Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia

FEEL THE GRASS GROW

Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia

Angela Jill Lederach

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2023 by Angela Jill Lederach. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lederach, Angela Jill, author.

Title: Feel the grass grow : ecologies of slow peace in Colombia / Angela Jill Lederach.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022039165 (print) | LCCN 2022039166 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503634640 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503635685 (paperback) | ISBN 9781503635692 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Peace-building—Colombia. | Peasants—Political activity—Colombia. | Political violence—Colombia.

Classification: LCC JZ5584.C7 L44 2023 (print) | LCC JZ5584.C7 (ebook) | DDC 303.6/609861—dc23/eng/20220923

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039165

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039166

Cover design: David Fassett / Notch Design

Cover photograph: Claudia Verenice Flores Escolero, Sanctuary of Peace, view of Montes de María from the Villa Barbara Sembrandopaz Farm

Typeset by Elliott Beard in Adobe Garamond Pro 10.5/15

Dedicated to Sembrandopaz

Gracias por posibilitar mi proyecto de vida—

Que sigamos soñando juntxs

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

List of Acronyms

TO DEFEND LIFE: An Introduction

PART I: Memorias Vivas—Living Memories

1. From and For the Territory: The Campesino Struggle for Peace

2. The Earth Suffered, Too: The Death of the Avocado Forest and Multispecies Resurgence

PART II: Prisa—Hurry

3. Photos and Signatures: Contested Performances of Peace

4. Too Much Prisa: The Temporal Dynamics of Violence and Peace

PART III: Paz sin Prisa—Slow Peace

5. The Times of Slow Peace

6. Voice and Votes: Building Territorial Peace

7. Vigías of Hope: Slow Peace and the Ethics of Attention

CODA

Notes

References

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

MANY VOICES HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO this ethnography. I am especially indebted to my friends and colleagues in Montes de María who have accompanied me from the beginning of this process, providing invaluable reflections, analyses, critiques, and support over nearly a decade of partnership. My research questions, lines of inquiry, and field of vision for this project would have been profoundly diminished without close accompaniment from Sembrandopaz, the Proceso Pacífico de Reconciliación e Integración de la Alta Montaña, the Jóvenes Provocadores de Paz de la Alta Montaña, and the Espacio Regional de Construcción de Paz de los Montes de María. Thank you for the many ways you all invited me in, oriented my research, and engaged in the co-construction of this work. I have often reflected on the immense privilege it has been to learn from your social processes, community organizing approaches, and daily engagement in peacebuilding, all of which have fundamentally contributed to my own political formation—for which I am deeply grateful.

