Reflections on activism, the academy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex in Colombia: What a revolutionary ethos might look like

ABSTRACT

This essay brings together different voices to reflect on several participatory research projects carried out in Colombia, based on human rights, ‘empowerment’, harm reduction, (im)mobility and forced migration, gendered and political violence, armed conflict, and the right to health of people in the social margins. We look back on nine years of activism to explore the foundations of what our friendships and relationships have come to know as a revolutionary ethos. We critically re-visit and reflect on the concept of ‘the activist’ in the realms of the human rights apparatus in Colombia, the academy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC). We look back on what was forged and what was lost to propose the critical concept of ‘radical honesty and self-care’ as the basis for a revolution that supports processes of healing and social justice. Finally, we imagine what ‘healing’ can look like, as committed activists despite our differences and positionalities. We engage with and problematise the different forms of activism that emerge in social struggles and we address self-criticisms, constant reflection, radical honesty and uncomfortableness as powerful tools in joining forces to continue social justice work and caring.

KEYWORDS:

• Activism
• Non-Profit Industrial Complex
• academy
• social movements
• Colombia

Who we are: An active network

We are a diverse group of women. We share common struggles but differ in our positionalities. We acknowledge the pieces of our identities that bind us but also those that split us apart to resist essentialisms within activism. By recognising our privileges and disadvantages, vulnerabilities, agendas, levels of exposure and commitments we hope to voice silences that reproduce violence. We hope our reflections convey a much-needed vulnerability in human rights initiatives inserted in neoliberal business dynamics happening in the global South (Rodríguez-Alarcón & Montoya-Robledo, 2018). We return to emotional language and praxis as a way to resist capitalist logics that coopts identities for personal profit and reproduces colonial ‘aid industry’ models in Colombia. In this context we understand the ‘aid industry’ as the system that perpetuates the political hegemony of the global North through maintaining economic dependency of global South social justice initiatives (Degan, 2021). A system inherently ethnocentric, colonial and racist (Goldberg & Doobay-Persaud, 2021).

Being an activist in Colombia is a challenge not born of altruism, but of solidarity – with ourselves and others. Each of us has a different understanding of what being an activist is, but we all share the common belief that the ‘activist’ is someone who takes a public stand in the face of injustice. This implies either rejecting violence in family spaces, speaking up in professional domains, community organising or strategising from spaces of power, like academia. We present this testimony of our common and different struggles to question power structures that perpetuate inequality in Colombia and Latin America. This is not a self-indulging act of recognisance. It is fragmented history of navigating the precarious positionalities across race, class, sexual orientation, educational attainment and gender identity in light of heightened assassination of social leaders on the frontlines. In this article, we reflect on different types of activism, from feminist, participatory and grass-root initiatives, in which we have worked together, drifted apart, supported and criticised each other during the last nine years in academic-NGO or academic-community partnerships. This is not a manifesto but a dialogue.

We are all Colombian. We find our identities grounded in this territory that we acknowledge as our home. Our collective struggles strive to improve the health and living conditions of communities in Colombia, a home rooted in both urban and rural areas, a place of belonging. An arguably post-conflict society, Colombia signed a Peace Agreement with the largest and oldest guerrilla group in the country in 2016, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC-EP), which caused a vacuum in territory and illegal economies control (Pirateque Perdomo, 2021). After the Peace agreement was signed, over 400 social leaders have been assassinated (Human Rights Watch, 2021). Environmental leaders killings, especially those of indigenous origin, have also exponentially increased since 2016 (Global Witness, 2020). Colombia is currently the most violent country for human rights and environmental defenders in the region (Human Rights Watch, 2021).

Because of the armed conflict, activism in Colombia has been stigmatised by the political right and associated through smearing campaigns with guerrilla groups (Baird, 2008). The Colombian State has been more often than not, complicit with these practices. This has caused a disconnect between community-driven initiatives and decision-making spaces, often centralised in urban centers. Nevertheless, there has always been community mobilising around culture, land and ancestral practices (Asher, 2002; Fals Borda, 1986), as well as to denounce racism, sexism, silence and erasure around violence (Bolivar, 2011; Quiceno Toro, 2016).

For us, activism is a daily and strategic praxis to make people aware. Our collective work has allowed that consciousness to grow in reciprocity and respect, but also love for one another (Freire, 2018). Nevertheless, we struggle with the ‘activist’ label since it conveys privilege and status, a decision to speak up, a choice. We did not go to school to study activism and most of all, we are not paid to do this work; on the contrary, it comes at great personal cost. We do not all experience the same risks of exposure to violence but, we share a collective understanding that if we chose otherwise, we would succumb to silence because we did not have a choice in the face of injustice. We were not born free.

