The team of the project “Community strategies for Unarmed Civilian Protection in South-West Colombia” has published two new articles cowritten between academics and local researchers on the project. The first one is:
Adrián Alzate Garcia, Juan Mario Diaz-Arévalo, Jesus Alfonso Flórez López, Osmel Alexis Hoyos Buitrón, Simon Rushton, María Isabel Quintero Marín and Claudia Vanessa Rebolledo Ulcué: ‘Collective defence of the territorio: Vernacular concepts and practices of security in Colombia’s Pacific South-West.’ Review of International Studies. Published online 2026: 1-20.
The article examines the ways in which three communities in South-West Colombia understand ‘security’ and the practices they adopt in pursuit of it. The authors show the centrality of territorio as the key referent object of security in the region, and a wide variety of collective efforts adopted by communities in pursuit of securing their territorios. Methodologically, they show how Participatory Action Research (PAR) can play a role in helping to build and sustain community-level collective security practices, bridging research and action. Conceptually, they show how understandings and practices of security in the region draw directly upon indigenous, mestizo and Afro-Colombian cultures, histories, and epistemologies – and in many respects do not conform to Western security registers often assumed to be universal.
The other new article by this research team is:
Natalia Campo, Juan Mario Díaz-Arévalo, Viviana Yussed Díaz Holguín, Claudia Vanessa Rebolledo Ulcué, Simon Rushton: ‘Conversas on the Territory: Participatory Video and Intergenerational Dialogue in Buenaventura and Caldono, Colombia.’ Journal of Dialogue Studies 14, 2026.
Afro-descendant and indigenous communities in the Pacific region of south-west Colombia have rich ancestral oral traditions that have long been central to the design and development of their collective life projects. However, these have been disrupted by both conflict and insecurity in the region and internal community dynamics, including feelings amongst young people that they are often unheard by an older generation of leaders, affecting intergenerational collaboration that has been central to communities’ efforts at self-protection. The article examines the potential of Participatory Video (PV) to be a catalyst for intergenerational dialogue in this complex context.