Political Geographies of Displacement by Dispossession in Columbia: The Case of Afrodescendant Communities in the Alto Cauca

Irene Velez Torres

Abstract

Over the last six decades, dispossession in the development and extractivist economic models has forced afrodescendants into motion; it has also compelled a change in local livelihoods that has deepened impoverishment and historical marginalization. This study uses the high basin of the Cauca River as a geopolitical scale for analysing features of the socio environmental conflicts that have generated displacement in Colombia. It critically addresses the matrix of actors and interests that interlock in these disputes in their attempt to access and control land based resources, and the ways in which unequal power relations have forced local afrodescendants to migrate. While economic models of accumulation have been supported by the government and international financial institutions, this research turns the attention to the official discourses and policies that have limited the local communities’ capacity to control their territory. From an activist position and by using a participatory and action oriented approach, this study explores how afrodescendants have defended La Toma as an ancestral territory through a translocal community building process.

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