El Zapatero en la Pandemia

Por Otoniel Romero Gómez, artista colombiano y profesional de la ARN Colombia

Esta mañana un hombre de 80 años que pasaba todos los días frente a mi casa despertando al barrio con un grito quebrado pero sonoro ¡¡zapatoos!! ¡¡zapatoos!!! – en su carreta de madera lleva su taller para arreglar zapatos – volvió a pasar. Hace ocho días no se le escuchaba, desde el día que se anunció la orden de confinamiento en nuestras casas. Está mañana al volverlo a escuchar creí que todo ya había pasado. Sin embargo, esta danza macabra apenas está por empezar. Salí corriendo y guardando distancia, lo llame con afán y angustia , y le dije , casi suplicando, que se estaba poniendo en peligro, que se fuera a guardar, que por su edad y lo mortal del virus con los adultos, se estaba arriesgando a ser contagiado. Y levantando sus ojos azules y cansados, y mirándome con cierta concideración, me contestó: “Hijo, hace ocho días no recibo un centavo, no tengo ni para un pan, lo único que recibo me llega por el arreglo de algún zapato en mi cotidiano deambular por las calles de esta parte de la ciudad. Hace ocho días estoy haciendo caso, me estaba comportando como un buen ciudadano, pero hace ocho días que no recibo ni un centavo, la ayuda de la alcaldía no llega.”

A street in Cali where the cobbler was looking for work.png
La calle del zapatero, Cali, Colombia

(more…)

Confronting the Pervasiveness of Violence and Marginality in the Work of Mexican Artist Teresa Margolles

Screen Shot 2018-09-01 at 11.33.36.png

Michela Coletta, University of Warwick

Exploring the exhibition ‘Ya basta hijos de puta’ in conversation with museum curator Diego Sileo.
PAC contemporary art museum, Milan, Italy

http://www.pacmilano.it/exhibitions/teresa-margolles/

Teresa Margolles (Culiacán, 1963) creates connections through her work that meticulously yet intimately show the blurriness of boundaries: between life and death, wealth and poverty, power and marginality, us and them. Her exhibition at PAC museum of contemporary art in Milan starts in the museum courtyard, where waiting crowds are sitting or leaning on her work Table and two benches (2007), a life-size cluster made of thick concrete. They are plain-looking everyday objects, commonly found in public spaces, which people instinctively gather around to interact, communicate and socialize. But what appears to be an unremarkable and untainted object hides the traces of social violence and death: the concrete has been mixed with materials from the spot where a corpse on the border of northern Mexico was found. This act of violence, which occurred in Mexico as a result of the drug war that has plagued the country for decades, silently insinuates itself into the everyday life of a European city through the global networks of consumption.

In Margolles’ work, the body is not an abstract notion; it carries a unique personal history, even when it is not materially present as such.

(more…)

Dos mujeres: Después de ver Una mujer fantástica en Warwick

Screen Shot 2018-09-01 at 10.29.39.png

Fernando Concha Correa, University of Warwick

Ese jueves daban Una mujer fantástica. Terminé mis clases y fui al Arts Centre y esperé en la sala vacía. No tenía nada en mente, creo, o si tenía algo eran las expectativas que uno puede imaginarse. Como todo chileno vinculado a las humanidades, o como todo chileno, había oído varias versiones de la película. Apreciaciones y críticas que a veces hablaban de otras cosas, de la presidenta y del presidente electo, por ejemplo, incluso de esa vez que Chile ganó la Copa América y los de la selección fueron a la Moneda y se pusieron a gritar lunes feriado con la Bachelet sonriendo incómoda en el medio. Dos horas después estaba encerrado con un grupo de unas quince personas en el primer piso del Arts Centre y la discusión fluía un poco amorfa.

Me había quedado con esa sensación de ausencia que dejan las situaciones percibidas a través de la niebla transparente de otra lengua. Era una especie de desdoblamiento, ser dos veces espectador: de la película y de la audiencia que hablaba de cosas lejanas y cercanas a la vez. Rosa Bosch, sobre todo, con energía y agilidad saltaba de una arista a otra como una pulga y se reía y dejaba entrever fragmentos de su larga experiencia en el mundo del cine. (more…)

Fernando Botero: Regarding the pain of others

Screen Shot 2017-10-12 at 14.20.42.png

Michela Coletta, University of Warwick

Arriving at Rome’s Vittoriano museum last August on a bright early afternoon to find a large, and largely Italian, crowd patiently gathering to see the Botero retrospective exhibition was no surprise. Colombian painter and sculptor Fernando Botero has long had a very close relationship with Italy: he has made his home in the beautiful borgo of Pietrasanta for part of the year and continues to rely solely on the work of a foundry in the small Tuscan town for his sculptural creations. But perhaps most significantly he has learned one of his biggest artistic and intellectual underpinnings from the Italian early Renaissance masters: that of art as storytelling, because humans need stories. The brilliance of the almost fluorescent pink of the exhibition banner, which contrasts with the mid-1930s inscription of the Risorgimento museum, in fact reflects the convergence of diverse artistic and lived realities in the artist’s almost-60-year-long production.

