The ecumene of the living and the dead. Bad death and territorial reparations in Bajo Atrato

Abstract

In the forests of the Bajo Atrato region, battles between guerrilla and paramilitary armies left a multitude of unburied corpses whose spirits have transformed the way in which local communities inhabit and heal their collective lands. It is argued that these spirits, along other set of experiences of suffering and pain that extend beyond the human, are a form of territorial damage. Ethnographic attention to this kind of damage is key in order to design adequate local and regional policies of peace and reconciliation.