Description
Since the signing of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the Colombian Government and FARC-EP, communities on the Colombian Pacific coast have continued to struggle in the context of evolving conflict dynamics and the encroachment of colonial racial capitalism. Their struggles are often framed either as resistance against armed groups or, increasingly, as environmental struggles. This paper offers an alternative understanding, arguing that Black communities’ struggles are neither ‘just’ reactions to external circumstances nor can be framed in terms of environmental struggles. Thinking about conflict-related forms of resistance and struggles for territory/environment as separate is, in itself, a colonial legacy and a reflection of ways of thinking grounded in the foundational dichotomies of Western (colonial) modernity. Building on decolonial scholarship and ten months-long ethnographic research, I show how these should be thought of not only as ontological struggles but as forms of relational ontologies through which different worlds are continuously performed. This is a significant analytical move that enhances our understanding of these struggles and contributes to the growing literature on relational ontologies and the pluriverse, challenging the discipline’s dominant canon.
