Back to the Chagra, the Stove and the Maloca: political opportunities and nonviolent repertoires of Amazonian indigenous women in Colombia

Abstract

This research analyzes the political process of the Coordination of Women, Children and Family of the OPIAC (Organization of the Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon) understanding it as part of the social movement of indigenous women in Colombia. For this purpose a qualitative documentary study was carried out  and which prioritized the archiving of the Organization itself. The research worked from culturalist theories of social movements where the feminist epistemology and the keys of the Peace Research were transversal to this analytical exercise. Finally, it was possible to understand that  amazonian indigenous women have employed repertoires of nonviolent action in which they are promoting different strategies to resist to war and to the structural violence. These strategies include the participation in the traditional institutional sphere, and also, in the autonomous scenarios of their own cultures where the ancestrality is claimed. On the other hand, political agendas put at the core the need to heal the wounds that violence has left in the body as in the soul, the recovery of the culture and the traditional knowledge leading to the praxis the “Living in a Good Way” proposal.