Contesting double displacement: internally displaced <i>campesinos</i> and the social production of urban territory in Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

Abstract. This article offers an empirical account of the emotionally charged processes involved in the social production of territory. I draw from ethnographic interviews with displaced leaders of socio-territorial movements in Medellín, Colombia, who are resisting what I call double displacement. First, they were displaced from the Colombian countryside due to conflict and now, decades later, they are again being displaced, this time from their informal settlements due to urban development. Founders of settlements are now leaders of social movements, who reside on the periphery of the city and make claims to their neighborhoods using the slogan that they have a “right to the territory”. I examine this case of double displacement to demonstrate the emotional and political aspects of re-territorialization by non-state actors at the urban scale. I argue that by applying a socio-territorial approach to examining the impact of double displacement, we recognize non-state territorialization as a realization and expansion of social power.

Beyond displacement: territorialization in the port city of Buenaventura, Colombia

“…In turn, this may result in overlapping territorialities, defined as 'the use and control of territory for political, social and economic ends', undertaken and contested by diverse actors with claims to the same spatial area, including the state but also civil society and other actors (Agnew & Oslender, 2013, p. 123). Highlighting the unstable nature of the state's authority where territorial struggles occur (López, 2019), this reinforces the notion that, within a given territory, '[m]ultiple spatial relationships and relational constructions of power are produced' (Clare et al, 2018, p. 306). In this sense, then, power is central to territorial processes, as part of social relations that produce territory (Fernandes, 2005, cited in Halvorsen et al, 2019, p. 1455; see also Zibechi, 2008).…”

“…These threats of potential and actual territorial struggle are expressive of the 'double displacement' described by López (2019), as informal neighbourhoods established by displaced communities are dispossessed or evicted. Yet, while territorialization usually entails the appropriation or production of territory, de-territorialization does not necessarily always entail outright displacement, but may relate to dynamics which are spatially and temporally diffuse, including loss of control over land, and consequent distortion of social and productive processes (Oslender, 2004a).…”

“…Inhabitants of the city's low-income neighbourhoods, especially at the water's edge, are subject to regular threats of eviction and displacement from armed actors and the state, sometimes overlapping in the context of port expansion (Jenss, 2020). For many this constitutes a double displacement (López, 2019), as they have come to the city after expulsion from their rural lands. At the same time, communities have mobilized to resist such processes and defend urban territory which they have been involved in producing, through processes of re-territorialization.…”

‘Volviendo a Vivir’ (coming back to life): Urban trauma, activism and building emancipatory futures

“…However, urban growth in Colombia is also a result of violence and internal displacement arising from armed conflict over five decades between left wing guerrilla, right wing paramilitaries, the Colombian government and organised crime groups who are often involved in drug trafficking (Arango-Vargas, 2021;Lo´pez, 2019).…”

Maroon Socioterritorial Movements

“…T he reading of socioterritorial movements constitutes an emerging southern approach to understanding geographies of social change that examines how campesino (small-scale farmers) and indigenous groups in Latin America produce space to achieve their political goals (Manc ¸ano Fernandes 2005;Halvorsen, Fernandes, and Torres 2019;L opez 2019). These studies emphasize actors who mobilize counterhegemonic or subaltern territories that resist capitalism and the state (Manc ¸ano Fernandes 2005Bryan 2012;Zibechi 2012;Haesbaert 2013;Lopes de Souza 2015;Courtheyn 2018).…”