Afro-Colombian Autonomous Visions of Peace

• In Event: Reframing Autonomy: Decolonizing Practice in Indigenous and Afrodescendant Communities

Abstract

Although the signing of peace accords between the national government and the FARC guerrilla in November of 2016 formally ended the longest war in the Western Hemisphere, the so-called post-conflict process in Colombia remains highly uncertain. On the one hand, there is widespread concern that the newly elected president, Ivan Duque, will undermine the peace process for the nation as a whole by failing to follow the accords. For Afro-Colombians, who make up 25% of the country’s population, the entire peace process has been marked by efforts to exclude them from effectively participating. In this paper, I explore Afro-Colombian responses to this exclusion from the formal spaces where Colombian peace is being defined. I show that when faced with this enduring exclusion, Afro-Colombians have moved to develop strategies to protect black lives in practice and are crafting an autonomous vision of peace that posits that national reconciliation is impossible so long as anti-black violence exists. While demanding accountability from the state as full citizens and victims of the war, this vision of peace is autonomous because it does not wait for the government to deliver on its promises, but rather moves to develop concrete strategies to protect those who are in danger and to cultivate practices that sustain and reaffirm flourishing black lives.

Author

• Roosbelinda Cárdenas González, Hampshire College