Water conflicts, violations and forms of self-protection: A multi-case study in Eastern Antioquia, Colombia, phase 2
Mural in the municipality of San Luis (Photo: Project team)
Water is currently a structuring axis of hydro-social relations and the conflicts that arise over its control and use in Colombia. The first phase of this project explored conflicts related to concession processes for hydroelectric projects in the rivers La Paloma, Santo Domingo and Dormilón in municipalities of Argelia, San Francisco and San Luis in the Oriente Antioqueño region. Preliminary results showed associated problems such as mass tourism, real-estate pressure and mining, which add further threats emanating from the privatisation of water and which also depend on energy production. These new forms of river use and privatisation have been introduced in an insidious manner, without recognition of the damage they are causing to the communities and social actors involved. These forms of intervention, promoted by public policy, project an image of an “empty space” or one that is adaptable to new uses in the regions concerned, which intensifies the degree of vulnerability of the populations who live their, as it does not recognise their pre-existence and their territorial dynamics. More information about Phase I of the research project is available here.
In the second phase of this project, we intend to delve deeper into these combined threats, to explore the scope of self-protection in the face of a conflict of growing water privatisation. We also aim to explore the contributions of these self-protection strategies to reflections on just transitions, in a context of debate over energy alternatives and the revision of polluting, undemocratic development models.
Dormilón river, San Luis (Photo: Project team)
RESEARCH TEAM
Beatriz Arias López, Universidad de Antioquia (principal investigator)
Hernán Dario Pineda Gómez, Universidad de Antioquia
Mateo Valderrama, Asociación Campesina de Antioquia – ACA
Juan David Arias, Grupo De investigación Territorio, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana
Jessica Restrepo, Grupo De investigación Territorio Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana
Denisse Roca, solidary consultant, CLACSO group on Political Ecologies of the South Abya-Yala
PROJECT OUTPUTS
Photo Embroidery Exhibition
The exhibition “Let the Rivers Be for Life! Community Self-Protection and Care” delves into the strategies of self-protection employed by communities in response to conflicts impacting the Paloma, Dormilón, and Santo Domingo rivers, located in the municipalities of Argelia, San Luis, and San Francisco, respectively. Information about the exhibition is available in English and Spanish here.
Art that Protects, phase 2: Networks as strategies for self-protection in the context of urban conflict in the city of Medellín, 2023
The first phase of the Art that Protects project documented the place of artistic and cultural initiatives developed by community-based organisations in the city of Medellín in the landscape of nonviolent self-protection. Issues such as legitimacy, permanence in the territory, and the commitment to socially engaged art appeared as key elements to understanding the self-protective character of these initiatives. In our investigation we found, firstly, that violations are not produced on the basis of isolated categories such as gender or age, but by a combination and superimposition of different social factors; and secondly, that the network of relationships and alliances between artistic and cultural organisations is a key strategy that allows them to generate sustainability and “armour” in the face of violations. More information about Phase I of the project is available here.
These findings were further explored in the second phase of the project, in order to identify the type of networks that have been formed, how their exchanges take place, and what collaborative strategies they use, and to understand the effects on the self-protection of communities in the context of the urban conflict in Medellín from an intersectional reading of social vulnerabilities.
Community Garden of Harlequin and the Jugglers (Photo: Courtesy of Arlequin y los Juglares)
RESEARCH TEAM
Beatriz Arias López, Universidad de Antioquia (principal investigator)
Adriana Diosa, Cultural corporation for development Arlequín y los Juglares
Freddy Giovanni Pérez Cárdenas, Cultural corporation for development Arlequín y los Juglares
Sandra Maryori Benitez Diosa Cultural corporation for development Arlequín y los Juglares
“Art that Protects” project team with members of the group Barrio Comparsa, 2022 (Photo: project team)
Series of Short Films: Art That Protects and Intersectionality
Through a series of five videos, we analyzed how beliefs, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender can simultaneously act as sources of vulnerability and self-protection, using an intersectional perspective.
In collaboration with Luis Fernando García “El Gordo,” founder and director of Barrio Comparsa, we explored how artistic organizations create images and works rooted in their ethical principles and values, reflecting their members’ stories and responding to the demands of their context.
