Victims: being empathetic to the suffering of others.

1. Teaching social justice in the EFL classroom
within the Colombian post conflict
María del Pilar Fernández Pedraza M.A.
Leidy Yisel Gómez-Vásquez M.A.
2. VICTIMS STATION

2. Understanding the context:
SOMETHING ABOUT SAN CARLOS, ANTIOQUIA
San Carlos is a municipality part of the sub-region of Eastern
Antioquia well-known as the hydro-electrical capital of Colombia due
to its strategic location. San Carlos is a town with great variety of
natural resources: beautiful woods, natural reserves, rivers and
waterfalls, as well as fertile lands that allow the community to
produce coffee, sugarcane, potato and corn.
Unfortunately, due to its strategic location,
San Carlos became the main objective of
different armed groups that wanted to have
control over the territory to impose their
ideologies and benefit their own interests
in detriment of the civil society.

3. Before watching the pictures:
Go to page 106 and read the text.
While watching the pictures:
Think and discuss the following questions:
• Who appears in the photograph?
• What situation is portrayed there?
• What elements are shown in the photo and what
is the message?
Photos taken from:
http://especiales.semana.com/especiales/proyectovictimas/index.html#fotos

4. San Carlos, Antioquía. (1998) Héctor Abad Colorado

5. A guerrilla commando dynamited the Danticas bridge on February 20, 2002, which links the Antioquia
municipalities of San Carlos and San Rafael. As a result of the attack, an ambulance fell into the void and
three people died, including a pregnant woman. (Photo: Julio César Herrera / EL TIEMPO)

6. In January 2003, the Farc murdered 17 peasants in the Antioquia municipality of San Carlos.
(Photo: Natalia Botero Duque)

7. Community funerals
were a common scene in
the worst years of
violence in eastern
Antioquia, mostly
massacres committed by
the AUC.

8. San Carlos, Antioquia.
(2003) Héctor Abad
Colorado

9. Massacres San Carlos
(Antioquia) inhabitants
leaving the town.
(Photo: Natalia Botero)

10. Exhumations in eastern Antioquia of victims of the armed conflict in 2007.
(Photo: Juan Alberto Gómez)

11. After watching the pictures:
Record a 1 minute video answering the following
questions:
• Did the photographs made me feel empathetic to
the people portrayed, or was it the opposite?
• How were my feelings affected by them?
• Was the purpose of the photographs to sensitize us
or to attack us?
Send the video to the teachers’ email.