Promoting Birth Control in 1970s Colombia: Unlikely Alliances On and Off the Screen

This essay focuses on six films produced by Airlie Productions during the 1970s that present family planning projects and alert the public to the “population issue”—the supposedly devastating political, economic, and cultural consequences of the world population’s exponential growth. Five of these six films focus exclusively on Colombia, and one refers to Latin America as a whole, including references to Bolivia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. The production of five of these films was supported by Profamilia, arguably the most successful associate to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the most important Colombian family planning organization. Together, the films under analysis illustrate some of the difficulties the population movement faced in the 1970s in promoting birth control in the Global South, some of the strategies implemented to tackle those difficulties, and the unexpected alliances that were formed along the way.

Airlie Foundation’s story is deeply intertwined with the transnational population-control movement. The foundation was established in 1972 by Dr. Murdoch Head with the goal of collaborating closely with the Population Information Program (PIP), which had been recently created at George Washington University by Phyllis T. Piotrow, a leading figure in the population movement. Between 1971 and 1978, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded $16.6 million to the Airlie Foundation and the PIP.^[1] As a result, the Airlie Foundation made over 100 films on population and health issues during this time, set in various locations, including Colombia, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Jamaica, Kenya, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States. At around $1,800 to $2,058 per minute of finished film, these high-quality and location-filmed productions were costly, compared to the $1,236 per minute average cost of films made for government agencies.^[2]

USAID’s investment in the Airlie Foundation and the PIP was part of a broader trend. After World War II, U.S. private organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation started investing significant funds in Latin America and advancing pilot population-control programs. By the 1960s, the U.S. government had joined such efforts and was also exerting economic and political pressure to curb fertility in the region.^[3] Immersed in Cold War concerns, U.S. actors feared that poor, overpopulated countries in the Global South would feel unsatisfied with Capitalist governments and embrace Communism.

In this context, Colombia received an extraordinary influx of government and philanthropic funds, partly due to the great deal of local support found in the country for population growth control. Spearheaded by a handful of renowned Colombian doctors, Profamilia and the Colombian Association of Medical Schools resourcefully leveraged international funding to expand reproductive services, particularly to the countryside.^[4] Moreover, with the robust endorsement of President Carlos Lleras Restrepo (1966-1970) and his Minister of Health Antonio Ordoñez Plaja, in the late 1960s the Colombian Ministry of Health included family planning as an integral part of its maternal and child health programs.^[5]

The union of international and local efforts to advance family planning led to an abrupt change in the country’s demographic profile. In 1960, the Colombian birth rate was 6.735, meaning that, on average, every woman had almost seven children during her lifetime. Only twenty years later, the birth rate in Colombia had dramatically fallen to 3.967.^[6]

Divergent Perspectives on Social Well-Being and Birth Control

These films provide evidence of the local support that facilitated the drop in Colombian fertility and the sometimes divergent interests that motivated it. Two examples, very different from one another, are Y Mañana, ¿Qué? [And Tomorrow, What?] (1975), and Candelaria: A New System of Health (1972). These films show different levels of local compliance with the population discourse that equated birth control and development by linking lower fertility rates with economic growth and social well-being. Furthermore, Candelaria provides evidence of how local actors took advantage of population funds to advance their own purposes, in this case expanding healthcare services.

The film Y Mañana, ¿Qué? puts together fragments of interviews with, as the voice-over narrator describes them, “aware men [who] see the problem from […] slightly different angle[s].” Monsignor Luis Bambarén from Peru, for example, highlights factors creating social imbalance, including the irrational foreign extraction of Peruvian resources starting in the colonial period, as well as the abandonment of the traditional family structure of Inca families. Meanwhile, Mariano Baptista Gumucio, Bolivian writer and historian, states that his country needs to defend its “living human capital,” meaning decreasing infant mortality. Both Bambarén and Baptista express anti-imperialist and humanitarian perspectives with indigenous ruins as their background.