Juan Marcos Díaz, director of Robledo Venga Parchemos, shared insights on how violence in urban conflict contexts affects children and youth differently. For this reason, artistic and cultural organizations offer alternatives that help resist the pressures of armed groups.
The founders of Biocomunidad, Nelson Berdugo and Giovany Caro, highlighted how economic precariousness and informal labor impact many cultural and artistic organizations in the city. Also, they emphasized that the social value of artists transcends their financial circumstances.
Ludis Soto Cruz and Óscar Manuel Zuluaga, members of Arlequín y los Juglares, discussed how Afro-descendant and Indigenous populations on the outskirts of Medellín face inequalities due to their ethnic identities. However, these communities express their knowledge and perspectives through art, strengthening their dignity.
Diana Torres, Iris Andrea Álvarez, and Ana Milena Nanclares, members of Renovación, demonstrated how everyday power dynamics perpetuate gender stereotypes. Cultural organizations foster spaces for resistance and empowerment, especially for women, through community and artistic participation.
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 1: Category Cosmovision – Barrio Comparsa Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 1: Categoría Cosmovisión – Barrio Comparsa
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 2: Category Age – Robledo Venga Parchemos Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 2: Categoria Edad – Robledo Venga Parchemos
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 3: Category Socioeconomic Status – Biocomunidad Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 3: Categoria Estatus Socioeconómico – Biocomunidad
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 4: Category Ethnicity – Arlequín y los Juglares Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 4: Categoría Étnica – Arlequín y los juglares
Art That Protects and Intersectionality 5: Category Sex and Gender – Renovación Art Corporation Arte que protege e interseccionalidad 5: Categoría Sexo y Género – Renovación Corporación Artística
Series of Podcasts
Through three podcast episodes, we examined how art has served as a self-protection strategy over the last forty years and as a tool for networking. These networks have enabled grassroots artistic and cultural organizations to enter communities and engage with their residents.
Luis Fernando García recounted the tools used by Barrio Comparsa to reclaim public spaces for the residents of Manrique in the 1980s.
Members of Ziruma shared how their work has made them stronger than the conflict, using theater to narrate the life and memory of the neighborhood and its people.
The members of Sueños de Papel explained how support networks allowed them to recognize and build upon the work of those who had previously established the neighborhood, connecting with community leaders.
Podcast, Chapter 1: Let’s Change the Toys, Let’s Change the Game Podcast, Capitulo 1: Cambiemos los juguetes, cambiemos la vuelta
Podcast, Chapter 2: Stronger than War Podcast, Capitulo 2: Más fuertes que la Guerra
Podcast, Chapter 3: Connections that Support Podcast, Capitulo 3: Conexiones que sostienen
TIMELINE OF ARTISTIC AND CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS
Time line of artistic and cultural organisation in Medellín, Colombia (source: results of Art that Protects, phase 1)
‘Ritualising’ protection in conflict: A collaborative visual ethnography of the cultural and spiritual protection practices of the Nasa people in Colombia
Indigenous peoples in Colombia are caught in the midst of an armed conflict that has lasted for more than fifty years. Despite an elaborate protection architecture, the state has so far been unable to effectively protect them. Hence, in order to survive, indigenous communities have had to devise their own self-protection strategies. Not only do these strategies encompass the physical and psychosocial dimension of security, but they also draw on ancestral spiritual and cultural practices that both strengthen the indigenous communities’ physical protection and reaffirm their self-determination. However, these practices are often misunderstood by the state structures, which fail to implement strategies to support them.
This project sought to understand how ancestral spiritual and cultural practices protect indigenous communities in the midst of armed conflict and what coordination mechanisms could be put in place to ensure that these practices are effectively supported by the state. The project sought to generate a conceptual and visual representation of these practices through a collaborative visual ethnographic study of the Nasa people of the Resguardo Indígena de Huellas Caloto, an indigenous community situated in the North of the Cauca Department in one of the areas worst affected by the armed conflict.
Research team
Piergiuseppe Parisi, Centre for Applied Human Rights at York Law School, University of York, UK (principal investigator)
Ana Deida Secue Rivera, Colombia (co-investigator)
Resguardo Indígenas de Huellas Caloto, Colombia (project partner)
Research findings
The key research findings can be summarised in the following points:
The Nasa indigenous people understand protection holistically. Spirituality and ancestral cultural practices are key to understanding protection because they relate to their cosmovision and stem from a culturally specific understanding of risk and harm.