In our partnerships, we have built processes to support the right to health and defend basic human rights of marginalised street-connected communities in Bogotá, Medellín, and Cúcuta; we have used photography, art, theater and music to communicate our different realities and promote empathy. Academic-supported partnerships, in some cases internationally funded, have been possible given our different positionalities. Within our work, we have pushed for spaces where knowledge can be collectively developed and taught in classrooms, as well as implemented outside of the academic realm. As partners, we accompanied the returns of trans women expelled by armed violence to their hometowns, joining them in re-visiting places of pain and love; we have structured a health community network that started in Bogotá but has expanded to smaller cities to support trans people on accessing healthcare; we mobilised sex workers in Bogotá to defend their right to the city, a catalytic process that turned into law. We have also protested against machismo¹, police violence, abuse, racism and classism, even within our ranks. We have questioned whitewashed notions of ‘allyship’ and funding dynamics. This is where we situate our reflections: in this war-torn Colombia, still intellectually and socially colonised. Our purpose is to focus on the lessons that this collective struggle has left us and propose possible ways forward.

Daniela is a mom, a trans community educator, a mobiliser, artist, filmmaker, dancer, writer. She was a founding member of the Trans Community Network (RCT according to the Spanish acronym), a grassroots organisation born in the Santafé neighborhood in Bogotá. ‘La Red’, as we know it, started with the effort of trans and migrant sex workers to join together to care and protect each other from the police, client and armed conflict violence that had permeated urban spaces through micro trafficking and territory control. Through burying many of her friends, Daniela experienced the impunity of their murders with anger and fear. The fear of dying made her aware of the need to start a network of care between trans women living amidst violence, a way of being together.

For Daniela activism is being a community educator, the art of subverting the same cultural symbols that exclude trans bodies from cultural/social narratives. This humanisation process is a way of denouncing how power decides who gets to live and die (Mbembé & Meintjes, 2003). Trans activists were long excluded from misogynistic, classist, transphobic, racist LGBQ+ movements in Colombia. Activism not being a safe space to be trans, Daniela found in art a place that allowed empathy without eliciting common negative reactions associated with the perception of trans voices as ‘dangerous’ or ‘violent’. Art is a democratic means of expression that does not demand elite education or political correctness. ‘The activist role’ oftentimes condones exploitative dynamics of re-victimisation and naturalisation of violence in the quest for recognition. Instead, she feels trans movements need more powerful communication tools to promote action and used art as a means for survival and sticking together to promote change.

For Yoko, a trans community leader from Santafé, activism has been a disenchantment process. A practice of resistance with little reward: a view we all share. Yoko feels that in NGO-work tokenism and instrumentalisation of trans bodies transforms the power of her voice into misery-porn, scholarships and prizes going to the most privileged voices in the movement leaving her story often shared as a way to elicit pity by fellow activists. She is currently the director of the RCT. Like Daniela, she calls out the precarisation of activism in Colombia, where there are no funds available to support community initiatives, much less for trans, sex workers’ movements. Yoko and the RCT have had to receive funds through partners that can ‘take the administrative burdens’ (like academic institutions) because they are not considered trustworthy to implements funds. The lack of a credit history is a barrier to receive funds, but the lack of funds is a barrier to open have a credit history to apply for resources.

This perpetuates a perverse system of privilege where class conflates with visibility and participation. More privileged activists become complicit in this system in their quest for funding and prioritising political agendas. For ‘activists’ like her, it means a life sentence in the streets,; instead of traveling, studying abroad and participating in international conferences, often spaces promoted by funders to network and grow. These spaces, denied for grassroots organisations by structural barriers inherent to the system of how funding and the human rights apparatus works in Colombia, become mostly reserved for well-connected activists, academics and English speakers. For Yoko, being a ‘whore’, impoverished migrant, trans woman, exposes her to the danger of the frontlines as someone ‘useful’ but ‘disposable’.

Yoko believes ‘activism’ has taken a toll on her emotional and physical health. The price of her activism has been never-ending loneliness: her role making her a protector, but never protected. When she tried to expose a partner for intra-partner violence through a live Facebook video, people thought it was a performance and ignored her. For Yoko, activism and social movements have a fundamental problem of ‘acompañamiento’. In public light there are collective struggles; but in private spaces there is little care and love. There is also no self-criticism of exploitative dynamics like uneven distribution of opportunities within organisations. Community leaders are expected to fulfill a role as representative leaders without being offered protections, payment, or care. This leaves community activists neglected in the face of real danger and harm.

