From Asylum to a Career in Asylum Law

Under the threat of continued kidnappings, 13-year-old Catalina Blanco Buitrago's family fled Colombia, South America for a better life in the United States. The experience left an indelible imprint on her and helped frame her academic path at Duke University and subsequent career plans. Last spring, just before graduating from Duke with a degree in women's studies, Buitrago shared her story. Why did you leave Colombia?

We fled because my father was a politician who worked for the government and my parents were being blackmailed. They had been blackmailed for maybe fifteen years before we left. But there was a point, when my dad had been kidnapped for the third time, my mother decided it was too much.

My dad had been given up for dead, so my mom decided we were going to leave. The morning before we left, my mother found out that my father was actually alive they had found him and he was in a coma. She decided she wasn't going to put my sister and I at risk anymore, so she sent us to America with my Nana. My mom would come visit us weekly and then go back to see Dad. At some point both she and my dad came here.

How did leaving everything and everyone you knew affect you?

The move to the States was sudden. I wasn't allowed time to "take in" the move or process the changes to come. My mother and I packed two suitcases each and sluggishly walked onto an airplane. Those were my last steps on Colombian soil.

It took only a couple of weeks to realize that neither bodyguards, nor bulletproof windows, nor electric fences were common. I now realized that my "normal" life was not normal at all. I was not a spectator of the violence in Colombia, I was a victim.

Adjusting to life in Miami was almost impossible without knowing why I couldn't just be at home with my friends. I missed my room in Colombia. I missed the comfort of my surroundings. But most of all I missed my family.

What sort of response have you encountered in the States? Do people know anything about your country? Do they care?

It really is a mixed bag. There are people who spell Colombia with a "u" and assume that I'm from South Carolina. They don't even think of the country and when they do, they make an automatic association with drugs. Then there are those who, as part of the American military, have physically fought the war in Colombia.

Why did you end up choosing to major in women's studies?

I fell into women's studies. I took a class that seemed interesting and then another and then another and next thing I knew I was hooked.

My mother was always an activist for the rights of women and children. I think that as I learned more about my mother and her story, I felt a need to connect with what she had once felt was worth fighting for. Through my women's studies classes I understood why my mother had wanted to help the women and children who were victims of the guerrillas. I understood what this meant for her as a woman and as a human being.

But best of all, I understood what I had to do to feel complete: I had to follow in my mother's steps and help the women and children who are victims of forced displacement. My goal is to become a lawyer and help those who immigrate and are asylees make a smooth transition.

How did your experience as a child asylee lead to your independent study at Duke?

I can vouch for the harm that such displacement can cause on a kid. The answers to my questions always resulted in new, but still vague information. My mom's shame and fear that I would not understand kept her from telling me about my kidnapping as a newborn, her rape some of the more horrifying situations that the FARC (Colombia's revolutionary armed forces) had placed my family in.

In my thesis I used a comparative approach to explore how women and children are affected by political asylum. By comparing political asylum cases in the U.S. and Canada two cases in each country: one successful, one unsuccessful I showed how some of the plights of refugees are further exacerbated when: (1) the asylum seeker is a child, or (2) when the asylee is a woman who has been rendered defenseless by the violence in her country and cannot afford to return for fear of being physically mistreated, mentally abused, or worse, killed.

You have had an opportunity to study abroad at Duke. Where did you go and why?

I applied to do DukeEngage in Uganda. To my great delight, I was asked to work with a women's rights organization, helping women displaced by war. I was able to apply the theory and substance of women's studies to help promote and protect the rights of Ugandan women who were treated as second-class citizens.

For years the United States has protected people who needed a safeguard against their oppressors. Affirmative action protects people of color. Labor laws protect women and the disabled. Insurance legislation defends the rights of the elderly and the ill. I think that asylum is another way to protect those who are vulnerable.

Catalina Blanco Buitrago is currently a first-year student at Boston University School of Law and plans to pursue a career in asylum law. A version of this article first appeared in the Spring 2010 issue of the Duke Women's Studies newsletter.