Costeña Colombianas’ Power of Protest: Young Women’s Resistance and Agency in Big and Small Ways

• In Event: The echoes of protest and decolonization in LAC's education system

Proposal

Relevance/Purpose
The power of protest addressed in the 2024 CIES conference is the lived experience of costeña (coastal) Colombiana young women through their agency and resistance to oppression. Although their voices may not be heard on a national or international scale, they work together to move against oppressive structures and limits imposed on them through social and political structures.

In authoritative circumstances, curiosity is silenced (Freire, 1998); discrimination, poverty, and injustice abound. The goal of improving education for a more equitable world, begins with examining power dynamics which underlie injustice. My research is situated in the Atlantic coastal region of Colombia within recent waves of social protests, 2022 Colombian presidential election, drastic increase in Guerrilla violence, and escalating economic, political, and health-care crises. This paper addresses conference sub-theme 3: Theories, Methodologies and Protest. An empirical qualitative research, this study examines the relationship between power and protest experienced by costeña Colombian young women to better understand their resistance, struggle, defiance, and compliance.

Context/Conceptual framework
Employing de/colonizing feminist epistemologies, this paper addresses and celebrates the grassroots work of women and young girls in estratos 1 (lowest socio-economic status) (Anzaldúa, 1987). I engage in the dialogue exploring the regions educational, socio and geopolitical experiences and challenges of young women collaborators in this work.


I argue that dominant eurocentric ways of knowing and being take a backseat and examine a pluriverse of onto-epistemologies that center marginalized ways of knowing. Arturo Escobar (Escobar, 2020a), a Colombian scholar, argues a Pluriversality, an existence of multiple realities and ways of knowing. “Pluriversality is not cultural relativism, but entanglement of several cosmologies connected today in a power differential.” (Mignolo, 2018, p. x).


Coloniality robbed groups of people of their land and stole others from their lands to enslave them. The power differential allowed for colonial epistemologies alongside an epistemicide of non-Western thought or ways of knowing. “That power differential is the logic of coloniality covered up by the rhetorical narrative of modernity” (Mignolo, 2018, p. x). Colombia colonized into Western Eurocentric epistemologies, these became the foundation of the current social and political systems. Afro-Colombiana and Indigenous ways of knowing were, and continue to be, severely marginalized and discriminated against. Pluriversality is employed as a framework for analysis in this study that uncovers how residual colonial power struggles are at the core of young women’s socio-economic, education, and mental health crises. Pluriversality provides a theoretical framework as a resource to understand the power of protest for young Mestiza, Indigena, and Afro-Colombiana women as they struggle and resist oppressive structures.

Inquiry/Research design
A qualitative critical ethnography (Kapoor, 2017), this study combines the heart with the mind, senti-pensar (feeling-thinking) to address the participant’s embodied experiences (Escobar, 2020b). An interdisciplinary, collaborative, community-based study, the economic barriers and educational needs of young women in a local context are examined with an analysis of the reality of systemic oppression within a colonial legacy. Over the course of three extended stays in Colombia, I collected data in Corozal, Sucre (rural multi-ethnic/indigenous) Cartagena, and Bolivar (urban multi-ethnic/Afro-Colombiana) in Colombia. Informing the development of the study’s research questions, I made connections, built relationships, and conducted conversations with young women assigned the lowest strata/estratos. As an outsider, I asked participants what they desired and how I could contribute. Author positionality is discussed in the full paper.

Three data collection trips occurred in 2021-22, including interviews, focus groups, and observations conducted, recorded, and transcribed in Spanish with costeña Colombian young women. Human Participant (IRB) Review was granted and research participants provided consent. Thematic coding and analysis was completed in Spanish before translated into English.

Findings
The power of young women’s protest in their local costeño communities reveals grassroots efforts of women struggling and resisting together against oppressive systems. Findings from this study reveal systemic inequalities, access to food and water, mental health, sexual sigmas, traumas, racism, classism, access to quality education and challenging poverty conditions and domestic work that impede young women’s perception about their future and opportunities for education. Social constructs of gender reproduce inequities of unbalanced power dynamics between men and women that extend to education access and economic opportunities (Stromquist, 2001). Additional factors for young women in lower estratos that affect their perception of personal agency include being among the first in their family to complete high school (Bachiller), lack of access to exam preparation (Las pruebas Saber), and limited time to prepare for exams. Social efficiency, educating young people for Colombian economic success, is additionally dampened by rampant nepotism that prevents qualified individuals from obtaining secure employment.

Young women’s power of protest is demonstrated in banding together to create childcare resources, share funds to buy food, and take turns studying to support efforts to complete schooling. Resistance in the form of protesting in the streets to local political and social instability and subsequent lack of community resources such their water being cut off for weeks on end. Acknowledging political and social implications of colonial efforts of epistemicide in Colombia sheds light on the resistance and struggles young women in this study face to experience greater agency in their lives. The full paper describes these and additional findings of their resistance and struggle.

Contribution
The significance of this research is situated within the pursuit of a more just world; to identify and understand inequalities, interrogate hegemonic colonial oppression, and explore sustainable solutions to improve the lives of the vulnerable population of young women in this study by exploring their agency and resistance to oppression. A collaborative project with several universities in Colombia, the long-range value and goal is the development of local grassroot interventions.

This study adds to the literature addressing culturally-relevant sustainable development and research regarding opportunities for cooperation between government and non-governmental organizations and national and international policymakers to explore solutions for these most vulnerable populations. The dissemination of this study elevates the voices of the young women who collaborated in the study and informs community-based NGO projects and the broader society.

Author

• Laura A Edwards, University of Northern Iowa