There is impunity in activism. Daniela and Yoko feel trans women are perceived as scandalous, difficult to work with and violent; and often in the face of conflict are silenced for making others uncomfortable. But trans bodies are also commercialised as exotic in a gentrification process of the Santafé neighborhood, ‘bait’ to ultimately expel them from the only spaces they have deemed worthy of inhabiting. Similarly, trans people have had to fight their way into feminist and LGBTQ+ mobilisation, overcoming barriers for participating. Eventually, trans social struggles have diverged from these platforms, carving a space for their own voices to express freely without being asked to ‘tone it down’, erase their differences or conform with the more mainstream ideals of these movements (see Les Moustaches et al., 2018; Red Comunitaria Trans & Espinosa, 2020). In Daniela’s and Yoko’s experience being trans, impoverished and marginalised means that your voice is not heard.

Barriers add to the feeling of stagnation when all that changes is political correctness and language that does not translate into social norms, programs, or policies. Activists and educators are often asked to do workshops to discuss human rights and gender, or what has been referred to as the ‘workshop model’: hiring of community leaders to ‘sensitise’ teams of practitioners or government officials through trainings, reducing activism to teaching ‘tolerance’.

The ideology of development, as packaged and promoted by donors and NGOs, harmed the women’s movement and activism in a number of ways. Gender training and sensitization sessions became a popular pastime. While some of the sessions … addressed serious structural issues of patriarchy, others … completely de-politicized the issue … the word ‘training’ implies lower-order mental functioning (like learning to operate a computer) and it seems inconceivable how someone could be trained in gender-sensitive living. (Saigol, 2016, p. 24)

These models, as promoted by decision makers, funders and activists, aim to ‘include’ communities in training and information dissemination but ultimately represent an example of tokenism for institutional actors to resolve public criticisms for stigmatisation. The ‘workshop model’ uses ‘the activist’ in this context to respond to public demands while cleaning their image but not inflicting real change through policy. It is frustrating because there is no other space made available to be heard but also because this work is considered ‘voluntary’ and thus, not billable by normal labor standards. Activism is not a discipline and thus, community leaders without a formal education are belittled (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Yoko speaking at a community event.

Similar to Yoko’s praxis, for Rochi the greatest difficulty in being an activist is to accomplish change in others. She fights for Luna, her trans daughter, despite the shaming and hard criticisms of her ‘motherhood style’. Activism provides a visibility that other parents envy and try to silence, framing it as trying to ‘protect’ Luna. In her case, activism has been based around the personal struggle of creating support and affection networks for her daughter, so that when she is not around, Luna will have a supporting community. In this deeply selfless sense, it is the conscientious intent of generating a better world for her daughter and children like her. This revolution based in an act of love (Kelley, 2002), catalyzes in community leadership. Activism was not a choice but a way to confront discrimination and hate within healthcare and education institutions, to procure the tools to defend her and her daughter’s rights. To heal, Rochi thinks that hate needs to be dealt with through the understanding that she cannot change the way others think, and health comes from the distance with violence. By not conceding space to ill treatment, healing goes from forgiveness to action. For Rochi, an activist should always be very clear about what they need to change because what is not named, does not exist. The health system and health provider’s practices are a major obstacle for the protection and right to health of trans people. Rochi’s actions are instead centered around demanding respect, dignity and access.

As for Luna, activism is a brave and heroic endeavor. Encouraged by her mother’s activism and the support of her trans community, Luna’s perspective builds in the love and support that her family and allies have created around her despite all the daily hate. Luna is determined to fight for other children and wants to become a lawyer. Even at nine years old, she feels a strong commitment to justice. She wants to change the heart of others to end discrimination so that trans children stop suffering. She wants to be a superhero to save lives (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Luna’s vision of her as a super hero.

As a psychologist, Catalina finds problematic pathologising tags placed on Daniela, Yoko or Luna to access healthcare or much needed gender-reaffirming procedures and surgeries. As a scholar, she believes science should be at the service of communities and not an arbitrary gatekeeper of rights. For Rochi and Luna, the denial of their wellbeing and health has been justified by doctors as moral impediments. Catalina recognises activism in academia as a double-edged sword. On one hand, the production of science is inherently tied to liberation and social justice (Fals Borda, 1979: Fals Borda & Moncayo, 2009; Montero, 2004), environmental defense of the Earth (Galeano, 2005), and the intent to save cultural diversity (Freire, 2018, p. 1993). On the other, it reproduces exploitation, discrimination and exclusions based on the status quo.