Botero’s work is often referred to as having dream-like and fantastic qualities, as a form of escapism, and this latest exhibition was no exception in reinforcing that view. His now famous conflated human bodies provoke reactions ranging from subdued laughter to discomfort. Yet, the longer I observed scenes of private meetings, family gatherings, public functions and displays of political power, the more clearly was I able to access the mundane everyday details that make those trademark figures into real life characters of a very human story. Botero’s paintings are far from being fantastical. They are intimate stories about the lives of others, of which we get to become curious spectators for a few moments. Home utensils, domestic animals, elaborate clothing, a piece of jewellery, red painted toenails: this profusion of details pulls the bloated figures down to earth offering hints about why they might be sad, or happy, or reluctant to make eye contact with us.

Screen Shot 2017-10-12 at 16.11.38.png
Fernando Botero, The Street, 2000

What has just happened? What is about to happen to them? The untold is as important as what is there: a man stepping out of a door, two people crossing paths (are they strangers, or have they met before?), a woman looking over the street from a window – what calls her attention? We, the viewers, sense that there is more to what we can see: the weight of the past,  the hopes for what is to come, the burdens and the possibilities that we know are unfathomable because we ourselves are the secretive custodians of our own dreams and fears. And so we suspend judgment and we are able to empathise with the loneliness of others, which is our own.

Screen Shot 2017-10-14 at 15.00.51.png
Piero della Francesca, The Duke and Duchess of Urbino, ca. 1465-1472

The brilliant, blazing colours give form to Botero’s rounded shapes. The audacity of colour and the rigour of detail are the essential lesson that the artist internalised when he reproduced the old masters’ paintings during his time in Florence in the early 1950s. Piero della Francesca’s imposing portrait figures obscure the infinitely detailed background: the hovering eye needs to slow down as though through a magnifying glass to be able to read the real world in which the character is immersed.

Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 13.48.16.png
Fernando Botero, Crucified Christ, 2000

The significance of the background is apparent in Botero’s (to my knowledge) latest portrait of the crucifixion (2011) included in his Vía Crucis series: a green Christ on the cross pinnacled over what looks like Central Park in New York, and below, depicted with tiny precision, are scenes of everyday normality. As we indulge on the daily activities of commuters, mothers with their children and casual strollers, we are shattered by the realisation of the void of empathy. The series was exhibited with very little success –  and dismissed with some criticism – in New York, and later donated by the artist to the Antioquia museum in his native Medellín. It has since been exhibited twice in Italy, first in Palermo and later in Rome. Between this and his earlier portraits of Christ on the cross, in 2005 Botero produced the controversial Abu Ghraib series based on the accounts of the tortures that occurred in the Iraqi war prison in 2003. The series, only belatedly acclaimed by the North American liberal critics, was first exhibited at Palazzo Venezia in Rome that same year, while only a year later was Botero able to exhibit it in the USA among great controversies.

“Botero’s representations of the pain of others seem to warn us about this: nothing can be truly understood without being lived and so he constantly reminds us that he is able to show us only part of the story.”

Screen Shot 2017-10-12 at 16.07.49.png
Fernando Botero, paintings from the Abu Ghraib series, 2005 (left) and the Vía Crucis series, 2011 (right)

Arthur Danto, in a November 2006 article for The Nation, recognised one feature of the Abu Ghraib series that seemed to redeem Botero’s contribution to contemporary art in his view: the artist’s ability to “immerse us in the experience of suffering”. What Danto, and a lot of other critics, failed to perceive is the fact that this is not new at all to Botero’s work; in fact, his entire artistic production is about human pain through the lens of every day life, full of loss, inadequacy, yearning, promise, and farcical absurdity. Danto resurrected an old, and as urgent as ever, polemic on the value of photographs to instil sentiments of empathy and commended Botero for achieving just that through his paintings. Can the pain of others be understood through images? And can these representations produce true empathy between human beings?