The film does not call attention to the fact that Colombian ex-president Carlos Lleras Restrepo’s “angle,” also included in the film, is more than “slightly different” from those of Bambarén and Baptista. He does not seem to be preoccupied with the conditions of disadvantaged communities or global inequalities. Instead, he blames underdevelopment on rural people, claiming that they are of the “lowest cultural level in each [Latin-American] country,” and that their migration to urban areas, along with the perpetuation of their reproductive patterns and modes of life, is asphyxiating the progress of cities.^[7] Aligning with the content of his words, Lleras Restrepo is shown surrounded by objects symbolizing high-class status and modernity, such as a television and an elegant watch. Lleras Restrepo’s perspective as captured in Y Mañana, ¿Qué? reflects his broader support of the population discourse. During his presidency, he promoted population policies to the point that he has often been credited with Colombia becoming “a pioneer and leader in the formulation of population policy in the Latin American context.”^[8] Lleras Restrepo believed controlling Colombians’ fertility was a required step to accomplish economic success and to “modernize the State.”^[9]

In contrast, Candelaria: A New System of Health reveals how other people in Colombia prioritized providing health services to marginalized communities for the sake of improving their life conditions. Candelaria is the only film among those under analysis here whose production did not receive support from Profamilia, but from the Universidad del Valle. In 1958, the Universidad del Valle Medical School started a new experimental health system in Candelaria, a county (municipio) located approximately 20 miles outside of Cali whose inhabitants lived in rural and semi-rural zones. A census from 1973 indicated that there were 8773 inhabitants in Candelaria, split into 1952 families.^[10]

During the 1960s and 1970s, Candelaria’s health program received a significant influx of economic resources from the U.S., mainly from the Rockefeller Foundation. Still, the program maintained its core objectives as defined by local doctors. Over the years, doctors from Universidad del Valle upheld their commitment to primary health care (PHC) ideals and a broad understanding of what “health” meant.^[11] Likewise, even though they incorporated a family planning program into the Candelaria system in 1965, this never became the sole focus of their work. Their family planning program was quite inconspicuous at first, as the doctors did not want to start a conflict with the local church. They used to proclaim that “one would have to rely on the rhythm method, supported only by limited use of anovulatory drugs (‘the pill’) to regularize menstrual periods.”^[12] This approach changed in 1968, when the program openly incorporated modern birth control methods.

That birth control was part of but not at the core of Candelaria’s health care system is evident in Candelaria: A New System of Health. The 25-minute documentary explains the varying tiers of healthcare administered by personnel with different levels of education, including young local female volunteers trained for six to eight weeks. The film spends less than four minutes on the family planning services and the rest of the time discussing prenatal control, birth, and postpartum attention, as well as children’s nutrition, preventive immunization, and dental care. The voice-over narrator informs the viewer that “now in Candelaria, 90 percent of the couples know about the [family planning] program, and 35 percent are using the method offered. The birth rate has dropped 33 percent in the last 10 years.” Those numbers were probably not remarkable for people focused on population control, as they expected higher acceptance rates and more dramatic decreases in fertility.

Instead of blaming rural poor people for blocking urban development, Candelaria: A New System of Health ends by stressing that “the children who are cared for through an integral health program will grow strong and will be able in the future to put their healthy minds and energy to work for the development and welfare of their nations.” The film thus suggests, even if only indirectly, that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the racialized and impoverished community it portrayed. If offered sufficient services, its members can thrive. In doing so, it supports the message that the path to social well-being is better care for the population, rather than fewer people, as advocates of the population discourse would have generally argued.

The film’s empathetic portrayal of rural people, combined with its marginal focus on family planning and comprehensive definition of health, suggests that doctors affiliated with Universidad del Valle may have played a meaningful role in shaping its narrative. This influence was perhaps most pronounced in the case of Dr. Emilio Aguirre Castaño, a former dean of the university’s Health Division. Dr. Aguirre Castaño was known for fostering collaborative relationships with various U.S. foundations and institutions to enhance the education of his peers and students. Not by chance, he makes a brief appearance in the film and is credited as a “Special Consultant” in the end credits. His involvement and the final result indicate behind-the-scenes negotiations between the film producers and Universidad del Valle’s medical community.

Family Planning as a Communication Problem

Candelaria: A New System of Health is not the only Airlie film that portrays the efforts undertaken in Colombia to incorporate local people into the promotion of health services. This is also true of four films focused exclusively on the promotion of birth control: Socio Dramas [Social Dramas] (1974), La Bandera Verde [The Green Flag] (1974), The City: Implications for the Future (1977), and Vamos Donde Ellos [We Go Where They Are] (1977). The widespread effort to portray the participation of local communities in birth control programs probably responded to two sets of pressure then facing Airlie Foundation: on the one hand, the need to efficiently communicate the intended message to people who may be unfamiliar with Western media conventions; and, on the other, the need to defuse criticism regarding the use of media to persuade people about health-related issues, rather than simply to inform them.^[13]