I am especially thankful for the formation that I have received in participatory action research and grassroots peacebuilding from Rosa Jiménez Ahumada, Ana Verónica Montaño Chamorro, Ricardo Esquivia Ballestas, Lillian Hall, Yésica Blanco, Etel Salas, Wilton Ortíz, Oscar Vergara, Narciso Díaz, Manuela Emperatriz Buelvas Anaya, Stella Ramos, Daris Padilla, Osmar Ortega, Leidy Ballesta Ríos, América Vaquerano Romero, Rosa del Carmen Argueta, Ana Milena Ballesta, Claudia Verenice Flores, Lani Gomez Pickard, Pablo Abitbol, Chucho Pérez, Jose Francisco Restrepo, Jose Macareno, Catalina Pérez, Pedro Vasquez, Amilcar Rocha, Víctor Negrete, Eduardo Porras, Camilo Rey, Dionisio Alarcón, Luz Mery Valdez, Hernando González Meléndez, Yolyz Correa, Claudia Cueto, Juana Alicia Ruiz and family, Gabriel Pulido, Soraya Bayuelo, Julia Cagollo, Rosember Barón Berrio, Jorge Montes, Miledys Vásquez Navarro, Lenis Navarro de Vásquez, Jocabeth Canoles, Aroldo Canoles, Truby Canoles, Ciro Canoles, William Jaraba—and the whole Jaraba family, Jose Arrieta, the Mendoza family, Omar Rodriguez, Elisa Judith Buelvas Garcia, Deiver Canoles, Julio Parra Arrieta, Domingo Rafael Deavila Buelvas and family, Reinaldo Ovalle Olivero and family, Irina Junieles, Ivonne Díaz, Arturo Zea, Judith Pinedo Flórez, Angelina González Jiménez, Naún Álvarez González, Geovaldis González Jiménez, and Ignacia González Jiménez. I want to extend my deep sense of gratitude to the many members of the Proceso Pacífico de Reconciliación e Integración de la Alta Montaña, the Jovenes Provocadores de Paz, the Comité de Mujeres de la Alta Montaña, Mampuján Mujeres Tejiendo Sueños y Sabores de Paz, Afro-Música, Sembrandopaz, the Zona de Reserva Campesina, the Mesa de Interlocución y Concertación, and the Espacio Regional de Construcción de Paz de los Montes de María who made this project possible. In addition to professional support, the moral and emotional support that I have received from Naún, Jocabeth, Elmer Arrieta Herrerra, Jose Ortega, Jose Niño, Darlis Hernandez, Ronald Mendoza, Glenda Jaraba, and the Vigías Ecológicas—who were central participants in the research and writing process—has sustained me across many years of friendship. Thank you for evenings of echando cuentos, walks through the campo, moments of rest in the sway of the hammocks, and companionship. The videos of the birdsongs and landscapes of the Alta Montaña in the final months of writing were especially significant for my own sense of rootedness. Larisa Zehr, in particular, played a significant supporting role throughout the research process. Lari, thank you for orienting my research and walking alongside me from the beginning—our evening conversations, many adventures, and your critical questions are present throughout this ethnography.

I would have been lost without the transcription and research support that I received from Paola Benavides and Silvia Lozano. Silvia Lozano also contributed significantly to the translation of written materials. I also want to acknowledge the skills of Elkin, Rafael, and Yair who always provided me with safe passage and companionship along the many journeys in the Alta Montaña. Borja Palidini, Josefina Echavarría Alvarez, and the Barometro/PAM team provided important spaces for sharing early iterations of this work. Anna Vogt, Sarah Richardson, Becca Méndez, Carolina Serrano, Luis Felipe Botero, Elise Ditta, Gwen Burnyeat, Saskia Nauenberg Dunkell, Alex Diamond, and Daniel Ruiz Serna all contributed to the analyses and theories present in this book by creating spaces for sharing scholarly work while I was living in Colombia and after I returned to the United States. I am especially indebted to my dear colleagues Manuel Salamanca, Mery Rodriguez, Martha Márquez, María Lucía Zapata, Wendy Kroeker, and Cécile Mouly for creating a supportive, generative, and caring community of scholar-practitioners that has deeply shaped this work. I received immense support and companionship through writing retreats and writing accountability groups shared with Danae Yankoski, Stefanie Israel de Sousa, Lucía Tiscornia, and Janna Hunter-Bowman—thank you for helping me to find joy in the writing process. The caretakers at GilChrist Retreat Center created a space where—in the rush of deadlines—I could tap into a slower rhythm of life that enabled me to immerse myself in the creative process—for which I am grateful. A number of coffee shops—across states and countries—also sustained me while writing this book. Thanks to Cerro Maco in El Carmen, Época Café in Cartagena, The General in South Bend, Red Buffalo in Silverthorne, and Archetype in Omaha for skilled baristas and community spaces.

The New Research from Women Studying Violence working group provided key spaces for collaboration and scholarly engagement throughout multiple iterations of this project. I am grateful for Lucía Tiscornia and Abby Córdova’s thoughtful organization and planning—and to all of the members of that community who have shown me what building scholarly communities of care and support can look like, may we keep cultivating such spaces together. I want to especially thank Janice Gallagher and Angélica Durán-Martínez for insightful comments that improved and deepened the analysis found across the pages to follow. The Communications Team of the Alta Montaña provided rich visual images found throughout this book—I am especially grateful for the artistic support from Elmer Arrieta Herrerra and Omar Rodriguez. I want to thank Julio E. Cortés for the detailed maps used throughout this book. I am also thankful for the writing support I received from Justin de Leon, Nicole Gerring, Cat Standfield, Kate Paarlberg-Kvam, Dan Fahey, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Elena B. Stavrevska. And, I would have been lost without the constant care extended to me by Roxani Krystalli—thank you for generative conversations, poetic morsels, and notes of encouragement—all of which have deeply informed the chapters that follow.

