Embodied territories: practices of violence and care in Colombia

According to Global Witness, Colombia was the country accountable for more than half of the killings of environmental leaders and human rights defenders around the world in the last two years. Francia Elena Márquez Mina, the Afro Colombian environmental and human rights leader today vice-president for the leading political party Pacto Histórico, defines these systematic murders as a product of the política de muerte; a politics in which different forms of violence – political, economic, gendered, environmental, racial, and colonial – are articulated and entangled. This performed paper urges to not only think about neo-colonial violence, but to foreground acts of resistance, repair and healing. It explores these entanglements by giving voice to some of the women at the forefront of the struggle, to those imagining and embodying a post-violent society in which, to draw upon Françoise Vergès, violence is not naturalised, not celebrated and not the central theme of its narrative of power.

This short piece is to be performed in English and Spanish. Firstly, in Spanish, drawing upon language justice as a framework, to respect the choice of language of the protagonists of this paper which will speak, but also sing. Singing is here framed as a form of resistance, of refuge, of hope and of complaint; and it voices those everyday situations that affect people unevenly. To take time and care to include some singing voices is also a way to recognise alternative epistemes or acts that are not easily translatable into text and academic frameworks. It is also a way to recognise how voice is central to this piece, which is deliberately multi-vocal, in the same way as it is deliberately multi-lingual. Secondly in English, as the language that, ironically, first introduced me to feminism and decolonial thought, aiming to extend this call for care and call for action to the AHRA audience who will engage with it.