Mending the social: witnessing spirits, hurting trees and other epistemologies of pain in Colombia

Abstract

This text explores, within the framework of a land restitution process in Colombia, the importance that the link with the ancestors (with the «spirits», with the «invisible», or with «the ghostly», as acting entities) has in the process of mending the social. In other words, to recognize the territory/body damaged by war, to return to the spaces of terror and disappearance and to re-inhabit the fracture that is the product of violence. It is located specifically in the Colombian Caribbean, around the work of a network where members, men, and women of Afro-Colombian, Raizal, peasant and regional indigenous organizations participate. At the time, a network of support and collective accompaniment that emerged two decades ago as part of a process of mutual care for its members in times of forced displacement and threats.