Susan Sontag was skeptical about the power of photography to achieve that. This is where Botero’s magnified, floating figures create a sense of emotional distance for the spectator to be able to engage with their pleas without judgment. These paintings create a sense of pathos close perhaps to the emotional connection that materialises between theatre performers and their audience: there is as much through what we can see as there is through the mysterious silence of an ajar door, a half empty glass or an evasive stare. Susan Sontag reflected on the impossibility of replacing experience, and indeed what deeply worried her was the fact that modernity allowed people to feel that they know something before, or without, experiencing it. Botero’s representations of the pain of others seem to warn us about this: nothing can be truly understood without being lived and so he constantly reminds us that he is able to show us only part of the story. The pain of others does not become more easily intelligible, but we may become more human.

Boquitas Pintadas revisited

Screen Shot 2017-07-19 at 16.11.39.png

Sofía Mercader, University of Warwick

In the Wikipedia article about Boquitas Pintadas, Manuel Puig’s novel from 1969, the fictional character of Juan Carlos Etchepare is surprisingly described as the main figure of the book. Although the male character is certainly at the centre of the love affairs unfolding in the fictional town of Coronel Vallejos, where most of the storyline is situated, the female characters are the ones that hold the protagonism in the novel. Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia highlighted in numerous occasions Puig’s exceptional ability to capture orality. Even more exceptional was, I think, his ability to reproduce the female universe of his own time. Women’s perspective is suggested from the title on, which refers to a feminine universe: the make up, the seduction symbolised by female coloured lips, the diminutive ‘boquitas’. Taking distance from this reference, in its English version the book was entitled Heartbreak Tango, probably inspired by the fragments of Alfredo Le Pera’s tango lyrics that introduce each one of the novel’s 16 chapters (with the sole exception of chapter 15, which is headed by a fragment of Agustín Lara’s bolero ‘Azul’).

Screen Shot 2017-07-19 at 16.12.18.pngHeartbreak, on the other side, reflects the novel’s theme: the impossibility of long lasting love for all the characters. Nené, Juan Carlos’ official girlfriend, ends up getting married with a man she does not love. Nené’s friend, Mabel, who had maintained a secret affair also with Juan Carlos, gets conveniently married with a man she is not interested in at all, but who provides for her. Raba, a school friend of Nené and Mabel, who is in a lower class position, gets pregnant by a man who rejects her love. The entire microcosm of a small town of the Buenos Aires Province is reconstructed through these life stories. The social importance of marriage, the value given to chastity and virginity, the jealousy, class differences, and gossip are all dramatically depicted in the novel. To some extent, Puig’s novel could be understood as a critique of the morality of 30’s and 40’s Argentina, in which hypocrisy and conservative values were inevitably imposed onto women, especially in small villages distant from, perhaps, more progressive urban centres. However, this critique remains respectful of the thoughts, feelings and emotions of the female characters who, rather than rebelling against the status quo, reproduce it and help perpetuate it.

[Puig’s] critique remains respectful of the thoughts, feelings and emotions of the female characters who, rather than rebelling against the status quo, reproduce it and help perpetuate it.

But what makes Boquitas Pintadas a novel that captures the full attention of the reader, what makes it so appealing and unique is its singular narrative strategy. The novel adopts the folletín format, a very early antecedent of TV series, and each chapter is an entrega, an instalment or episode. Within these chapters, the narrative abandons the typical prose style to include different registers: obituaries, letters, the monologue of a fortune teller, the monologue of a confession, and a beautiful stream of consciousness, riddled with bolero lyrics (‘Juan Carlos, si puedes tu con Dios hablar, que olvidarte no pude te responderá’), at the end. The achieved effect in the reader is remarkable, not only because there is texture to the plot, but mostly because Puig virtuously manages the different languages with which the novel is composed. This exceptional ability explains Piglia’s fascination with Puig: according to the former the latter was one of the very few real avant-garde Argentine writers, by virtue of his technical and experimental writing style.

