Emergency in water territories: itinerant pluriversity of the Yurumanguí River

The CLACSO Working Groups on Bodies, Territories, Resistances and Emancipatory Praxis, Common Goods and Decolonial Alter-Global Methodologies , 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, marked by the unfulfilled and incomplete Peace Agreement from previous administrations; we await a total, effective, and efficient peace that aligns with our ethnic and territorial mandates.

In this direction, we observe the proliferation of group wars as a macabre part of the authoritarian and conquest system of the patriarchal capitalist system that rages in the territories of life, fostering 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 trafficking of timber from the Pacific rainforest. The most effective forms of self-governance on the river are being implemented by women. It is not merely about protecting life, but about protecting life within the territory, because we Afro-descendant communities know that without territory, without the river, there is no life (Collective of 200 Women Birthers and Caretakers of Life in the Territories, Doña Dalia Mina, Aponury, February 25, 2023).

Peace cannot be achieved from behind desks, nor through militaristic strategies. Therefore, the women's community and the full assembly emphasize the urgent need for comprehensive peace agreements directly in the territories, based on rules established by ancestral communities in connection with the territories of planetary life . Addressing the root causes of war will require exposing the businesses behind each war, each forced displacement, and their specific strategies of expulsion.

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of remembering the Ancestral University by sharing experiences between worlds in defense of life, in contrast to the outdated solutions that go through militaristic (neo)extractive green, falsely ecological authoritarianism.

We call for the creation of different conditions for 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 by global peace, capable of deeply examining the true solutions to preserve existence beyond business and false solutions based on neo-extractivism; these are countered by concrete practices, tangible solutions that harm businesses but in return safeguard the possibilities of life and existence on the planet-water.

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.