I was the first woman, and also the first person clearly identified as leftist, to sit at the Superior Council of a conservative public university. In November of 2004, a military patrol came looking for me at the law school. Fortunately, I was not in the University, but this got me really panicking. What is terrible is that you start taking your distance from the people you like in order to protect them, because if the paramilitaries associate them with your movement, they will likely also be threatened. The fact that I fought for public university education in Colombia, that I personally experienced the violence because of my political convictions and that I had the chance to know so many social movements explains that the defense of human rights continues being my life project to this day.