The research for this book would not have been possible without funding support from Fulbright Colombia, the United States Institute of Peace Jennings Randolph Peace Scholarship, USAID Global Development Fellowship, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Parts of chapter 2 appeared in an article published by American Anthropologist: ‘The Campesino Was Born for the Campo’: A Multispecies Approach to Territorial Peace in Colombia, American Anthropologist 119, no. 4 (2017): 589–602. Sections of the discussion on youth identity formation, found in chapters 2 and 7, appeared in an article published by Peacebuilding: Youth Provoking Peace: An Intersectional Approach to Territorial Peacebuilding in Colombia, Peacebuilding 8, no. 2 (2019): 198–217. I am grateful for the ways those publications—and comments from thoughtful reviewers—led me to deepen and clarify the arguments further developed in this book. I also want to thank my editor, Dylan Kyung-lim White, assistant editor, Sunna Juhn, and the editorial team at Stanford University Press for thoughtful feedback, attention to detail, and support for the vision and ethical commitments expressed in this book—it has been an immense pleasure to work with and learn from you all.

Early iterations of several chapters received insightful comments from Caroline Hughes, Emily Maiden, George Lopez, Siobhan McEvoy-Levy, Roddy Brett, Jeff Peterson, Emily de Wet, Todd Marek, Amanda Cortez, Rieti Gengo, Sara Morrow, Heather Dubois, Kyle Lambelet, Laura Weiss, Janna Hunter-Bowman, and Francis Bonenfant. And, to Leo Guardado, Leslie MacColman, Dana Townsend, Jesse James, Katy-Marie Lance, and Chris Haw: Your voices are present throughout this book—thank you for walking alongside me from beginning to end. Joanne Rappaport and María Clemencia Ramírez provided invaluable feedback that led to significant improvements in the organization and flow of the final manuscript—thank you for your time, care, and generative engagement with this project. Finally, the suggestions, questions, and feedback that I received from members of the Espacio Regional, the Proceso Pacífico, Sembrandopaz, and the Jóvenes Provocadores de Paz on an early draft of this manuscript were critical for deepening and clarifying the arguments made throughout this book.

I’m grateful for my scholarly communities at Creighton University and the University of Notre Dame. The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Department of Anthropology, and the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame all created formative spaces of learning and intellectual collaboration. The support that I received from my colleagues in the Department of Cultural and Social Studies at Creighton University sustained me amid the pandemic and in the final stages of the writing process—with special thanks to Laura Heinemann, Renzo Rosales, Cristina Pop, Erin Blackenship-Sefczek, and Alex Roedlach. I also want to thank Carolyn Nordstrom, whose scholarly work and personal support across the years has deeply shaped my own trajectory as an anthropologist—and whose feedback at early stages of the research significantly contributed to the final project. I lack adequate words to express my gratitude for the seemingly unending reserves of time, care, and feedback that I received from Catherine Bolten, Agustín Fuentes, and Ann Mische over the course of the entire research process, which brought this ethnography into being. Cat, I think you have read more drafts of this book than anyone else mentioned in these pages. I am so grateful for your time, care, and engagement with this project; Ann, thank you for reading deeply and helping me forge generative connections across disciplinary silos; and Agustín, I am thankful for your exuberant support, guidance, and ethical commitment to the wider vision in which this project is situated. I am deeply grateful for the ways in which you all model intellectual curiosity and ethical commitment to public scholarship.

The continuous support—meals, conversations, spaces of rest—that my parents-in-law, Jack and Ruth Yoder, as well as my grandparents, Naomi and John Lederach, provided were much needed over the course of many years. And while my grandma Naomi will not see these pages between two covers, I know her spirit is celebrating.