However, Catalina, like Daniela and Rochi, found in activism the means to survive an oppressive society that sought to silence uncomfortable queer voices. But like Yoko, Laura and Amy, she feels disappointed on social movements’ lack of self-criticism, tokenism and misogyny. As a self-identified queer woman, a migrant, a mixed-race scholar, she struggles with the political compromise that has led to not always being successful when exposing injustices in academic and human rights spaces. The report writing syndrome or the bureaucratisation and professionalisation of human rights training that refers to symbolic power but not practical impact leaves little to nothing behind for community leaders, as well as social movement’s bases (Rodríguez-Alarcón & Montoya-Robledo, 2018). This model promoted by international NGOs and funders does not necessarily reflect real beneficial actions. Activism has also been a way to resist the erasure that ethnocentric science imposes on Latin American voices. As a scholar in a global North institution, Catalina has seen how knowledge produced within academic spaces and global North scholars is prioritised and used as standards of good scientific praxis, imposing standards to conduct research with communities in the global South that are not applicable or even scalable to different realities. In her work, Catalina found little could be done to stop pathologising, deforestation, or killings of leaders when economic interests mediate actions and State institutions are complicit. Having been the ‘female researcher hired to mediate with communities’, she finds in activism a commitment to self-emancipation and radical honesty. As an activist, Catalina rejects researchers’ claims that surveys and publications help deprivation and poverty in the global South while not consulting or collaborating with local partners; thus reproducing cultural and colonial scientific practices. She feels activism in academic spaces often turns into a lonely voice within classrooms that others have to tolerate but can easily dismiss. For her, activism is an imperfect tool to resist silencing of non-White voices in the ivory tower as envisioned by Latin American scholars and community psychologists (Galeano, 2005; Montenegro et al., 2014; Montero, 2004). Activism is in this context resists intellectual colonisation and voices a response to cultural blindness (Freire, 2018) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Daniela and Catalina at a Regias Reveladas’ photo shoot.

For Amy, activism is a survival behavior that emerges from a deep desire to break free from the structures of oppression that weigh down on so many of us existing outside of the transnational capitalist class and institutions birthed in the reign of imperialism rampaging middle- and low-income countries. Activism in the face of this is not a choice. In Amy’s life, these structures of oppression were white supremacy, the extractivist and colonial system of international adoption, and the academy. Amy sought out the academy as the beginning of her pathway toward individual and collective liberation manifest in the return to Colombia, the land and people she was separated from at birth. In this voyage she encountered the rest of us. As leader and partner in many of the academic-community projects we have done over the years, activism comes from the slow daily fight against structures of oppression. This constant struggle is the only way she can survive within the contradictions and extractivist histories of the academy, both in Colombia and the United Sates (U.S.). Amy’ s relationships with activists in street spaces in Colombia began at an early stage of her academic career. Her entanglement with the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) emerged through initiatives attempting to open up the academy and create spaces for activism within the policed terrains of the ivory tower in the universities she’s worked for in Colombia and the U.S. Her work as an activist-scholar continues to engage deep learning for social justice alongside social movements fighting against the structures of the police state (Ritterbusch, 2019). Amy continues on the journey of (re)defining the contours of activist-scholarship in her life and beyond within the grim horizons of troubled times, institutions and cycles of revolutionary dreaming toward justice.

For Laura, activism has been an unexpected and rough road. Starting in the academic world from an old-school colonialist anthropology, her career shifted towards participative methodologies outside of hierarchical research paradigms. Laura shares other authors’ disappointment in the face of loneliness and the high price of being an activist. Her path has cost her a great deal of her economic, mental and social stability, dealing constantly with misogynistic, exploitative and tokenistic practices within the NGO industry, and a precarious job field full of ‘express research’ where ‘participatory’ and ‘feminist’ practices are reduced to marketing strategies (Martínez Apráez, 2019). Looking back, Laura realises with disappointment that the impact of her work throughout the years is not proportional to the level of effort and sacrifice it required. Part of the problem relies on the lack of self-criticism within the social movements, a practice that many defend by claiming that quarrels or complaints between activists only destabilise the collective fight, promoting a behavior of covering unethical and violent practices in favor of the supposed ‘greater benefit’. Friendships and social circles among activists can intensify the lack of self-criticism, avoiding reflection in order to preserve internal power dynamics and personal relationships. For Catalina, Laura and Amy, allowing male voices to silence theirs or to overlook corruption was justified as necessary to avoid hurting social movements. Oftentimes, Laura’s criticism has marked her as hostile or problematic like Yoko, Daniela or Catalina (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Trans health community network class.