The performance of protection rituals according to the spirituality and cultural practices of the Nasa people reaffirms and reinforces their self-determination and contributes to their survival (pervivencia) as a people.
The exercise of protection rituals represents a form of psycho-social and emotional self-care in the midst of the Colombian armed conflict.
Spirituality – and specifically the performance of rituals – signals belonging to and generates acceptance by the Nasa community. It promotes cohesion within the community. State protection officers who refuse to participate in rituals generate mistrust within the community and around the beneficiaries of state protection schemes.
The recruitment base of armed groups or criminal gangs operating locally include indigenous (Nasa) peoples. Spiritual leaders – such as traditional medics and elders – command respect within the Nasa community but also among indigenous recruits of the armed groups. This partially explains both why key Nasa figures are targeted by armed groups and the negotiating power of Nasa traditional authorities.
The state protection architecture is underpinned by an elaborate regulatory framework, which if applied comprehensively would accommodate ancestral forms of protection. However, in practice, the design and implementation of protection schemes – even those that are meant to strengthen indigenous forms of unarmed protection – fail to meaningfully include the Nasa people.
In order to better support self-protection practices rooted in the Nasa spirituality and culture and to provide culturally adequate protection schemes, Colombian authorities should ensure the active participation of Nasa communities in the design and delivery of protection.
By unpacking the notions of risk and harm from an indigenous Nasa perspective, the research has conceptualised an understanding of protection (and, more broadly, security) that complements that of physical protection offered by UCP (Oldenhuis, Furnari, Carriere, Wagstrom, Frisch, and Duncan 2021: 29-31). In particular, the research focuses on the notions of cultural and spiritual risk and harm, and it regards the exercise of protection practices rooted in culture and spirituality as necessary to holistically protect indigenous Nasa communities in the midst of the Colombian armed conflict.
The research centres the voices of the Nasa people, thus emphasising the protection needs of the communities. It offers avenues to strengthen local self-protection infrastructures by, on the one hand, formulating actionable recommendations that state authorities should consider in the design and delivery of protection schemes (Parisi and Cooper, forthcoming) and, on the other hand, facilitating the reappropriation and strengthening of certain neglected spiritual and cultural practices by the community themselves (through five tulpas de pensamiento convened by the indigenous community of the Resguardo de Huellas Caloto, the project partner).
The project has produced a short film, ‘Survive among violence. Stories of the Nasa people in Colombia’. The film was shown as part of the WOW Film Festival and the Festival Internacional de Cinema Ambiental de Garopaba, Brazil – Selection 2024.
The Saakhelu is a ritual that celebrates fertility, fecundity, and prosperity. (Source: https://www.ritualisingprotection.org/blog)
{ Art Allies project (Image credit: Manuela Lara) }
Strategies for Safety and Solidarity: Understanding protection through creativity in South Sudan and Colombia
Artists who create political and socially engaged work are increasingly at risk. In contexts of protracted socio-political conflicts or post-peace agreements, discussions of safety and protection for social and cultural leaders (where artists and allied activists are situated), are often reduced to mitigating risk to harm and physical violence. Less is known about how artists, allies or their organizations experience those harms and what protection infrastructures they build up to continue collective action. This project identified how artists and allied activists understand protection and vulnerability based on lived experiences.
This interdisciplinary research connected South Sudan and Colombia. It compared findings from research conducted in South Sudan (2020-2022) with new research in Colombia (2023) to investigate two key questions:
First, how do artists seek safety in times of conflict and unstable peace?
Second, how can creative methods be used to investigate vulnerability and map out networks of safety, going beyond the need for artist protection and into collective solidarity within activist communities?
THE RESEARCH TEAM
Principal Investigator: Kara Blackmore
Dr Kara Blackmore is a researcher, curator, and policy fellow at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA). She will oversee the overall project and support Co-Investigators in their country-specific workstreams. She will use her experience in creative methodologies and curation to lead Workstream 3, culminating in the exhibition in Bogotá. She will also lead on the cross-country mixed-methods paper. As Principal Investigator, Blackmore will take responsibility for the overall delivery of the project.
