Agency in Contexts of Violence and Crime: Coping Strategies of Women Community Leaders vis-à-vis Criminal Groups in Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

This article explores women community leaders’ relationship and interactions with criminal groups in Medellín, Colombia. Based on in-depth interviews in low-income neighborhoods, this article shows that women community leaders develop coping strategies to deal with the everyday violence that is largely connected to the presence of <em>combos</em>, which are criminal groups. We identify three coping strategies: confrontation, negotiation, and avoiding confrontation, which are not exclusionary from one another. These coping strategies are understood not only as a form of surviving in environments with high levels of violence and crime, but also they are part of women community leaders’ development of agency. We aim to go beyond the ‘passive/agency binary’ (Hume and Wilding 2020) by understanding women community leaders’ coping strategies as a form of situated and contingent agency.