Performance Practices and the Conflict of Memory in Colombia: Working Towards a ‘Decolonial’ Digital Archive and Epistemological Justice

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Notes

1. We’d like to thank our assiduous and hard-working research assistant Jonelle Walker for her work on this article.

2. Translation from Spanish to English by the authors.

3. Marcela Fuentes, Performance Constellations: Networks of Protest and Activism in Latin America, Theater: Theory/Text/Performance, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019), 12.

4. Fuentes, Performance Constellations, 16.

5. Ibid., 12.

6. Boaventura De Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014), 19.

7. Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South, viii–ix.

8. Elisabeth A. Povinelli, ‘The Woman on the Other Side of the Wall: Archiving the Otherwise in Postcolonial Digital Archives’, Differences 22, no. 1 (2011): 146–71 (153).

9. ‘Embodied Performance Practices in Processes of Memory and Reconciliation in four territories of Chocó and the Pacific Medio of Colombia: Guapi, Unguía, Bojayá and Buenaventura’, UKRI/Newton Fund grant with Colciencias at Universidad de Antioquia (AH/R013748/1).

10. See, Stephanie Vella, ‘Reconsidering Archives and Performance’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 40, no. 2 (2018), 133–7.

11. Kevin Everod Quashie, ‘Introduction: Why Quiet’, in The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 6.

12. ‘Vivir sabroso’ is a local expression used by Afro communities in the Pacific. It denotes their world view or ‘life philosophy’ that involves daily practices such as travelling along rivers, creating kinship, accompanying the dead, going to the crops, going to the gold mines and celebrating the patron saint’s festivities; all fundamental in finding a balance that makes life ‘sabrosa’ (delicious). See Natalia Quiceno-Toro, Vivir Sabroso: luchas y movimientos afroatrateños, en Bojayá, Chocó, Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad del Rosario, 2016).

13. ‘Buen vivir’ derives from the Quechua concept sumak kawsay and aymara concept suma qamaña. It ‘embraces the broad notion of well-being and cohabitation with others and Nature […] the concept is also plural, as there are many different interpretations depending on cultural, historical and ecological setting’, Eduardo Gudynas, ‘Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow’, Development 54, no. 4 (2011): 441–47 (441).

14. Kaitlin M. Murphy, Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2019), 5.

15. Anne Burdick, Digital Humanities (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012), 7–11.

16. Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 33.

17. Katie Shilton and Ramesh Srinivasan, ‘Participatory Appraisal and Arrangement for Multicultural Archival Collections’, Archivaria 63, no. 1 (2007): 87–102; Gabriella Giannachi, Archive Everything: Mapping the Everyday (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 99.

18. Katie Shilton and Ramesh Srinivasan, ‘Participatory Appraisal’, 90; and Giannachi, Archive Everything, 99–100.

19. Michael Rothberg, ‘Multidirectional Memory’, Témoigner, Between History and Memory [Online], 119, 2014, http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/1494 (accessed July 23, 2020).

20. Giannachi, Archive Everything, 109.

21. Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, ‘Political Tussle Over Truth And Memory In Colombia’, Hirondelle Foundation, May 19, 2020, https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/truth-commissions/44027-political-tussle-over-truth-and-memory-in-colombia.html (accessed July 23, 2020).

22. Maria Alejandra Navarrete and Laura Alonso, ‘Overview of Violence Against Social Leaders in Colombia’, InSight Crime, February 18, 2020, https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/overview-violence-social-leaders-colombia/ (accessed August 4, 2020).

23. This term comes from filmmaker Olowaili Green who explains the Guna Dule system of knowledge, the mola, as a type of oralitura: a mix of orality and literature.

24. Wiñay Mallki, ‘Indigenous And Oraliture As Resistance To Forgetfulness’, Errata #, https://revistaerrata.gov.co/autor/winay-mallki-fredy-chikangana (accessed September 23, 2020).

25. Caroline Tagg, Lyons, Agnieszka, Hu, Rachel, & Rock, Frances, ‘The Ethics of Digital Ethnography in a Team Project’, Applied Linguistics Review 8, no. 2 (2017): 271–92 (272).

26. Corp-Oraloteca is a documentation center and research group at Universidad Tecnológica del Chocó that safeguards, researches and strengthens body and aural practices and knowledge of the Colombian Pacific. See La Corporaloteca website <https://www.corporaloteca.com>.

27. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994).

28. Stuart Hall, Formations of Modernity (Oxford: Polity, 1992).

29. Gurminder K. Bhambra, Connected Sociologies (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

30. Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South.

31. Raewyn Connell, Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

32. International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, ‘Indigenous Peoples in Colombia’, n.d., https://www.iwgia.org/en/colombia.html#:~:text=According%20to%20official%20data%2C%20indigenous,%25%20of%20the%20indigenous%20population (accessed September 23, 2020).

33. Joe Parkin Daniels, ‘Colombian soldiers accused of raping indigenous teen in second case to emerge in a week’, The Guardian, June 30, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jun/30/colombia-soldiers-sexual-assault-indigenous-tribe (accessed July 23, 2020).

34. Camilo Pardo Quintero, ‘Salvar a Guapí del olvido, el reto de las emprendedoras locales de Ríos Unidos’, El Espectador, [August 3, 2020], https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/salvar-a-Guapí-del-olvido-el-reto-de-las-emprendedoras-locales-de-rios-unidos/ (accessed September 23, 2020).

