A community power that builds peace:

Imperfect peaces and transformative powers in Southern Tolima

Abstract

Colombia has a long history of violence, but it also shows a renewed capacity to resist it. Proposals from women, men, and youth that address the way they were affected by the conflict have survived and emerged, as well as various peacebuilding strategies that arose in the midst of warfare. Likewise, associative strategies have been strengthened, as in the case of the inhabitants of Chaparral, Ataco, Rioblanco and Herrera (South of Tolima), who have developed organizations of coffee producers, organizations related to the care of the environment, women's networks, young peace builders, among others. Communities that, like many others in different parts of the world, have transformed their situations by exercising a transformative power in their environments.

The research work carried out with co-researchers of social organizations of the project "School, Territory and Post-conflict" has revealed the presence of different strategies that transform power and from where peace in the territories is acquiring different nuances, until giving shape to “Pluriverses of peaces” in the South of Tolima. Based on an undisciplined and participatory methodology, the research has shown how transformative power operates as a vision of future and is embodied in transformative strategies that impact territories.