Emergency in water territories: itinerant pluriversity of the Yurumanguí River

The CLACSO Working Groups Bodies, territories, resistances y Emancipatory practices, common goods, and decolonial alter-global methodologiesThey speak out against the socio-territorial emergency situation that the communities of the Yurumanguí River, the Colombian Pacific Basins and the Farallones de Cali Park are suffering.

The river pluriversity has been a commitment to self-management and autonomy by the communities of the Afro-Andean and Afro-Pacific rivers since 2011 with the Parideros, later co-designed as the Pluriversity of the rivers, originating the pluriversities in Latin America since 2016.

On this visit, as academics, artists, activists, and ancestral communities, we are direct witnesses to the various complexities of the armed conflict in the context of a post-conflict situation in the Unfulfilled and incomplete Peace Agreement in previous government periods; already the expects a total, effective and efficient peace that is in accordance with ethnic-territorial mandates.

In this direction, We observe the proliferation of group wars as a macabre part of the authoritarian and conquest-driven patriarchal capitalist system that rages in the territories of life promoting confinement, forced displacement-exile in the thirteen rural communities of the river.

The communities along the Yurumanguí River have safeguarded their territory and water from industrial and indiscriminate fishing, open-pit mining with backhoes, the planting of monocultures of coca and African palm, and the illegal logging of timber from the Pacific rainforest. The most effective forms of self-governance on the river are being implemented by the women themselves. It is not merely about protecting life, but about protecting life in the territory, because we Afro-descendant communities know that without territory, without river, there is no life. (Collective of 200 Women Birthers and Caregivers of Life in the Territories, Doña Dalia Mina, Aponury, February 25, 2023).

Peace is not achieved from behind desks, nor through militaristic strategies; therefore, the women's community and the full assembly indicate the urgency of to make total peace agreements directly in the territories with the rules of the game proposed by the ancestral communities in link with the territories of planetary lifeGoing to the origins of war will involve making visible the businesses behind each war, each forced displacement, with their specific strategy of exile.

The pluriversity of the river remains one of the bets for re-existence that consists of remember The Ancestral University, by sharing experiences between worlds in defense of life, in contrast to outdated solutions that involve militaristic authoritarianism (neo)extractive green, falsely ecological.

We challenge the creation of codifferent conditions of peace based on the experiences of ancestral communities and the maroon forms of justice of feminine care as a novel emergency to safeguard a peace-inspired global peace, capable of reviewing in depth the true solutions to preserve existence beyond business and false solutions based on neo-extractivism; these are opposed by concrete practices, palpable solutions that damage businesses but in return safeguard the possibilities of life and existence on the water-planet.

We will be accompanying the river communities and honoring the inspiring women who champion alternative forms of justice, restorative justice, and life-saving practices. We await your responses to visit the community as part of an international caravan and to reach agreements directly in the territories with the assemblies and communities that maintain the interconnectedness of the river, the people, and the communities that safeguard peaceful life in these territories.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/19HsfkrD-dVkOmwRBbEuwtCRNJmE-pnGh/edit

March 14th 2023
CLACSO Working Groups
Bodies, territories, resistance
Emancipatory practices, common goods, and decolonial alter-global methodologies

This text expresses the position of the aforementioned Working Groups and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.