She has worked on over 20 grant funded projects and is adept at working with professional support staff and overseeing cross-country financial reporting. Within the FLIA, she has experience in managing workstreams on six different UKRI, DFID and Bloomsbury Set projects namely the FCDO-AHRC funded Safety of Strangers and the GCRF funded Politics of Return research projects.
Dr José Fernando Serrano-Amaya leads Workstream 1 in Colombia. He uses his expertise in conflict studies, peacebuilding, and activism in Colombia to conduct case study research. His most recent research on the politics and social pedagogies of reconciliation in post conflict settings documented the richness of the practices to transform conflicts, among which arts are very significant.
Serrano-Amaya has experience in Africa and Latin American comparative research, previously researching on issues of gender-based violence and homophobic violence between South Africa and Colombia.
Co-Investigator: Rebecca Lorins
Dr Rebecca Lorins leads Workstream 2 in South Sudan, conducting the Story Circle research. Her background in media, communication and performance arts are essential to implementing the Story Circle methodology with Likikiri Collective.
Lorins has extensive experience working on research projects, recently implementing the Story Circle Method as part of research on three collaborations with University of Portsmouth: the British Academy funded Art Heritage and Resilience, and two AHRC funded projects: Youth Voices and Rethinking Resilience in South Sudan through an Arts-based Curriculum.
Manuela Lara has been commissioned to create portraits of artists and social leaders whose experiences of insecurity and efforts for safety help to visualize the research. She will work with Dr Kara Blackmore develop the commission. This work builds off her existing Vivas project that centres on women who have survived the civil war in Colombia. Many of these women are artists themselves and are active social leaders working to keep their communities safe.
Partner: Likikiri Collective / Elfatih Atem
Likikiri Collective is a multimedia arts and education organization located in Juba, South Sudan. Likikiri will support the research through hosting the Story Circles. They will contribute to the research by providing a collective as case study.
Elfatih Atem will lead this in his capacity as the founding Executive Director. He has worked in a leadership capacity for many national Sudanese and South Sudanese cultural projects, as well as a consultant in culture, heritage and the arts for international NGOs and the UN. Likikiri brings an intercultural and interdisciplinary approach to this project, building connections across various sectors, including education, culture, development, and peacebuilding.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
The research findings are connected to 3 areas:
We have come to understand some of the vulnerabilities in relation to how artists stay safe. We found that for artists working within the creative, cultural and educational sectors there is a real economic constraint to safety since it is costly to pay for cyber-protection, mobility and costs to legal fees for defending their rights to freedom of expression. Working with collectives illustrated that there is a need to be in social proximity to others as a way of ensuring a legitimate protection infrastructure, often already built into existing collective formats, such as unions of weavers/sewers, performers, theatre makers. Here we push the conceptualisation of ‘self-protection’ into a more indexical frame and argue that social dynamics of violence are always linked therefore making the self-as-individual an impossible equation.
Protection infrastructure as interlinked between (1) fortification (2) creative process within this framework we conceive of the notion that curation is a mode of protection, meaning that people in creative spaces collect certain materials and narratives to self-style their presence as a way of staying safe. These processes of selection, contextual evaluation, and public interface – when done in collective formats – creates a kind of fortress to protect the physical and mental wellbeing of the artist. Such a finding is important considering in both Colombia and South Sudan nearly all our collaborating partners and research participants did not see safety as an absence of violence, rather it is a way to withstand the ongoing violence that has been persistent in these contexts.
The value of creative methodologies. Using arts-based research methodologies to show how issues of safety and vulnerability can be investigated within and outside of artist and allied activist communities, using methods such as art commissions, and curation helped to further protection aims amidst violent conflict because it offered both direct confrontation with the issues and an alternative approach to dealing with issues of violence. One thing that we found from this research is related to the long-term and cyclical forms of bodily violence that are connected to historical legacies of epistemic violence. Such forms can be traced through symbolic and material lineages that goes beyond narrative-based oral histories. Conversely, we also found (which is not unique to this project) the affirming potential of spontaneous connection that can lead to healing and reconciliation to avert future violent events.