Writing brings me great joy, apprehension, energy—and doubt. Whether I needed to take a break, rekindle confidence, or celebrate milestones, my mom, Wendy, was there every step of the way. Thank you, mom, for getting me through and helping me have fun along the way. My dad, John Paul, has shaped the pages of this book in more ways than I realize—long before the first questions that animate this text came into being. Mom and dad, I am immensely grateful for your care, patience, listening ears, and guidance—all of which have fundamentally shaped my sense of self and proyecto de vida. To my brother, Josh, thanks for keeping me grounded—our conversations over dinners, drinks, walks in the woods, and long bike rides helped these pages materialize.

To my life partner, Jeff, words fail to express my gratitude for your companionship throughout this process. Your joy, love for Colombia, long walks, endless conversations, translation support, and constant presence throughout the research and writing process made this book possible. To Isa, thank you for reminding me to play, walk slowly, and find wonder in life’s smallest and most remarkable gifts. This book would not have been possible without the love, care, and joy that my family brings. You both (and the growing relevo generacional) constantly remind me that we are always more than ourselves.

In the process of writing this book, my dear mentor, colleague, and friend, Rosa Jiménez Ahumada, passed from this world. Rosa’s enduring commitment to peace animates these pages—and it is my hope that her life lives on through them, siempre caminando.

LIST OF ACRONYMS

ACCU: Campesino Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá (Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá)

ADR: Rural Development Agency (Agencia de Desarrollo Rural)

Alta Consejería: The Office of the High Advisory to the President on the Regions (Alta Consejería Presidencial para las Regiones)

ANT: National Land Agency (Agencia Nacional de Tierras)

ANUC: The National Association of Campesino Users (Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos)

ART: Territorial Renovation Agency (Agencia de Renovación del Territorio)

AUC: United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or the paramilitaries (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia)

BACRIM: Illicit Criminal Networks (Bandas Criminales)

CCAI: Center for the Coordination of Integrated Action

CEV: The Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition, or the Colombian Truth Commission (La Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad, la Convivencia y la No Repetición)

Citizen’s Commission: Citizen’s Commission for Reconciliation and Peace in the Caribbean (Comisión Ciudadana de Reconciliación y Paz del Caribe)

CNMH: National Center for Historical Memory (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica)

CORPOICA: Colombian Corporation for Agricultural Research (Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria)

CTC: Colombian Confederation of Workers (Confederación de Trabajadores de Colombia)

CRS: Socialist Renewal Movement (Corriente de Renovación Socialista)

CSPP: Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (Fundación Comité de Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos)

ELN: National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional)

EPL: Popular Liberation Army (Ejército Popular de Liberación)

Espacio Regional: Montes de María Regional Space for Peacebuilding (Espacio Regional de Construcción de Paz de los Montes de María)

FARC-EP: Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo)

Forgotten Communities: Association of Forgotten Communities of Montes de María (Asociación de Comunidades Olvidadas de los Montes de María)

ICA: Colombian Agricultural Institute (Instituto Colombiano Agropecuaria)

INCORA: Agrarian Reform Institute (Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria)

INGO: International Nongovernmental Organization

JAC: Community Action Council (Junta Acción Comunal)

JEP: Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz)

JOPPAZ: Youth Peace Provokers of the Alta Montaña (Jóvenes Provocadores de Paz de la Alta Montaña)

M-19: 19th of April Movement (Movimiento 19 de Abril)

MIC: Roundtable for Dialogue and Coordination (Mesa de Interlocución y Concertación)

MOVICE: Movement of Victims of State-Sponsored Crimes (Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado)

OACP: Office of the High Commissioner for Peace (Oficina del Alto Comisionado para la Paz)

PAM: Peace Accords Matrix

PAR: Participatory Action Research (Investigación-Acción Participativa)

Peaceful Process: Alta Montaña Peaceful Process of Reconciliation and Integration (Proceso Pacífico de Reconciliación e Integración de la Alta Montaña)

PRT: Revolutionary Workers Party (Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores)

Sembrandopaz: Sowing Seeds of Peace (Sembrando Semillas de Paz)

Victim’s Law: Victim’s and Restitution of Land Law 1448 (La Ley de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras 1448)

Victim’s Unit: Unit for the Attention and Integral Reparations of Victims (Unidad para la Atención y Reparación Integral a las Víctimas)

ZRC: Campesino Reserve (Zona Reserva de Campesina)

ZVTN: Transitory Rural Zones for Normalization (Zonas Veredales Transitorias de Normalización)

FIGURE 1. Archives of Resistencia with Jorge Pérez. Photo by author.