35. International Crisis Group, ‘Calming the Restless Pacific: Violence and Crime on Colombia’s Coast’, August 9, 2019, https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/andes/colombia/076-calming-restless-pacific-violence-and-crime-colombias-coast (accessed September 23, 2020).

36. Danelly Estupiñán, ‘Colombia’s social leaders are still being killed during the quarantine’, Amnesty International, June 22, 2020, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/06/lideres-sociales-nos-siguen-matando-durante-cuarentena/ (accessed September 23, 2020).

37. José Luis, Interview in Bojayá on November 16, 2019, authors’ translation.

38. Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2019), 1.

39. Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica, ‘Contexto’, n.d., https://centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/contexto/ (accessed November 2, 2020).

40. Associated Press, ‘Colombia’s Conflict Spills Over to Museum of Memory’, Latino Rebels, December 26, 2019, https://www.latinorebels.com/2019/12/26/colombiamuseumofmemory/ (accessed September 23, 2020).

41. Camilo Ucros, ‘Colombia: land inequality and historic memory’, Latin America Bureau, July 7, 2020, https://lab.org.uk/colombia-land-inequality-and-historic-memory/ (accessed September 23, 2020).

42. Michael Rothberg, ‘Multidirectional memory’, Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire, 119, 2014, http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/1494 (accessed July 23, 2020).

43. Tianna S Paschel, Becoming Black Political Subjects: Movements and Ethno-Racial Rights in Colombia and Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

44. Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Rites, Rights & Rhythms: A Genealogy of Musical Meaning in Colombia’s Black Pacific (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 10.

45. Paschel, Becoming Black, 12.

46. UNICEF, ‘Panamá sees more than seven-fold increase in number of migrant children crossing through Darien Gap’, March 5, 2020, https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/press-releases/Panamá-sees-more-seven-fold-increase-number-migrant-children-crossing-through-darien (accessed September 23, 2020).

47. There is evidence however, of indigenous groups playing marimba, ‘el piano de la selva’ (the jungle’s piano), an instrument brought from Africa in the slave trade (see Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Rites, Rights and Rhythms). Indigenous’ weavings and artcrafts are also significant and commercialized by associations like ‘Rios Unidos’, a rural cooperative of Afro-descendant women which promotes collective work to reaffirm the power of being a woman of African descent in their own ways of organizing and coming together for mutual aid, herbology, and healing work. This reveals the existence of networks of support between Afro and Indigenous groups.

48. A revealing connection with indigenous groups manifests in the production and staging of the play; the theatre collective consulted and included Indigenous characters to help them mediate with the souls and spirits of those who were not properly buried according to the Afro tradition. The expertise of Indigenous spirit mediation was identified as a valuable contribution of this group in the context of the massacre and the 17 years in between the assassination of the victims and their burial.

49. ‘Minga’ derives from the Quechua ‘mink´a’ and is associated with forms of community work in Andean indigenous communities. It is conceived as a practice, or rather a lifestyle of sharing that involves human and spiritual exchange, knowledge and collective production. ‘Uramba’ stems from an Africanist word that connotes solidarity.

50. Interview with the research team June 16, 2020, authors’ translation.

51. Quashie, Aesthetics.

52. Interview with the authors, June 11, 2020.

53. Interviewed for this research on July 13, 2020.

54. Interviewed for this research on November 16, 2019.

55. Claire Warwick, Melissa M. Terras, and Julianne Nyhan, Digital Humanities in Practice (London: Facet Publishing in association with UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, 2012), 4.

56. Giannachi, Archive Everything, 60.

57. Quashie, Aesthetic, 3.

58. Informal conversation held in Guapi (March 10, 2020) while talking about traditions and the production of the archive. Author’s translation from Spanish to English.

59. Vella, Reconsidering Archives and Performance, 133.

60. Interview with Juana on March 10, 2020 in Guapi. Translation from Spanish to English by the authors.

61. Interview with Nany on March 9, 2020 in Guapi. Translation from Spanish to English by the authors.

62. Interview with Elver on March 10, 2020 in Guapi. Translation from Spanish to English by the authors.

63. Informal conversation with Nany held in Guapí on March 10, 2020 while talking about the relevance and uses of Corpografías. Translation from Spanish to English by the authors.

64. Interview with John Erick on June 16, 2020.

65. Interview with Elvia on September 8, 2019 in Bojayá.

66. Interview with José Luis on November 16, 2019 in Bojayá.

67. A Tafur Villareal, ‘Política cultural y construcción de paz en Colombia 1990–2002ʹ, NOVUM 6 (2016), 18–34.

68. Sousa-Santos, Epistemologies of the South, 16.

69. Luis Carlos Sotelo Castro, ‘Not Being Able to Speak Is Torture: Performing Listening to Painful Narratives’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 14, no. 1 (2020): 220–31 (221).

70. Quashie, Aesthetic, 6.

71. Giannachi, Archive Anything, 106.

72. While these four territories appear close by on a map, there is no easy way to connect them. No national highway exists, much of the land is covered in thick vegetation, and river transportation has many limitations.

73. Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject, 1.