On the contrary, Vargas Llosa (whose Pantaleón y las visitadoras owes much to Boquitas Pintadas in my opinion), criticised Puig for his lack of literary knowledge. Although the Nobel prize argued that Puig was a brilliant writer, he considered his ‘light’ literature as based on images, just like cinema, and therefore as a work that will not survive in the future, as for him: ‘ideas and not images allow books to pass the test of time’. Vargas Llosa might be right about the visual power of Puig’s novels. After all, it is a well known fact that Puig loved cinema and Hollywood stars, and it is undeniable that his literature reflects to some extent that admiration. But Vargas Llosa might be wrong about the endurance of Puig’s literature, he might be still hurt by Puig’s comparison of Vargas Llosa with the actress Esther Williams, ‘tan disciplinada y aburrida’ in a famous list where Puig compared Hollywood actresses with Latin American writers. For himself, Puig chose Julie Christie: ‘Una gran actriz pero al encontrar al hombre de sus sueños (Warren Beatty) no actúa más’, he stated. Perhaps, as the tragic female characters of Boquitas Pintadas, he was also hoping to find the man of his dreams.

 

In memoriam – Juan Goytisolo

Screen Shot 2017-06-05 at 18.55.24.png
Juan Goytisolo, 1931-2017

Alison Ribeiro de Menezes, University of Warwick

I emerge from the Métro at Bonne Nouvelle and head up the Boulevard Poissonnière towards the Le Gran Rex, feeling as if I have suddenly been transported right into the pages of Paisajes después de la batalla. An eager 26 year old about to finish my doctorate on Juan Goytisolo, I’m on my way to interview the writer I’ve spent the last three and a half years reading and thinking about. What strikes me, though, is that for an author best known for having thrown off the shackles of social realism in the 1960s, in favour of a heavily introverted and metafictional style, the urban fabric that I’ve read about in Paisajes springs up magically before my eyes.

Two decades on, it seems clear that Goytisolo’s writing is more strongly marked by a sense of place than perhaps the postmodernist readings of the 1980s and 1990s were willing to admit. And not just urban places such as the Sentier in Paris, which Goytisolo imagined plastered with graffiti in Arabic in Paisajes, or Tangiers, the subversive protagonist whose streets featured in the magnificent Don Julián, and Djemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakesh, the heart of Makbara. A sense of place, of entangled identities, and of the problems of fighting over these also pervades Goytisolo’s wonderful dispatches from Sarajevo, Chechnya, Palestine.

Goytisolo is of course best known for his cultural subversion of the Spanish literary tradition, and for making his sexuality a defiant rebellion against all normativity. But one of his most interesting pieces is perhaps one of his least read: ‘In memorium F.F.B’, a mock obituary on the occasion of the death of dictator Francisco Franco which can be found in Libertad, libertad, libertad. I always use this short piece when teaching students about the Franco Regime, often in tandem with the opening of Carmen Martín Gaite’s El cuarto de atrás. Both were writers whose lives were dominated by dictatorship, marked by its intellectual poverty, and the struggle of the imagination to open up alternative vistas.

Goytisolo’s In memoriam expressed enormous bitterness towards Franco. My own here expresses admiration for a writer whose best works will stand the test of time. I recently reread Señas de identidad  while studying it with my students at Warwick, and I was struck by how relevant its warning against propaganda and fake history still is.

Goytisolo’s in memoriam expressed enormous bitterness towards Franco. My own here expresses admiration for a writer whose best works will stand the test of time. I recently reread Señas de identidad while studying it with my students at Warwick, and I was struck by how relevant its warning against propaganda and fake history still is. The great Spanish novelists of the 60s and 70s seem to have fallen out of fashion, yet their message about deconstructing false narratives and exposing the fallacies of received opinion has never been more necessary.

SPECIAL FEATURE: Memorias en Red

Screen Shot 2017-06-05 at 07.02.31.png

Hace veinte años sólo un acontecimiento de la historia de España producía en nosotras tanta o mayor curiosidad que la guerra civil española. Quienes alcanzamos la mayoría de edad en torno al cambio de siglo queríamos saber qué había pasado durante ese proceso fundamental cuyas imágenes se correspondían a nuestros ojos con las de aquel documental de Victoria Prego que, editado en cintas VHS y distribuido por El País, llenaba las paredes del salón de las más afortunadas. Dispuestas a verlo de cabo a rabo, el relato atropellado de la voz en off de Prego y la sucesión acelerada de imágenes, nos sumía en una profunda confusión. Eran las mismas imágenes que repetidamente veíamos en televisión cuando se hablaba de aquel proceso, pero lo que allí se contaba carecía de sentido para nosotras. Esa decepción se sumaba a la de no haber estudiado la guerra civil española, pese a que formaba parte del currículo de Historia de 3º de BUP.

