrá tree”.

In Clandestina, artist Gabriela Pinilla (Bogotá, Colombia, 1983) proposes the construction of a graphic story about the history of Carmenza Cardona Londoño, a militant of the “Movimiento 19 de Abril M-19”, a guerrilla group that emerged in Colombia in the 1970s. Carmenza, or “la Chiqui” as she was known, was a teacher who joined the guerrillas and was in charge of negotiations during the seizure of the Dominican Republic embassy by the M-19 between February and April 1980 in Bogotá (one of the most important events in the history of this guerrilla group, which signed peace with the Colombian government at the end of the 1980s). 

Pinilla expands the dimensions of the story, to understand the mindset of Cardona and the historical and formative reasons behind her political course. In a world that has endured internal armed conflict for more than seven decades, the artist sheds light on a story that is not well known to this day, and thus contributes to the clarification of one of the many facts that remain hidden in our history.

The figure of Carmenza touches on critical issues within the history of the conflict in Colombia: the implementation of the exceptional penal regime known as the Security Statute decreed by President Julio César Turbay in 1978, the indiscriminate use of torture as a strategy against political opposition at the time, the violation of the rights of political prisoners, intimidatory actions against artists and writers dissenting with the government, systematic killings of opposition members, forced disappearances, and the situation of poverty and neglect in some regions of the country, all interwoven with Carmenza's life and that of her comrades, between the 1950s and 1990s.

The images, wooden figures, and dioramas are the result of the convergence of several events: the research conducted by Darío Villamizar on the events surrounding her life, the narrative richness of the diary written by Carmenza Cardona during her journey in Chocó, the interviews with Carmenza's sisters, mother, several of her close friends, and other militants whom she met and shared time in Cali, and finally, through a thorough review of press and archives.

The illustrated book “Entre agua y raíces: las luchas de la Chiqui en las montañas del Chocó” (Between Water and Roots: La Chiqui's Struggles in the Mountains of Chocó), which will also be on display at the exhibition, was co-authored by Darío Villamizar and Gabriela Pinilla, and is part of the series “La Venganza de la historia”, which Pinilla began working on in 2007 with the intention of narrating the history of Colombia from perspectives, voices and sources other than those used by the official history. To date four series issues have been published, and fourteen murals have been created.