This week, we have launched two new videos giving overviews of research projects. The videos from the Strengthening Local Capacities for UCP (Rural Women’s Peace Link, Kenya), and Community strategies for Unarmed Civilian Protection in South-West Colombia: local experiences and lessons learned projects are now available on our YouTube Channel. Please feel free to watch these videos, and leave any feedback, reflections, or questions for the PI’s on this Mural page.
Call for Conference Papers – EISA PEC16, Potsdam, 5-9 September 2023
Creating Safer Space network PI Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and project PI Sukanya Podder will be chairing a section on ‘Civilian agency in war and violent conflict: Exploring the power of self-protection’ at the 16th Pan-European Conference (PEC) of the European International Studies Association (EISA). The conference will take place in Potsdam, Germany from 5-9 September 2023. The deadline for submitting a paper or roundtable abstract to the section is 15 March 2023. See the EISA PEC 2023 website for more information: http://pec2023.eisa-net.org/section-list/. We look forward to receiving submissions from the Creating Safer Space community.
Veronica Kerich
Veronica is a seasoned Human Resource and Knowledge Management Specialist, with more than 13 years’ experience. She is also Executive Manager with over 7 years of executive office support and program Coordination. Currently she works as People and Culture (HR) Administrator at the Strathmore University Business School.
Rachel Rea Luxton
Creative Events Manager
Rachel Rea Luxton is a curator and artist based in Aberystwyth, Wales. She is the Creative Events Manager for the Creating Safer Space network and is excited about raising awareness of the practice and opportunities of UCP through the Arts.
Beginning of fieldwork in the South Hebron Hills
Marwan Darweish, Mahmoud Soliman and Andrew Rigby spent ten days doing field research in the South Hebron Hills, in the south of the occupied West Bank, during October-November 2022.
A few weeks prior to our visit one of our co-participants in our research project, a community leader in the village of Al Tuwani, suffered serious injury at the hands of thugs from a neighbouring illegal settlement, who attacked him with staves and metal bars, breaking both his hands.
The settler-thugs acted with complete impunity – confident they would face no legal sanctions for their acts of violence. They are emboldened by the knowledge that the violence they perpetrate against Palestinians serves as a major informal tool of the Israeli state in its pursuance of its annexationist policies. In the words of a report by the Israeli human rights agency B’tselem, ‘settler violence is a form of government policy, aided and abetted by official state authorities with their active participation.’
In such an asymmetric struggle the local inhabitants have few resources of resistance beyond their own everyday courage, tenacity and stubborn steadfastness – sumud. To support them different Palestinian, Israeli and international agencies, organisations and groups have sought to offer various forms of accompaniment as agents of civilian protection, assisting the local Palestinian communities in their efforts to achieve a degree of ‘safe space’ within which to pursue their lives.
During our field work we interviewed local Palestinian community leaders and activists, in addition to members of international groups engaged in different forms of ‘accompaniment’. We are now engaged in the process of analysing the material we gathered from our interviews and observations. A number of interesting insights are beginning to emerge, which we shall pursue in subsequent fieldwork.
1) The limitations of traditional approaches to accompaniment and civilian protection when the local population face risks to their well-being around the clock, with night raids by settlers increasing in frequency.
2) The symbiotic relationship between local Palestinians and international accompaniers. The accompaniers are there to enhance the security of the Palestinians, but the Palestinian in turn ‘protect’ the internationals – advising them of potential threats, identifying escape routes in case of attack, indicating where they should stand in order to minimise the risk of injury during encounters with settlers.
3) One of the key ways in which internationals can enhance the capacities for self-protection of local Palestinians is by letting the locals know that they are not alone. This awareness has a significant impact on local morale.
Mahmoud Soliman and Marwan Darweish talking to Abu Nidal from South Hebron Hills (Masafer Yatta), October 2022.
Soldiers from one side and activists on the other side. Al Tuwani October 2022.
Invitation: Top Tips on How to Write a Grant Application (in French)
This month, Creating Safer Space is co-hosting a collaborative workshop with Nonviolent Peaceforce and Institut Catholique de Paris.
In this event, Dr Cécile Dubernet and Prof Rachel Julian will lead a French language session with top tips on how to write a grant application. There will be time for questions and discussions following a presentation.
