Instead, they flee the countryside only to arrive in burgeoning urban neighborhoods where they face rejection and discrimination. Mencoldes works with displaced families at several locations around the country. They don't know the city, and no one here knows them. The environment is strange and seems aggressive to them. Clothes in the city are different than in the countryside.
Work is different.
According to Neira, the adjustment for uprooted women is often more difficult. Many of the women first get jobs here as maids, but in the countryside there's no washing machine, no vacuum cleaner. Something that's as ordinary for us as using a blender can leave a woman newly arrived from the countryside in tears. Besides unfamiliarity with urban culture, the displaced are often stigmatized. Ironically, she'd been displaced by the guerrillas, but she says the captain never asked her who caused her displacement.