[media-credit name=’JEFF SCHORFHEIDE/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Colombian civil organizations are trying to make a change in their country despite constant violence, according to a Colombian peace advocate who visited the University of Wisconsin Wednesday.

Ana Teresa Bernal Montanez, commissioner on Colombia’s Commission on Reparations and Reconciliation, spoke to students, faculty and community members about the conflict that plagues her home country.

“For many decades, Colombian society has been unable to resolve a series of conflicts which have made violence an ongoing and daily reality,” Montanez said.

Colombian citizens have made great strides to try and combat this violence, including creating a constitution in 1991 and establishing organizations such as the Commission on Reparations and Reconciliation brought forward by the citizens, according to Montanez.

“It’s not only silencing guns, but it is strengthening democracy,” Montanez said.

Most recently, a group of Colombian mothers formed “Mothers for Life,” a group that seeks kidnapped children and fights for children who still live at home so the children might live a dignified life, Montanez said. Last month 300 of these women gathered to hold a week dedicated to peace.

Although Montanez and her fellow peace activists made great strides, violence still continues.

Montanez described the violence that occurs in her country, which includes massacres, land mines and kidnapping.

She described groups of men torching villages and killing men while their wives and children watched.

Organizations striving for peace also exist in the United States. The Colombian Support Network is a Madison-based group that helps Colombians in their journey to a peaceful society.

Although Montanez and her fellow activists appreciate this support, she said she has mixed feelings about the U.S. government getting involved with Colombian conflict, manly due to the U.S. focus on extraditing drug traffickers.

Montanez’s drive comes from a need within to help solve her country's conflict, which she discovered when she was young.

"It was a Colombia that had issues of equality, injustice and pain. I promised myself that my life had to make sense," Montanez said of her thoughts when she was 15.

UW junior Tess Wendorf said Montanez affected the audience with her first-hand knowledge, giving everyone an inside look into the Colombian world.

“I liked that she got emotional when she was talking, when she started to tear up it was moving,” Wendorf said. “It shows it is impacting her greatly.”

Montanez was invited to speak as a Soffa Distinguished International Visitor to help educate the students and the community about these issues plaguing Colombia and what the civil society of Colombia is doing to solve them, according to Gilles Bousquet, Dean of International Studies.

“One of the things we were hoping was she would bring some personal insight from Colombia to the campus and the complexity of the situation,” Bousquet said. “It also gives us a snapshot of what people are doing today to remedy the situation.”