The Tree of Love: Life Writing and ‘Seasons of Self’ by Former Child Soldiers in Colombia

ABSTRACT

Autobiographies of childhood generally focus on narratives of nostalgia or trauma, depicting notions of lost innocence. This article posits that such a Global North perspective needs to be re-imagined when listening to the ‘self-stories’ of child soldiers from Colombia’s indigenous Nasa community in the Cauca region. They described their experiences of conflict in a series of narrative workshops located around the Tree of Love, (el árbol del amor)—a place where hopes and dreams are shared, its strength and constancy representing the resilience of the Nasa people in the face of violence. These shared narratives are presented as 4 chapters, each depicting a season, characterised by a different form of epiphany, constituting ‘liminal experiences connected to moments of … crisis’ [Denzin, N. K. 2017. Interpretive Autoethnography, Sage Research Methods Online. London: Sage. Accessed June 4, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781506374697, 52]. The article is presented in narrative style, enabling the researchers to stay close to the young child soldiers’ lives. Together these narrative extracts offer a mosaic of auto/biographical experiences that portray the journey from war child to child soldier to child survivor. The ability to resist re-recruitment in spaces that remain dangerous, where the cycle of violence is relentless, appears to be bolstered by an agency that comes from within, offering potential for post-traumatic growth.

KEYWORDS:

• Colombia
• child soldier
• epiphany
• trauma
• self-story

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Cape Town Principles can be accessed here: https://openasia.org/en/g/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Cape-Town-Principles.pdf.

2 Forced abortion within the ranks of the FARC has become a topic of investigation for Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), created as part of the 2016 peace accords.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by GCRF: [grant number A6378AE9-ADD2-41A9-BE4F-788FA2C790A7].

Notes on contributors

Mathew Charles

Mathew Charles is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of International, Political and Urban Studies at El Rosario University, Bogotá, Colombia. He is interested in creative and participatory peace building. His research focuses on organised crime in Latin America, and the participation of children and teenagers in gangs and non-state armed groups in particular.

Karen Fowler-Watt

Karen Fowler-Watt is a Senior Principal Academic in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. Karen works closely with the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change. Her research interests embrace reporting marginalised voices and re-imagining journalism education. Karen also writes about reporting conflict, digital storytelling, authorial voice and auto/biographical journalism.