"We Lived the River Through Our Bodies": Environmental Care, Intergenerational Relations, and Sustainable Peacebuilding in Colombia

Authors

Angela J. Lederach, Chapman UniversityFollow

Files

Description

"This chapter offers an ethnographic account3 of youth peacebuilding practices in Montes de María. I place Jose’s pressing question, 'who am I?' as a central starting point to examine the foundational role that identity work plays in youth processes of 'provoking' peace in Montes de María, Colombia. I center Jose’s critique of the harm enacted when analytic attention focuses solely on youth who have migrated to urban cities. Instead, I turn my attention to the lives of youth who, against all odds, have stayed. I argue that the struggle to reclaim a sense of self, place, and belonging is at the very heart of JOPPAZ’s daily work to build territorial peace – one that requires intergenerational solidarity. While much of the peace studies literature focuses on transformation, I draw on Indigenous theories of resurgence and multispecies relations to argue that in a context of dispossession and mass violence, social reproduction plays an equally vital role in campesino claims to land and futures (Alfred 2005; Corntassel 2012; Daigle 2018; Hatala et al. 2019; Ruiz Serna 2017; Todd 2017). JOPPAZ did not emerge as an isolated movement, but instead forms the youth wing of the wider campesino movement known as the Peaceful Movement of Reconciliation and Integration of the Alta Montaña (Peaceful Process). In becoming the relevo generacional, Jose – and the 600 young members of JOPPAZ – are engaged in a 'regenerative struggle' for territorial peace (Alfred 2005, 20). Through the daily work of building peace 'from and for the territory,' youth imagine and bring into being campesino futures of dignified life (vida digna)."

ISBN

9781526177872/

Publication Date

6-2024

Publisher

Manchester University Press

City

Manchester, UK

Disciplines

Community-Based Research | Latin American Studies | Peace and Conflict Studies | Place and Environment | Regional Sociology | Rural Sociology | Social Psychology and Interaction

Comments

In Helen Berents, Catherine Bolten and Siobhan McEvoy-Levy (Eds.), Youth and Sustainable Peacebuilding.

Recommended Citation

Lederach, A. J. (2024). "We lived the river through our bodies": Environmental care, intergenerational relations, and sustainable peacebuilding in Colombia. In: H. Berents, C. Bolten, & S. McEvoy-Levy (eds.), Youth and sustainable peacebuilding (pp. 176-188). Manchester University Press.

Copyright

Manchester University Press