TO DEFEND LIFE

An Introduction

ON AUGUST 24, 2016, THE government of Colombia and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) announced that they had reached a final peace agreement after over fifty years of war. As major news networks broadcast then President Juan Manuel Santos’s announcement from Havana, Cuba, I sat next to Jorge Pérez under the tin roof of his open-air living room in the Alta Montaña (High Mountain) of El Carmen de Bolívar, a municipality located along Colombia’s northern coast. Jorge leaned back in a handmade chair, carefully propped up against one of the posts of his house, as he recounted the history of his community (vereda).¹ Stacks of papers sat in piles around Jorge’s feet. He had placed small rocks on top of the papers to guard against the steady breeze that passed through the open living room. As he spoke, he sifted through the stacks, locating cherished and worn documents to tell his story.

I had traveled to Jorge’s house at the invitation of Larisa Zehr, an accompaniment worker from the local peacebuilding organization, Sembrandopaz. Most recently, Larisa’s work included accompanying the Alta Montaña’s historical memory process. Facilitated in collaboration with the National Center for Historical Memory (CNMH), the community-based process responded to one of the reparation measures outlined in the signed accords between the campesino movement, the Proceso Pacífico de Reconciliación e Integración de la Alta Montaña (Alta Montaña Peaceful Process of Reconciliation and Integration, shortened to Peaceful Process) and the state in 2013. Jorge formed part of the team of narrators—writers—and had begun organizing his community’s archives for the historical memory book. He had asked Larisa to come and scan the saved meeting minutes, legal proceedings, human rights violations, and records of the Junta Acción Comunal (Community Action Council, abbreviated JAC) into a cell phone application as part of that process.

Larisa and I left the urban center of El Carmen in the afternoon. Seated behind a trusted moto driver, we passed lines of jeeps full of the day’s harvest at the busy intersection of Twenty-Eighth Street. I watched campesinos unloading the jeeps and bartering with the intermediaries in charge of the storage and export centers located along the highway as we headed up the winding road to the Alta Montaña. The open grasslands characteristic of the large cattle ranches that line the lower region of El Carmen passed from view as we climbed into the Montaña’s dry-tropical rainforest. The cool air and shade from the old growth caracolí, mango, and ceiba trees provided a respite from the hot temperatures and dusty streets of El Carmen. At the highest point of the paved road, we turned off onto a steep and narrow dirt path. The base of the Colombian Marine Infantry—replete with a helicopter landing pad—came into view when we rounded the last hill before descending into the heart of the Alta Montaña. As the dirt road flattened, the peaks, valleys, marshes, rivers, and reservoirs of Montes de María spread out before us. I could glimpse the shimmering waters of the Caribbean Sea in the far distance.

The beauty of the panoramic views belied the history and memories of violence also held within the landscape. The armed conflict had taken a devastating toll on the fifty-two communities that compose the Alta Montaña. Massacres, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, selective assassinations, and massive, forced displacements form part of the litany of violence that campesinos experienced at the hands of multiple armed groups that operated in the region. The isolated and thickly forested region served as a strategic base for the FARC-EP, the Popular Liberation Army (EPL; Esperanza, Paz y Libertad), the National Liberation Army (ELN; Ejército de Liberación Nacional), the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT; Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores) as well as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC, or, paramilitaries), and the Colombian Marine Infantry. Campesinos found themselves caught in between competing armed groups over the course of decades.