Currently, Laura’s activism is in a phase of re-construction and reflection, in which she seeks new tools and ways of acting ethically, without a pointless burnout. For her, this means solving a persistent structural issue among activists: the lack of coherence between the ideals for which to fight in public spheres and personal and private behaviors. It is common to see well known activists who, in their private lives, replicate and perpetuate misogynistic, discriminatory and colonialist visions. Her current struggle is to rebuild herself, both as an activist and as an individual; a painful process of liberation from oppressive relationships and societal structures, particularly with internalised patriarchy that has been policed ⁣⁣and reinforced by partners, family and colleagues in deceitful and systematic ways. This personal struggle, which includes giving up her position in different projects and organisations, along with cutting off relationships within her affective and work circles of ‘allyship’, is part of the radical honesty we aim for, that demands coherence with oneself.

Where we come from: The global human rights apparatus, the NPIC and academia

Activism and NGOs in Colombia are usually framed by different market dynamics, which necessarily turn the beneficiaries of social projects into products, creating imaginaries of ideal victims (Martínez Apráez, 2019). The NPIC refers to the apparatus of resources, relationships and partnerships formed in cities in Colombia, mainly Bogotá, more readily available to connected activists who have both the network and the influence to convey the interests of international funders. Issues with power dynamics between global North and South partnerships for research and humanitarian aid are common worldwide, including issues with authorship, lack of sustainability of initiatives, tokenism, agenda setting, metrics of success and generating dependency (Dreher et al., 2012; Matenga et al., 2021; Reith, 2010; Walsh et al., 2016). Despite the efforts to include more horizontal approaches, without economic independence grassroot organisations and activists remain under the power and influence of funders from global North institutions that set goals and timelines, as well as participation standards. In Colombia, this can cause problems for communities as what is prioritised it often not what is needed, or what community members prefer. Tensions and hierarchies between members of a team in academic-community partnerships or NGO-community partnerships often arise due to distribution of funds and allocation of resources, leadership and visibility.

Unfortunately, few community-driven efforts manage to evolve to independence of foreign funds and end up co-opted by larger organisations. In this sense, the ‘aid industry’ and human rights apparatus promotes dependency through resources while perpetuating the global north hegemony (Cerón, 2019; Degan, 2021). Activists face the dilemma of either ‘belonging’ to the system for a stable wage or renouncing to personal ethos. By having to comply with external indicators, social justice movements in Colombia remain dependent on partnerships with academia and/or international funds and support and protection, visibility or ‘training’ causing to put aside locally prioritised issues. Evaluation criteria of projects are skewed to meet ‘hard data’ instead of prioritising community views and soft skills. This tyranny of quantitative metrics promoted by the international ‘aid industry’ and academia are prioritised over community and empirical know-how (Fals Borda, 1979).

The ‘aid industry’ (Terry, 2013) and NPIC in Colombia is mostly supported by global North donors. Albeit there are different mechanisms for receiving and implementing funding, the structure is supported on a system of applying to grants that have set timelines and priorities, accepting foreign guidance and often supervision within teams. Achieving sustainability while conducting community work requires an enormous amount of time and dedication, as well as skills that community educators more often than not do not have; like university degrees, proficient use of English or basic access to internet. This is a classist structure thar reinforces the bureaucratisation of the human rights field.

Although similar experiences encompass human rights and environmental issues, in our experience funding mechanisms present two fundamental problems: the first is that it co-opts movements and imposes agendas based on external prioritisation of needs. The second is that it imbues with power privileged activists while not necessarily promoting community engagement, disregarding local concerns over symbolic power. In a country like Colombia, where there is ongoing armed violence and illegal control of territories, this is especially cumbersome as activists and social leaders are not subjected to the same exposure to danger or have similar health practices. Foreign funding legitimises ‘activist’ hierarchies but does not resolve injustices in the community and individual level for people in the frontlines. Competition for donor’s funds is a well-known dilemma between organisations, turning aid into power (Terry, 2013).