Airlie Foundation’s efforts to speak in an accessible language and to include locals in its family planning message are particularly evident in Socio Dramas. This film opens with an introductory segment, in which a specialist in communications talks about how they have incorporated the “sociodrama technique” to bring the message of family planning to male peasants in Colombia. Created in the 1930s by psychiatrist and psychosociologist Jacob Levi Moreno, sociodrama is the group counterpart of the individual-oriented method of psychodrama.^[14] It is a participative methodology in which a directed group of people theatrically represents a real-life event or situation to analyze social roles and improve group dynamics.^[15] According to the expert, sociodramas created and interpreted by peasants themselves were the best way to ensure that the message was understood and appreciated by rural audiences. This kind of reasoning was also invoked by health communications experts involved in family planning elsewhere in the world who were incorporating a “grassroots model based on indigenous media, such as puppet shows, dramatic performances, and songs.”^[16] Even though in Colombia the use of sociodramas seems to have differed from Moreno’s original method—by being filmed, likely being scripted and departing from therapeutic goals—these dramatizations provided participants a space for normalizing talk about birth control and articulating the tensions that its use could create inside families.

The Airlie Foundation’s emphasis on communication techniques was likely driven by the interests of Profamilia’s leaders as well. This was true of Lily de Bucheli, who served as director of Profamilia’s Information and Communications Department. An elite woman who had been educated in the United States, de Bucheli was familiar with communication techniques, including audiovisual production and screenwriting.^[17] After having been both a participant and consultant at the University of Chicago Summer Workshop on Family Planning Communications, she developed the project proposal for the rural pilot program functioning when Socio Dramas was filmed. She then served as the project’s general director.^[18]

After the communications expert’s introduction and a series of various sketches filmed on location in which local, amateur actors dramatize scenarios that are designed to encourage the use of birth control, the film ends with a little girl reciting a copla—a poetic form popular in the coffee-growing area where the sketches are set. She hails Profamilia and “clarifies” that women affiliated with a club supported by the organization were “good women and not rebels.” The distinction alludes to the traditional dichotomization of women as either saintly Madonnas or debased whores. The girl’s words attempt to link the use of birth control with the former archetype thus easing fears about contraception as a path towards moral degradation via extramarital sex. In short, through this copla and the sociodrama sketches, the film shows how rural people appropriated and adapted the family planning discourse to their specific realities and communications modes.

The sketches in Socio Dramas aim not just to encourage people to use birth control but also to inform them about the available methods and how to access them. In doing so, the film overcomes a problem that, according to Manon Parry, marred the Nigerian film My Brother’s Children (1970), which was produced for the Family Planning Council of Nigeria and sponsored by the IPPF. According to Parry, because My Brother’s Children “was more motivational than informational (because it dealt with the reasons for using contraception rather than any detailed discussion of techniques), those who lacked technical knowledge were likely to remain ignorant and therefore unsupportive.”^[19] In contrast, the sociodramas filmed in Colombia stand out for both their clear explanation of different birth control methods and stress on the accessibility of Profamilia’s personnel.

Moreover, the sketches in Socio Dramas reveal how its Airlie Foundation producer and Profamilia leaders have a shared focus on recruiting new birth control users rather than on addressing the broader situation of women. Throughout the film, a recurring theme emerges: while women are motivated to use birth control, they require their husband’s approval. In the film, husbands consent after a Profamilia promoter calmly and confidently advocates for family planning and reassures them about the safety of available methods. One sketch even culminates in the husband unilaterally deciding that his wife will use birth control, stating, “I am going to take you to a health center and make you take birth control.” This closing statement is unsettling from a women’s rights perspective, even if the woman had initially expressed interest in contraception.

Similarly, birth control is sometimes presented as an alternative for lessening women’s household work, rather than for addressing the gendered, unequal distribution of labor. In one sociodrama sketch included in La Bandera Verde, a man arrives from working in the fields and starts yelling at his wife and two older daughters, who are cooking and cleaning the house. He demands to be served lunch. And when one of the women says that food is not yet ready, he shouts, “What do you mean food is not ready? I come here to eat, and you say you have not made food. What have you been doing then?” When his daughter starts explaining the difficulties of their daily life, he screams once again, “silence!” and the sketch ends. This might be an overstatement, but this sketch seems to present family planning as a means of avoiding conflict by ensuring that food would be ready on time rather than as a way for women to have more freedom over their bodies, schedules, and workloads.