Ay-o! Jorge greeted us as the motos descended the narrow path to his house. I dismounted, shaking Jorge’s hand with a warm greeting. Hundreds of fallen old-growth trees lined the steep hillside below. He followed my gaze. Here, before, these were mountains of avocado, he explained. Here, there were avocado trees that reached thirty meters high, mountain after mountain of avocado, he gestured across the barren hillsides. "I could not see the neighbor’s house. Now it is seen because all the avocado, ajá," his voice trailed off as we took in the ashen-white logs that blanketed the steep hillside.² We are talking about 6,000 hectares of avocado, Jorge continued. Since the time of my grandfather, these were farms of avocados. Imagine it! He paused, giving us time to envision the thick, green forests. This avocado farm was more than fifty years old. Look at what has been lost. Jorge shook his head. A donkey cried from the valley below, filling the space of silence, memory, and loss. Here, before, one had everything one needed, one lived well. Here, there was a massive displacement. The death of the avocado has affected everything. Rather than separate the experience of forced displacement from the death of the avocado forest, Jorge connected the two experiences as inextricably linked, lifting out the human and environmental costs of war in his narrative. He turned away from the lookout and motioned for us to take a seat next to the stacks of paper that he had carefully arranged in the open-air living room.

Despite bombings, forced displacement, and the social upheaval wrought by war, Jorge had protected and preserved his community’s history. The archives, carefully guarded and enclosed in makeshift cardboard folders, reflected the practices of campesino resistencia (resistance) found across Montes de María.³ Jorge sifted through the papers, carefully maintained throughout the years, as he spoke. His grandparents started the first school, cradled in the valley below his house. At that time, there were many children but no teachers willing to travel to the Montaña, he recalled, so, my grandparents organized the children together to teach them. It makes one very proud to know this history, to know that their legacy lives on. He pulled out an aged piece of paper—the edges worn with small smudges across the front. The page contained the names and signatures of all the Community Action Council (JAC; Junta Acción Comunal) members since the organization’s inception. He pointed to the name of his grandfather and, with his finger, traced the page until he found his own name. The signature marked an integral part of his life story, the moment when he first joined the JAC in the early 1990s. This leadership, he said, looking up from the page, is in my blood.

Violence offers only one part of the story that Jorge chooses to recount about his life and community. In his telling, the rich traditions of campesino organizing, resistencia, and agroforestry form the foundation of his narrative. Accounts that focus solely on war and suffering obscure the multigenerational struggle for peace that shapes how campesinos, like Jorge, narrate the history and territorial identity of Montes de María.⁴ Popular depictions of Montes de María as one of the territories most affected by the armed conflict not only erase the long histories of campesino organizing that have fundamentally marked the region, but also conceal the localized dynamics and consequences of the armed conflict.

Jorge turned back to the paper in his hands as he continued the story. Next to his name appeared the name of the attorney from the urban center of El Carmen who legalized members of the JAC as part of the local governance structure. The same attorney, Jorge explained, later accused the JAC president of collaboration with the guerrillas, leading to his assassination. False accusations of campesino leaders became one of the primary forms of violence that local state authorities, like the attorney, used in collaboration with the paramilitaries to maintain power and territorial control. As the campesino movement in Montes de María grew in numbers and influence, the state increasingly engaged in violent repression to undermine the collective power, built through grassroots organizing, that threatened the country’s elite political class. The criminalization of campesino organizations through the dual discourses of security and insurgency enabled the state to normalize violence against campesino social leaders.

"For many years, they said that this area was only full of guerrillas and micos (monkeys)," Jorge explained, outlining the ways in which the state denied recognition of civilians in the Alta Montaña. Dehumanizing representations of campesinos legitimized selective assassinations, helicopter bombings, and arbitrary detentions of social leaders throughout the course of the war. Such discourses also rendered more-than-human lives in the Alta Montaña disposable—collateral damage in the war against insurgency. The social and environmental devastation wrought by the war resulted in large-scale, forced displacements of campesino communities from the region.