The NPIC in Colombia is most clearly seen in the privileging of some organisations over others given the status, the accumulated social capital and the access of its members. Community and grass-roots organisations have to compete for resources against well educated, English speaking, higher socioeconomic status activists that showcase issues tailored to funders priorities and metrics. This propels a deeply unjust and often impossible process for grass-roots organisations that need to compete and apply for funding, attend meetings, fill out paperwork, and meet administrative demands while conjunctly presenting results in funder’s metrics. It clashes with time and care responsibilities, economic needs and everyday demands of less privileged activists who are left wondering: who has the time? Making ends meet like paying rent, cover utilities and taking care of children are priorities that cannot be neglected for community educators; realities that are deeply gendered and respond to class and socioeconomic possibilities. These dynamics fuel unequal partnerships where people in the frontlines become tokens, not agents in own struggles. Partnerships can be beneficial for communities if conducted ethically, but this is not always the case; just as funding can yield positive results in urgent scenarios. But the notion of the NPIC, in this context, fits into a liberation efforts paradox: it contradicts its fundamental purpose by prolonging the same suffering they intend to alleviate and strengthen the power of the very people who cause tragedy (Terry, 2013). Can we, in the name of a social justice ethos, stay silent in the face of injustice? When the very system and organisations established to protect disenfranchised communities become the source of their pain and exploitation, the results are not only negligence and harm but re-victimisation and marginalisation. This critique is often referred to under the auspices of the NPIC, defined by Dylan Rodriguez as

… a set of symbiotic relationships that link political and financial technologies of state and owning class control with surveillance over public political ideology, including and especially emergency progressive and leftist social movements … . the NPIC promotes a social movement culture that is non-collaborative, narrowly focused and competitive … (INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, 2017)

In this sense, lack of criticism and radical honesty within the movements erases community voices, who often become co-opted and secondary in these spaces that seek to represent or protect them (Spivak & Giraldo, 2003). Despite ‘good’ intentions, it is challenging to avoid this erasure when confronted with corporate visions of ‘research’, ‘victims’ and ‘marginalisation’(Spivak & Giraldo, 2003). From the aid industry perspective, the attempt to represent and capture individual voices evokes the generalised discourse of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘victimisation’ related to poverty, hunger and violence (Correa Salazar et al., 2014). Likewise, in approaches with different power dynamics between privileged allies and community leaders, hierarchies can be erased under the discourse of ‘peer work’ (Schrock, 2013). So, are activists and NGOs condemned to repeat inequality patterns? Can they do good without doing harm? (Fisher, 1997) Can they stop being complicit with colonial extractivism?

Radical-born Latin American participatory frameworks (Fals Borda, 1999; Fals Borda & Moncayo, 2009), pedagogy and community psychology (Montenegro et al., 2014; Montero, 2004) denounces these exploitative practices within academia and classroom walls, subverting oppressive power dynamics (Montero, 2004) through pedagogy and community education (Freire, 2018). By aligning with other liberation movements (Anzaldúa, 1987; Montero, 2004), these schools of thought tried to create a space of reflexivity that engaged academia with social justice by maintaining an ethos of trust and allyship. We have found that this participatory research, more ‘subjective’ but also more engaged, can be a tool to support collective processes while de-identifying with the oppressor and questioning colonial logics (Freire, 2018). We think transformative reflexivity needs to be tied to positionality and promote independence.

In this way, activism can turn into a process of awakening and consciousnesses building, first of how we are colonised and controlled, and then of transiting inequalities to commit to working together while acknowledging differences. Allyship needs to be questioned. For alliances to be honest and useful, this type of activism cannot renounce neither to its privileged knowledge of external origin nor to its role as ‘advisor’ (Dietz & Mateos, 2015). Allies must recognise their positionality, contribute from their knowledge and platforms but always ‘pass the microphone’ to the voices of the community, support knowledge building but strive to not be needed and always not taking the leading role. It is essential to recognise asymmetric relationships in teams and partnerships (Martínez Apráez, 2019) including decision-making power, fund distribution and retribution.

The term ‘activist’ is oftentimes used without checking privileges or understanding its burden for leaders in the frontlines. In Colombia this can be a life or death issue. The trans women in this group especially resent this instrumentalisation by the LGBTQ+ movement without acknowledging the violence they face. This compromise with participation and commitment to work together should align with the philosophy of liberation (Dussel, 2001). The production of actions and knowledge in this context is a praxis that engages collective and reflexive action to transform oppression while including the actors committed to such transformation (Montero Rivas, 2012).

