Colombian 'Strike of Crossed Legs' Ends as Officials Agree to Build Road

Martin Luther and Mohandas Ghandi achieved their goals of transformative social change by disavowing violence; women in the Colombian town of Barbacoas achieved their goals by boycotting sex.

For 38 days, 300 women refused to have sex with their husbands in an effort to get the government to pave a road connecting their town with the rest of the country. After some initial frustration, some of the men joined the effort with a hunger strike.

It worked. The acting governor of the province of Nariño and a representative from the Army agreed to allocate funding for the project and being paving the road no later than October, according to Colombia reports.

"Something very important for us is that the project was reported in the national budget and that the project includes construction of the whole way," said Diego Fernando Enriquez, a judge who promoted the protest.

The road was the sole one out of town, and residents said that it had deteriorated to the point that journeys to the nearest hospital can take 12 to 14 hours, a fatally long wait for some people.