Mayerly Díaz Castellanos has been a human rights researcher for the past 10 years at the Latin American Institute for an Alternative Society and Law (ILSA). She shares her learning journey and what inspires her to do her work.
Mayerly Díaz Castellanos has been a human rights researcher for the past 10 years at the Latin American Institute for an Alternative Society and Law (ILSA)
Please introduce yourself briefly and tell us about your work.
My name is Mayerly Díaz Castellanos, I am Colombian, a human rights defender, environmental activist, feminist, lawyer specializing in public policy and gender justice at CLACSO, and a human rights researcher for the past 10 years at the Latin American Institute for an Alternative Society and Law (ILSA/Colombia).
My work has focused on the defense of human rights, women’s human rights, environmental rights, and the rights of nature through comprehensive strategies that bring together academia, legality, and the legitimacy of alternative forms of law enforcement and practice to achieve these goals. This has been achieved through at least the following areas: training for community lawyers, social mobilization for resistance, advocacy in public policy, activation of mechanisms for citizen participation, and litigation.
Life invited me to be a protagonist and to understand epistemic injustices from my own experience. That is how I began to meet people who inspired me to dream of a more just world. I was born and raised in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Bogotá, in an area marked by social, economic, and cultural inequalities and violence. There, as an immersive experience, the song “El baile de los que sobran” (The Dance of Those Left Behind) by the band Los Prisioneros is played over and over again. It was on this path that my friends were left “kicking stones,” while the state “asked for effort and dedication.” It was the state itself that wanted to close our secondary school to build a Carrefour (a French supermarket chain). The students aged 11 to 16 decided to take over the school and demand the right to public education. It was 21 days and nights of occupation, during which police brutality exceeded its force on numerous occasions, assaulting and arresting underage students and people who supported the protest. Thanks to Karen Díaz and other girls in the final year who called for a meeting and, through great collective efforts, managed to influence the state institutions and mobilize the entire educational community, today the school still exists and provides primary and secondary education to almost two thousand girls and adolescents.
It has been 24 years since that struggle was won, which means that approximately forty-eight thousand girls have graduated since then.On the other hand, my work has focused on the defense of human rights, women’s human rights, environmental rights, and the rights of nature through comprehensive strategies that bring together academia, legality, and the legitimacy of alternative forms of law enforcement and practice to achieve them. This has been achieved through at least the following axes: i) training for popular and community advocacy, ii) social mobilization for resistance, iii) advocacy in public policies, activation of mechanisms for citizen participation, and iv) litigation.
We sow life, sow in memory of “Berta Cáceres is a seed” March 8, 2025.
In the search for justice, I have been presented with multiple scenarios, perhaps due to my peasant and popular roots. Meeting the peasant population that has been defending the Pisba páramo (a fragile ecosystem of global importance) for more than 30 years in Boyacá, Colombia, was undoubtedly a turning point. They have taken up resistance against coal and limestone exploitation in the moorland area as something that is part of their lives. Even with threats and discrimination from companies and the state, the people remain firm and find legitimate community-based ways to defend their territory.
This experience was very interesting to me, and it became even more powerful when we began to weave a regional network of women defenders with peasant women, which has had a great impact at the local, regional, and national levels. In practice, our work has moved from the realm of rights to action, and with this I want to identify the process that began from social mobilization and litigation and has been expanding to other community forms of access to justice through policy advocacy, change, and transition of everyday practices that concretize rights, also from self-governance and community management.
This is not to say that one or the other is more important, but rather that the multiplicity of actions strengthens the processes and advances in the short, medium, and long term, with critical reflections on the realization of rights as a fundamental pillar.
All of this has allowed communities to remain with the capacities to confront and counteract violations of rights and discrimination. This accumulation of experiences has allowed me to expand my knowledge and have a critical perspective on all aspects of life, with social and environmental justice as my horizon. I acknowledge the territory we inhabit and the social struggles that have taken place here. horizon of social and environmental justice.I recognize the territory we inhabit and the social struggles that have taken place here, and for this I am grateful for the rights we have acquired and to those who were at the forefront to make this happen. I strive to leave contributions along every path so that they can continue to transform realities.
I am motivated by the knowledge that in every place, no matter how remote, forgotten, or invisible, I find people with the sensitivity and interest to defend the rights of all. I am motivated by finding in collective organization the sustenance of life itself.
I have understood along the way that by organizing ourselves, we have found the possibilities to move forward, without waiting for those in power.
I am inspired by the peasant and working-class women who have broken the chains of silence and have taken up the word, care, and their knowledge to defend themselves and defend nature, life, water, and territory.I feel that belonging here is what moves me, what gives me the possibility to not lose sight of the horizon and to want to keep going, in what may be a utopia for some people.
My suggestions are aimed at continuing to come together as a network and sowing the seed that the collective is what sustains us. It is very important to democratize experiences and knowledge, and with that, the invitation is to not lose sight of the paradigm shift: the transition from conventional practices to alternative practices in everyday life and in the law will give us all the possibility of feeling and thinking that we are finding changes in the short, medium, and long term, which reveals progress towards justice.
National mobilization before the Congress of the Republic of Colombia, in defense of anti-mining referendums.