We do not seek ‘allyship’, but an ethos where support with convergent political principles and a mutually beneficial association turns to awareness of positionalities, ethical clarity and, above all, a capacity for systematic self-reflection on the contradictions of the system we participate in to achieve change and stop being complicit with the perpetuation of harm and oppression. We seek radical honesty within contradicting identities, uncomfortableness and recognition of fear; we seek emotional language to respond to quantitative metrics.

After almost a decade of collective work, we feel we can no longer be naive about intersecting and conflicting positionalities within social movements and ourselves. It is important to rethink emerging needs and risks, and to ask ourselves if behind the discourses of respect and equity lies a masked, new, deeper and more dangerous form of exploitation. It is important for us to be skeptical, tread carefully in self- and collective reflection (Kelley, 2002) and define the ways in which we are not independent neither financially nor politically from the NPIC and the global aid industry (Terry, 2013). It is central to be aware of injustices and ethnocentric silences within human rights professionalisation and movements; to denounce the transfer of State responsibilities that the government puts on civil society only to blame it for its own misery (Freire, 2018). It is paramount to be careful with academic practices of speaking over or writing about others. Even within this article, it was important to ask ourselves how to include all voices, discussing the different benefits we can derive from this type of publication and the interpretation of voices in English, a language that most of us do not speak/understand. It is an act of trust, and affirmation that no one’s hands are completely clean (Kelley, 2002) but it does not excuse us from trying.

Where we want to be going: Revolutionary ethos, radical honesty and healing

Audre Lorde argues that caring for ourselves is ‘not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare’ (Rodriguez & Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2019, p. 69). Individually, to overcome messages that have sought to erase us on account of our identities, making the conceptualisation of love a limited resource that can be ‘used’ and discarded, we respond with an ethos of radical honesty and healing. Honesty, in this context, is self-recognisance and care, voicing the uncomfortable in spite of risking personal relationships. Disposable love represented in obligations by blood or social ties has been used for too long as a tool of domination, demanding the silencing of difference as a token of belonging. How can we care for ourselves and heal without being complicit with oppression?

We believe the network that ties us together has allowed us to grow and love, that is, the act of care for each other and ourselves given the radical honesty that sustains our activism. Colombian activist and environmental defender Francia Márquez says: ‘I am because we are. I am a link in the chain, but the chain does not break in me’ (Esquivel, 2021). We do not write this essay as any kind of moral superiority card, as we have made enough mistakes to know there is no unique path to liberation. We have learned to live in a way that keeps us close, but not to avoid conflict. We no longer strive to be accepted. We have shrank to fit society’s frames and to counteract this socialisation, we need radical honesty to speak about what we feel, want, and need. Engaging in radical honesty allows our lives to align with our desires and rights, becoming a building block for an authentic community and a life in community that supports. Healing as we understand it: in community with others and our planet. To build communities of care we shift from individual transactions of self-care to collective transformation of self-, mutual- and planetary care; as we are a family of caretakers who inherited this earth and cannot survive without each other or the ecosystems that sustains us. It is a never ending ethic of cooperation (Kelley, 2002).

This love and honesty as political resistance is to acknowledge our differences but still voice the need to sit at the same table: ‘What we need is a culture where the common experience of trauma leads to a normalisation of healing’ (Rodriguez & Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2019, p. 62). Nevertheless, this must never be equal to the silencing of discomfort or erasure of differences for the benefit of the movement, the group or even each other (Taylor, 2021). Large-scale philanthropists holding power within the global NPIC often defend activists who have been called out as violent, misogynistic or extractivist in the name of sustaining or protecting ‘the movement’. Social justice fights are an act of love because they oppose this violence but also because they recognise that in the act of loving you are building a grounded solidarity. But honesty is still needed to achieve the transparency required to de-identify with ‘the oppressor’ (Freire, 2018). Unchosen and imposed silence is violent. But chosen silence is even worse. The ethos of honesty can be intellectual and material, can be artistic or therapeutic. We fight to change ideas, even if it is our own relationships that question what is possible.

We claim that art and other forms of knowledge are necessary for this type of ‘love in tension’ to emerge. New languages and voices need to come from activism to move beyond static indicators of well-being. We seek a revolution in which we practice an ethos of honest connection to each other, our communities, our planet. Like Francia Márquez explains: ‘being a link means that if I get there, that is ok but if I do not, I pave the way for others to get there’. In our vision, ‘freedom’ has no particular ties to nationality or race (Kelley, 2002) nor does it entail borders. Healing should look like the understanding of the immensity of life’s diversity in the love for freedom. Earth has no borders (Anzaldúa, 1987) (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Trans health community network.

