Collective trauma in Indigenous and Black territories on Colombia’s Pacific coast: a framework and collaborative approach to researching violence

ABSTRACT

Using collaborative research methods with local organisations, this study analyses collective trauma in Colombia’s Pacific coast. It examines ethnoterritorial groups, or collectivities whose identities and political organising reflect a distinct territorial consciousness characterised by intercultural, environmental and socio-economic relationships to land. ‘Peer interviewers’ adapted research instruments and ethics to their communities, highlighting oral testimonies and the collective construction of knowledge. They connected emotionally and intellectually with their people revealing key information about harmful events undermining the life-worlds of their communities. Building on this work, the article breaks the trauma process into different phases starting with traumatogenic events that cause communal distress and produce a social and signification crisis. It claims that territories represent a form of knowledge and produce feedback effects in the trauma process that help people connect emotionally and strategically with place. The article concludes that harmful events are not the same as collective trauma. Collective trauma is constructed in a process of signification that uncovers and interprets a negative collective impact and delimits the group of sufferers.

KEYWORDS:

• collective trauma
• indigenous groups
• Afro-descendant groups
• ethnoterritorial identities
• territory and trauma

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the Jenzera Work Collective, especially Efraín Jaramillo, Chiesie Salinas, Fernando Castrillón and Gloria Salinas, for supporting this work. I owe a great deal of gratitude to the 2018 and 2019 Interethnic School students for helping with this research.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For the full report, see the ‘Publications’menu at www.jenzera.org. It presents the research procedure, tabulated answers to all the questions and Jenzera’s analysis of the results.

2 The community councils of Anchicayá, Bahía Málaga, Cajambre, Gamboa, Mayorquín, and Raposo in Buenaventura (Valle del Cauca); the community council of Bajo Mira and Frontera in Tumaco (Nariño); and the community council of the Lower Part of the Saija River in Timbiquí (Cauca).

3 The Indigenous council of La Gloria Inga; and the Indigenous Reserves of the Eperara-Siapidaara of the Naya River, the Nasa Emberá Chamí of Buenaventura; of Yu’zxicxkwe in Dagua (Valle del Cauca), and of Unión Balsalito in the San Juan littoral (Chocó).

4 Jenzera is an independent non-profit foundation sustained by a small interethnic and multidisciplinary group of volunteers.

5 The school began in 2007 as a series of interethnic meetings with Indigenous, Black and campesino leaders. Jenzera worked with experienced facilitators and designed a curriculum on interethnic relations and territory. Participating organisations suggested repeating the workshops and maintaining a curriculum that adapts to the region’s changing realities. This learning space was eventually named a ‘school’. Jenzera has coordinated and procured funding for five schools since 2007. Participants meet for five days, four times a year, and occasionally go on guided field visits to evaluate other ethnic governments.

6 I have supported Jenzera’s work since 2006. In 2018, I helped design the project for the 2018 and 2019 schools applying the recommendations of Indigenous and participatory methodologies. My research was evaluated and approved by Colorado State University’s Research Integrity and Compliance Review Office Protocol #18-7908H, ‘Multiculturalism and Ethnoterritorial Governance: How Marginalized Ethnic Groups Adapt to Institutional Reforms in Post-Conflict Societies’.

7 A total of 30 in Buenaventura, 12 in Tumaco, one in Timbiquí, one in Dagua and one in the Lower San Juan Littoral (Chocó).