Collective Memory, Migration and Land Grabbing: Eco-Violence Escalating Conflict in Colombian Rural Communities of the San Juan Subregion

Stephanye Zarama Alvarado, University of Bonn (Colombia)

The territory of the Colombian Pacific has been highly covered due to its great wealth in natural assets and water sources, this has led it to have multiple forms of colonization, exploration and extractivism. Some of the conflicts have included land grabbing, foreign mining extraction and logging exploitation that has led to the expropriation and dispossession of communities, perpetuating the poverty and exclusion that these ethnic groups have historically had to suffer. Chocó has been one of the departments most affected by the armed conflict in the country, producing the internal migration of population with a prevalence of this even in the current times of transition towards peace. While extant research focuses on the root causes of such conflicts, the reasons for their escalation remain insufficiently understood. In addition, the types of violence are intertwined and often cumulative, and their prevalence is a component of migratory phenomenon that is still insufficiently documented. This paper argues that Eco-Violence is escalating the conflict and that the use of represent past contestations in present day realities, leading to the experience of collective memories permits to understand how migration dynamics plays a role in the reproduction of vulnerabilities and impedes opportunities of peacebuilding. A comparative study in two different regional socio-political settings is adopted in this research. Qualitative research with the design and draws upon data collected from focus groups, semi-structure interviews and biographical narratives was conducted in the municipalities of Istmina and Condoto with the communities of Basurú and Acosó during the year 2021. The data collected was systematized in Atlas.ti24 and analyzed by using the conflict and social representation theory and the socio-historical analysis method in collective memory. This provides a brief history of the conflicts and explore the connection between how past events are represented before, during, and after armed conflict thanks to the land grabbing and examines these representations on collective behaviors and the persistence of different forms of violence, specifically, Eco-Violence that influence and sustain the immobility or mobility in conflict-affected communities that generates a negative peace.