The Local Church’s Defence of Human and Ethnic Rights in Chocó, Colombia

Abstract

The article analyses the role of the local church in the construction of ethnic organisations in the 1970s–80s and later in the defence of human rights in the 1990s–2010s in Chocó, Colombia. It studies the transformation of their peacebuilding and humanitarian strategies influenced by liberation theology and the culture of indigenous and Afro-Colombian people. The construction of social memory through workshops has been one of the preferred tools analysed in this article due to their significance in the creation of ethnic organisations and in grassroots peacebuilding. The black social movement accompanied by the local church in Chocó has not only supported the defence of their territory as collective property in an attempt to strengthen their welfare and autonomy but as a form to resisting the violence of the conflict, particularly in the form of forced displacement. This article uses interviews, archive and participant observation in the study of this important transformation that traces one of the most important periods of the conflict in Colombia.