Community-Based Distribution of Birth Control

Incorporating local people into a family planning program was not only a communication strategy but also a strategy for making birth control available to populations that were hard to reach. Consider The City, which uses a dramatic tone to present the supposedly catastrophic impact of rural and undereducated people migrating to Latin American cities. Halfway through the 20-minute film, there is a sudden shift in tone towards a more hopeful approach as the voice-over narrator states that Colombia has developed a way to reach women in barrios with birth-control methods. The film then describes Profamilia’s network of distribution posts of nonclinical contraceptives, staffed by local volunteers who offered birth control in their family-owned stores, answered their peers’ questions, and referred them to Profamilia clinics when necessary.

La Bandera Verde and Vamos Donde Ellos, in turn, focus on Profamilia’s community-based distribution system based not in peripheral urban neighborhoods but in the countryside. These films (as well as Socio Dramas) were shot in Risaralda, a coffee-growing region located in the Colombian Andes. This area had been selected in the early 1970s by Profamilia for a community-based pilot educational program in family planning that was funded mainly by the Population Council.

The project aimed to increase contraceptive use among rural people based on the idea that “larger numbers of rural residents would adopt family planning methods if information and services were more readily available.”^[20]

With the project undertaken in Risaralda, Profamilia expected “to acquire the experience and develop the techniques needed for integrating family planning education, into on-going community education programs elsewhere in Colombia and Latin America.”^[21] This was probably a realistic goal at the time, as Fernando Tamayo, Profamilia’s founder, was then the president of the IPPF and could thus promote the expansion of the system if successful. Because Profamilia was anticipating expanding this system, it is likely that one of the benefits this organization gained from collaborating with Airlie Foundation was collecting high-quality audiovisual evidence of its work to later impress potential donors.^[22]

Considering that The City and Vamos Donde Ellos shared the same producer, screenwriter, and year of release, it is striking how differently these two films speak of the people portrayed in them. With the information available at this point, we can only guess that they probably had different intended audiences. If the narrator of The City talks with much disdain about the “persistence of the countryside ways,” the “surplus of barrio children,” and the “nightmare growth of the new city,” Vamos Donde Ellos instead expresses sympathy for the capacity of rural Colombian women to overcome adverse circumstances and do much good for themselves and their communities.

The system of community-based birth control distribution, as portrayed in Vamos Donde Ellos, indeed relied heavily on the dedication and hard work of promoters and distributors, the great majority of whom were women. Typically, Profamilia promoters visited one of the many veredas^[23] under their responsibility, engaged in conversations with various community members, and sought their assistance in identifying individuals who were widely respected and admired to serve as birth control distributors. In Vamos Donde Ellos, a woman named Rosita is selected to illustrate the qualities sought in distributors and the significance of their role. We learn that Rosita is a very community-oriented person and serves as president of a local women’s club. When her living conditions are presented, the film does not hide her limited economic resources. Yet, shots of her and her house are respectful, and the voice-over narration puts emphasis on her labor and capacity to cover her family’s needs, not on her lack of resources. The voice-over later explains that the importance and value that all the Rositas have for non-clinical contraceptive distribution programs is the trust they inspire in other women.

Vamos Donde Ellos thus highlights the role of volunteer distributors and the promoters who supervised and supplied the former. The film ends with a memorable message:

Societies can be changed in many ways. Occasionally they can be transformed by the action of tenacious peasant women who do not pay attention to the difficulties of the roads or the long distances […] and sow the idea that other rural women can also take responsibility for their own reproductive health.^[24]

These words are first accompanied by an image of a Profamilia promoter walking away from the camera. As she disappears on the to the right-hand corner of the frame, the image changes to a panned view of the green mountains, a reminder of the vast territory covered by the program.

The recognition granted to promoters and distributors in this film is quite significant. These women were not only either underpaid or performed volunteer work at the time, but since then they have been erased from the historiography on family planning in Colombia. As a result, the immense impact of their work has been lost to history.^[25]

Personal Motivations and Unlikely Alliances

In Arlie films, we do not hear directly from promoters and distributors. Yet thanks to other sources, we know that these women’s motivations did not always align with the expectations of Profamilia and the Airlie Foundation. For example, The City presents female leaders in “barrios” who provided supplies and guidance to their peers as selfless individuals willing to perform unpaid labor for the wellbeing of their communities. Similarly, Bandera Verde says that volunteer distributors “put their stores at the disposal of the Profamilia program […] because they are motivated and selfless people who know that they are contributing to […] the progress and well-being of the Colombian peasant family.” In their published testimonies, however, female distributors reveal that they were also driven by economic incentives, such as increasing traffic to their businesses. As former distributor Elvia González put it, “I did not make much money from selling pills but having them [in the store] was good for me. Along with pills, people would buy a pair of socks, a lipstick, or some face powder.”^[26]