Aligned with the calls from the 70s led by several radical movements, we call for a broadly sweeping defense movement across lines of difference that cultivates radical honesty as the anti-thesis of the NPIC. In this questioning we should include a clear delineation of how funding is allocated and plans to create independence from it; a planning of alternative models where partners grow and civil society from the global South and North collaborate to make their governments accountable for extractivist economies, human rights violations and perpetuation of a colonial system (Degan, 2021). This requires us to see beyond the divisions within and between movements to reach toward collective liberation without erasing tension. A radical ethos, however, is not enough without mass mobilisation connecting civil society from funding and funded countries towards specific milestones of justice-seeking. In order to topple the structures of capitalism that continue to rampage and co-opt our movements against violence, we must build power from the ground up understanding that health, healing and safety do not mean the same in different contexts and the same metrics of success should not be applied as a way of homogenising differences. Radical love and honesty, for us, means working toward the changes we hope to see in the world while engaging in daily acts of self- and collective care (Spade, 2020). We choose the language of love and radical sisterhood to put to rest notions, such as aid, that continue to dwell in the abyss of capitalism and to center principles of abolition, as understood in struggles in the global North as the end of policing, prisons and other structures of oppression, such as the academy and the academic industrial complex (AIC).

In short, we call for the abolition of the NPIC, the AIC and the imposition of colonial practices so new self-aware and sustainable forms of activism can emerge. We believe that abolition starts with radical honesty, self-criticism and love as acts of sustaining each other, to carefully reach toward change while holding governments and the NPIC accountable for reproducing harm and neoliberal logics. For us, in the diverse realms we each occupy, this means daily, personal acts of refusal to assimilate, to conform and to be silenced.

One crucial method that has brought us together is the use of art and innovative, non-academic methodologies to do research, mobilise and intervene our realities and spaces. Art allows new languages as it knows no boundaries of education or identities. As we aim to communicate our experiences of surviving and healing, art, thinking-feeling, ‘acompañamiento and radical honesty have allowed us to expose tensions and contradictions and question learned mechanisms of doubting ourselves and our know-how. Art does not follow institutional dynamics or answer to bureaucracy, degrees or funding. Art con be corporeal. Art has been a way to connect in our differences and create a participation space in human rights advocacy without compromising with the bureaucracy of aid or care (Freire, 2018). It has been a way to communicate research findings and make them more democratic, accessible, clear. In art, we find self-determination (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Body painting activity of the project Regias Reveladas (2015).

Our projects and actions have been called ‘activism’ but our lesson is that no one can liberate another, and no one can be liberated alone (Freire, 2018). Decolonial education, participation, creating networks of care, protecting the Earth as part of ourselves, allows us to build a project of self and shared care and learning, to access a safe space of awareness to be who we are in difference and honesty (Freire, 2018). In this process of nine years, we have sought liberation and gained a critical consciousness of how to exercise solidarity, we need to seek healing (Montero, 2004).

By reviewing our history together as activists, we have exposed the wounds, doubts and struggles that this role has entailed for us. Here we present the realisation that there is an urgent and dangerous structural failure in the human rights-apparatus to support caring for each other. Isolation should not be treated as something inherent to activism, but as a failure among movements to commit to care and voice vulnerabilities despite risking ‘hurting the movement’. There is no collective wellbeing that can be forged on the backs of individual suffering. To deconstruct exploitative dynamics of the NPIC we respond with honesty self-care measures. Building together and living coherently with our ideals we find to be both vulnerable and loving.

This text is not a manifesto. We do not claim to possess the answers to the issues we expose. We have failed in the past. Our aim is to take a look inside certain facets of social movements in Colombia and of global North-global South dynamics and question the stereotype of ‘the activist’. Our goal is to occupy a more honest space within the worlds we inhabit and keep paving the way for others like us to unapologetically carve a space for themselves in the world. We hope these discussions acknowledging differences, failures and lessons open the door to reflection. We hope that our collective story of self- and community love plants some hope that working together is still possible, as we try to do justice to our years of togetherness in collective struggle.

Notes

1 Machismo refers to patriarchal values and behaviors, and to the general context of power that perpetuates gender-based violence.