June 25, 2020

International Politics and Conflict Resolution

Teresa Almeida Cravo

The 2016 Final Peace Agreement signed between the government of Colombia and the guerilla group FARC-EP was a historical moment that put an end to a protracted conflict that lasted more than 50 years. Although the negotiations took place between the two parties during four years (2012-2016), in the picture of the signature of the agreement there were a dozen of indigenous and black representatives that managed to join the negotiations in the very last months. They were in the picture because they managed to negotiate that very same day the inclusion of an Ethnic Chapter that included the respect for all their ethnic-territorial rights historically acquired and secured, and whose implementation would be in line with their notion of autonomy and self-government, namely by consulting with them and also guaranteeing ethnic participation in peace policies and institutions. How did these ethnic identities come into play during the peace agreement and the implementation phase between the government of Colombia and the FARC? Drawing from decolonial and post-structural studies, this thesis looks into how peacemaking and peacebuilding can reproduce (or not) certain power structures that are already in place in post-colonial countries and societies, and in turn how these marginalized peoples' practices of resistance cope, defy, instrumentalize, and even overcome them. Based on the fieldwork conducted in Colombia during fifteen months, this dissertation explores first how these ethnic peoples worked their way into the negotiations by both mobilizing nationally and internationally and, second, to what extent the precepts of the Ethnic Chapter were taken into account during the first two years of the implementation phase. In particular, the thesis focuses on how the Development Programs with a (Ethnic) Territorial-Based Focus (PDET) were designed in the department of Chocó among government agents and ethnic-territorial organizations. This work argues that it was the agency of the ethnic peoples, their historical capacity to resist and mobilize, and their capacity to join forces between black and indigenous peoples what allowed them to pressure the government to invite them to the negotiations and include the Ethnic Chapter. However, that unprecedented moment of the negotiations represented a window of opportunity that was then closed during the implementation phase, as the colonial structures of power, that have historically relegated their identities, knowledges, and ways of being, flourished once again. Despite the fact that ethnic-territorial organizations gained some space within different institutions in charge of the implementation, they were not consulted for the majority of the agreement's subsequent legislation and the centralist logic of the government prevailed. In the design of the PDET in particular, although large segments of the population, including ethnic groups, participated in the assemblies, their worldviews did not transcend from their local realities to the central government of the country; instead, time constraints, technical procedures, and the government agency's know-how have so far dominated the whole process and limited an intercultural dialogue.

Keywords: Decolonial peace, peace processes, Colombia/Chocó, ethnic chapter, indigenous and black identities