Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Mocoa(Putumayo,Colombia) suffered an avalanche in 2017 that devastated the city causing deaths and disappearances. The years after the peace agreement with FARC-EP(2016-2022) have felt like that traumatic night, since peace and the avalanche demonstrated the importance of rivers and life.

Paper long abstract:

Since the signing of the peace agreement, the Andean-Amazonic department of Putumayo has experienced a traumatic post-agreement, since only in Putumayo more than 194 social leaders who defended environmental causes have been assassinated. Social initiatives such as the "Guardianas del agua del Putumayo" have raised alerts about this serious panorama of violence and environmental damage in times of climate crisis.

Using the contributions of feminist geography and the political ecology of emotions, the experience of the "Guardianas del agua del Putumayo" points out the importance of questioning the extractivism and militarism that have accompanied the history of the Colombian Amazonic region, emphasizing the consequences on the body of women in the contamination, excess, scarcity and dispossession of water at the hands of the armed actors of drug trafficking, mega-mining, oil extraction and deforestation.

The "Guardianas del agua del Putumayo" denounce sexual, physical, political, and psychological violence against women in the context of environmental struggles, but they also state that a fundamental part of their struggle is their spiritual strength, based on a healing relationship with the rivers and the conception of the local philosophy of "thinking beautiful ( Pensar Bonito- Suma Yuyay)", a philosophy that seeks to dialogue own notions of well-being and dignity, understanding that for the "Guardianas del agua del Putumayo" the defense of the territory is a process of recovery and daily spiritual healing against colonialism.