A few families, however, remained resistant, refusing to displace to urban cities. I was part of the Asociación de Comunidades Olvidadas de los Montes de María [Association of Forgotten Communities of Montes de María, shortened to Forgotten Communities]; Jorge leaned forward in his chair as he detailed the forms of community organizing that persisted throughout the war—yet, which remain largely absent in dominant accounts of the armed conflict. Working across the Alta Montaña, the Forgotten Communities formed to make civilian life in the rural high zone visible to outside authorities. At the height of violence, members of the Forgotten Communities led nonviolent marches to the urban center of El Carmen to demand their constitutional rights as citizens. They also developed communication and collective nonviolent protection strategies, creating shrewd, early warning systems to prevent the assassinations of friends and family members.

As the hot afternoon sun shifted into warm, evening light, Larisa scanned each page of Jorge’s archives into the cell phone application. In addition, Jorge gave Larisa a five-page essay he had handwritten for the historical memory book, which focused on the role of social leaders in the Alta Montaña. He looked up, removing his bifocals. "I composed a décima [song] about what it means to be a líder social [social leader]." His voice rang out as he sang—from memory—his life story, wrapped in the poetic, ten-line stanza song. Jorge’s décima did not focus on the violence he had endured. Instead, he sang of the campesino struggle to defend life and the right to life.⁵

With evening descending, we said our goodbyes and began the journey back down to El Carmen. When we arrived at the start of the paved road that connects the Alta Montaña to the urban center, SUVs from various media news outlets lined the road. The glaring bright lights, video cameras, external generators, and crowds of newscasters that swarmed the community offered a jarring contrast to our slow afternoon of "swapping stories [echando cuentos]. Just hours before, Santos announced that the government and the FARC-EP had reached a peace deal. Reporters holding microphones stood, strategically, in front of the bullet-pocked and burned-out church that sits at the edge of the paved road to capture the reactions of the victims" to the historic news. With no internet signal, no electricity, and no television, the announcement from Havana had not reached us at Jorge’s house. Far removed, yet intimately connected, Jorge sang of the collective campesino struggle for peace at the same time televisions and radios blared Santos’s declaration of peace from Havana, Cuba.

Jorge’s intimate recollections of violence and peace, as lived and embodied, set against the distant and inaccessible backdrop of Santos’s announcement from Havana, exposes the paradox of proximity that many social leaders in Montes de María faced as Colombia ushered in a new era of postconflict. The camera spotlight, trained on spectacular displays of the historic moment, cast a shadow over and drowned out the songs of the daily and decades-long campesino struggle for territorial peace that social leaders sustained throughout the war. Although many social leaders publicly advocated for the peace accords, the signed agreement posed new challenges for those who, like Jorge, had to find creative ways to make their work seen and heard amid the clamor of the posconflicto (postconflict) that dominated the airwaves.

This book makes visible what far too often is lost in mainstream depictions of war and peace. The stories and chapters to follow trace the collective, campesino struggle to build peace as the state’s implementation process unfolded in Montes de María. With this purpose in mind, I critically examine the effects that spectacles of peace—often bound to sound bites and photo shoots—have on everyday practices of peace, lived and built in campesino communities. After noting the lack of anthropological engagement with peace as a conceptual category, anthropologist Liisa Malkki (2015) asks: What would it mean to study peace ethnographically (104)? This book responds to the concern that animates Malkki’s question. I analyze the cultural practices, socioecological relations, temporal disjunctures, historical processes, and constellations of power that structure the uneven landscape of peacebuilding in Colombia.⁶ In doing so, I advance a critical anthropology of peacebuilding as a site of struggle.

Throughout my research, campesino leaders repeatedly critiqued the state’s approach to peace within distinct temporal registers to expose the varied forms of violence that permeate the postaccord context and to make their claims to peace seen and heard. By placing campesino critiques of "los tiempos—the times" as the central starting point for ethnographic inquiry into peace, this book offers a critical assessment of the temporalities that undergird the interlocking processes of political and environmental violence. Ethnographic analysis of the temporal continuities and contestations found in Montes de María affords theoretical insight into the technologies of power, dynamics of violence, and the practices of liberation that shape the postaccord landscape in Colombia. Grounded in the campesino call to build paz sin prisa (peace without hurry), I develop an ethnographic theory of slow peace. Although slow peace is not a literal translation of paz sin prisa, I use the terms interchangeably to place campesino theories of time in conversation