In the case of female promoters, evidence suggest that at least some were motivated by their interest in advancing women’s living conditions and promoting gender equality. Luisa de Murillo, a former Profamilia promoter in urban areas, recalls being introduced to the idea of a “population problem” by the organization. But she confesses that she was actually motivated by her commitment to help women make decisions about their own lives. That was what encouraged her to visit multiple neighborhoods and small towns, negotiating with a range of people, from Catholic priests to communist cell leaders.^[27] Similarly, former promoter Concepción Quesada recalled that, when visiting women in their houses, she did talk about the economic improvement of families and the wellbeing of kids to encourage them to use birth control. However, in contrast to promoters in Airlie films, she also spoke about justice and gender equity, because women’s submission was what outraged her the most.^[28]

Finally, the Arlie films also illuminate the unexpected alliance that emerged in Colombia between birth control advocates and some local Catholic priests, despite the Church’s doctrinal opposition to contraception. It has traditionally been considered a paradox that Colombia, a predominantly Catholic country, became one of the world’s most successful cases of family planning. Films like La Bandera Verde show that this was partially possible because Catholic leaders’ position on the topic was not monolithic. Although the 1968 release of the Papal Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae condemning contraception undoubtedly had repercussions in Colombia, some priests continued supporting birth control in the communities they served.^[29] Mora Mora is one such priest depicted in La Bandera Verde. In the film he acknowledges that Catholic doctrine does not accept the term “birth control,” but he says that it does supports the supposedly different idea of family planning. According to him, couples committed to one another through conjugal love should have the number of children they can responsibly educate and love. By portraying Priest Mora Mora’s perspective, this Arlie film likely sought to persuade Catholics that, pace the Vatican, birth control was not a sin.

Conclusion

The Airlie films on family planning projects in Colombia during the 1970s shed important light on the complexities and contradictions marking international population control efforts in the Global South. In particular, they offer a nuanced understanding of the diverse perspectives and motivations of local individuals and organizations collaborating with U.S. actors. Some influential figures like ex-president Carlos Lleras Restrepo viewed family planning policies as a vehicle for state modernization and economic advancement. But the films’ depiction of doctors from Universidad del Valle show that other prominent actors prioritized community well-being and embraced a broader notion of health. Furthermore, these films offer a glimpse into the poorly documented role of local promoters and distributors who participated in family planning programs to gain personal growth and contribute to the well-being of their communities.

Notes

[1] Manon Parry, Broadcasting Birth Control: Mass Media and Family Planning, Critical Issues in Health and Medicine (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2013), 94.

[2] Parry, 98.

[3] Marcos Cueto and Steven Paul Palmer, Medicine and Public Health in Latin America: A History, New Approaches to the Americas (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 157. and 193.

[4] Anthony R. Measham and Guillermo Lopez-Escobar, «Against the Odds: Colombia’s Role in the Family Planning Revolution», in The Global Family Planning Revolution: Three Decades of Population Policies and Programs, ed. Warren C. Robinson y John A. Ross (Washington, D.C: World Bank, 2007), 123.

[5] Mario Hernández Álvarez and Diana Obregón Torres, La Organización Panamericana de la Salud y el Estado Colombiano. Cien Años de Historia. 1902-2002. (Bogotá: Organización Panamericana de la Salud, 2002), 163-64.

[6] Banco Mundial, “Colombia,” Data Commons (webpage), accessed September 18, 2021, https://datacommons.org/place/country/COL?utm_medium=explore&mprop=fertilityRate&popt=Person&cpv=gender%2CFemale&hl=es.

[7] Lleras Restrepo’s interview in And Tomorrow, What? aligns with the argument advance in the first half of the film The City: Implications for the Future (1977), in which the voice-over argues that peasants who are migrating to the city are not skilled enough to perform required jobs, and they are instead producing a “surplus of children,” which is the reason why “one of the many changes which must take place in the shift from country to city is the shift away from the large farm family.”

[8] Measham and Lopez-Escobar, “Against the Odds: Colombia’s Role in the Family Planning Revolution,” 123.

[9] Daniel Pécaut, Crónica de Dos Décadas de Política Colombiana 1968-1988 (México D.F.: Siglo XXI, 1989), 82.

[10] William D. Drake and Luis F. Fajardo. “The Promotora Program in Candelaria: A Colombian Attempt to Control Malnutrition and Disease, 1968-74”, June 25, 1976. P. 33. Rockefeller Foundation Records, General Correspondence, RG 2, 1958-1970 (FA400), Reel 36, 311 – Candelaria Health Center (papers). Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, United States.

[11] In contrast to others’ perspectives, including that of the Rockefeller Foundation itself, PHC advocates believed that the health of a population was less related to medical advances than to living standards and nutrition. See Cueto and Palmer, Medicine and Public Health in Latin America, 204–14.

[12] “The Candelaria Experience,” May 1978. P. 45. Rockefeller Foundation Records, General Correspondence, RG 2, 1958-1970 (FA400), Reel 36, 311 – Candelaria Health Center (papers). Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, United States.

[13] Parry, Broadcasting Birth Control, 76–110.

[14] Ana María Fernández Espinosa, “Sociodrama: Características y Aplicaciones,” Master en Teatro Aplicado – Universidad de Valencia, 2018, 1–8.

[15] For a detailed description of sociodrama as a method, see: Patricia Sternberg and Antonina Garcia, Sociodrama: Who’s in Your Shoes?, 2nd ed (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2000).

[16] Parry, Broadcasting Birth Control, 79.

[17] Silvia Galvis, Se Hace Camino al Andar. La Otra Historia de La Planificación Familiar (Bogotá: Gráficas Ambar, 1995), 127–33. and 145.

[18] “´A´ Status Recommendation for grant of $52,000 to the Colombian Association of Family Welfare (PROFAMILIA) for a pilot community-based education program in family planning,” March 16, 1972, p 5. Population Council Records, Accession 2, Series 2. CN FA432, RG 2, box 54, folder “Colombia: Correspondence, Reports, Studies, 1972-1973.” Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, United States.

[19] Parry, Broadcasting Birth Control, 105.

[20] “´A´ Status Recommendation for grant of $52,000 to the Colombian Association of Family Welfare (PROFAMILIA) for a pilot community-based education program in family planning,” March 16, 1972, p 2. Population Council Records, Accession 2, Series 2. CN FA432, RG 2, box 54, folder “Colombia: Correspondence, Reports, Studies, 1972-1973.” Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, United States.

[21] Ibid.

[22] When requesting funds for this project from the Population Council in 1972, Profamilia had stated that “the [Colombian] National Coffee-growers Federation is interested in the possibility of financing a nation-wide campaign of the type being tested here. Before they agree to support such an effort, however, they have asked that PROFAMILIA demonstrates the efficacy of such undertaking through a pilot program” (Ibid.)

[23] Veredas are small rural communities composed of 50 to 1200 people (approximately 50 families). There is not a stablished center, such as a main square or a market. In Veredas, families are dispersed over a broad area.

[24] “Las sociedades pueden cambiarse de muchas maneras, ocasionalmente pueden transformarse por la acción de tenaces mujeres campesinas que no reparan en las dificultades de los caminos ni en las largas distancias para llegar a donde sea necesario y sembrar la idea de que también otras mujeres del campo pueden tomar también en sus manos la responsabilidad de su propia salud reproductiva.”

[25] Two exceptions to the general obscuring of promoters work are Galvis, Se Hace Camino al Andar. La Otra Historia de La Planificación Familiar; and Johana María Agudelo Echeverri, “‘Éramos Unas Profes Raras’: Promotoras Rurales de La Anticoncepción Moderna En Antioquia,1975-1979”,” in Género, Prácticas y Representaciones En La Historiade Colombia, Siglos XIX y XX, by Ruth López (Medellin: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2013), 80–105. For more on local women’s erasure in the history of family planning, see: Paula Orozco-Espinel, “The Women on the Ground: Rural Health Promotors and Family Planning in Colombia (1969-1974)” (MA Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2022).

[26] Galvis, Se Hace Camino al Andar. La Otra Historia de La Planificación Familiar, 27.

[27] Luisa de Murillo, interviewed by Paula Orozco-Espinel., In-person, Bogotá, September 11, 2023.

[28] Galvis, Se Hace Camino al Andar. La Otra Historia de La Planificación Familiar, 48.

[29] For more information on Colombian Church stand on Family Planning and some of the communications projects specific catholic sectors advanced to promote birth control, see: Juan Alejandro Lopera López, “Paternidad o Procreación Responsable: Iglesia Católica, Acción Cultural Popular y Control de La Natalidad En Colombia (1964-1978),” Historia y Sociedad, no. 31 (2016): 235–67.