A partir del año 2000 las imágenes y referencias a las fosas del franquismo comenzaron a multiplicarse en el espacio público y aquel relato sobre la transición, que se nos había antojado confuso, empezó a resquebrajarse. Visiones críticas con el proceso político de transición y narraciones alternativas a la que se consolidó en la post-dictadura aparecieron tempranamente (Vidal-Beneyto 1981, Passamar 2015), pero no tuvieron gran impacto. El debate sobre la transición se ha azuzado sin embargo durante los últimos quince años al calor de las disputas en torno a la guerra civil y sobre qué lugar debían ocupar las víctimas del franquismo en un régimen democrático. En el contexto de eclosión de las reivindicaciones en torno a la llamada “memoria histórica” se han articulado diversas relecturas de aquel proceso.

[…]

En una coyuntura en que plataformas ciudadanas y viejos y nuevos partidos políticos que gobiernan municipios y regiones están impulsando otros relatos, el presente debate está motivado por el deseo de explorar qué usos políticos se están haciendo de la transición española y qué otros se podrían hacer y al servicio de qué proyectos. Nos preguntamos qué lugar ocupan hoy las luchas sociales que debilitaron al franquismo y cómo aquellas experiencias sirven o podrían servir, más allá de la idealización y el victimismo, como referente para otras experiencias. Queremos problematizar asimismo el propio término de “transición” y ver qué connotaciones conlleva y cómo permite o limita formas distintas de pensar el pasado y construir el futuro. Así pues, nos interrogamos sobre lo que nos han contado de la transición y sobre lo que no nos han contado. Nos preguntamos qué relatos perviven de la transición y a qué intereses responden. ¿Qué memorias de aquel proceso y de aquellas luchas sociales sobreviven hoy en el espacio público y por qué? ¿Qué iniciativas y prácticas, desde la investigación, el arte, o la vida cotidiana subvierten las representaciones dominantes de la transición y cómo lo hacen?

To access the full text and website click here.


A petición popular, hemos decidido alargar el plazo de apertura del II Foro virtual de MemorÁgora: “La Transición: ¿qué hacemos con ella?” para que podáis compartir vuestras reflexiones en el debate durante un mes más.

El foro permanecerá abierto hasta el 30 de junio, así que ya no tenéis excusa. ¡Animaos a participar!

La deforestación sigue golpeando a América del Sur

Screen Shot 2017-06-05 at 18.28.05.png

Eduardo Gudynas, CLAES

La pérdida de bosques sigue siendo uno de los mayores problemas ambientales en América del Sur. Los datos más recientes muestran que, lejos de detenerse, la deforestación tropical sigue su marcha y aumentó en la Amazonia.

Los nuevos registros de pérdida de bosques en la Amazonia llamada “legal” en Brasil, indican un nuevo aumento. En el período de agosto de 2015 a julio de 2016 volvió a subir, alcanzando los 798 900 has. El año anterior la cifra era de 620 mil has. Esto representa un aumento de 71 % en comparación al 2004, según el Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Especiales (INPE). La mayor pérdida de bosques ocurrió en el estado de Amazonas (54 % del total), seguido por Acre 47% y Pará 41%.

Aunque las actuales cifras están muy por debajo de los picos de deforestación de 2003-4 en la amazonia brasileña, el problema es que se acumula lo perdido este año con lo deforestado en años anteriores.

En Brasil, como en los demás países, la expansión de la agricultura intensiva es una de las principales causas de deforestación. Por ejemplo, el programa Mighty Earth ha analizado la situación en ese país, encontrando que en las zonas de las sabanas arboladas donde opera la megacorporación de agroalimentos Cargill, se perdieron alrededor de 130 mil has de bosques entre 2011 y 2015. Mighty Earth también halló que en zonas donde actúa Bunge, otro gigante agrícola, se perdieron más de 567 mil has en ese mismo periodo.

Si bien en los países vecinos los indicadores son menos detallados, toda la información disponible apunta en el mismo sentido de una grave pérdida de bosques nativos. En Bolivia, se estima una pérdida de 350 mil has, en promedio, cada año desde 2011, según el Centro de Documentación e Información Bolivia (CEDIB). Esa cifra ha aumentado desde las 148 mil has deforestadas anualmente en los años noventa y las 270 mil has registradas en promedio durante la década del 2000.

En Perú, un relevamiento reciente muestras que se han perdido 1800 000 has de bosques amazónicos entre el 2001 y el 2015. Dicho de otro modo, casi dos millones de hectáreas en un lapso de 15 años. Los picos de deforestación tuvieron lugar en el 2005, el 2009 y el 2014.

En datos provistos por el Proyecto de Monitoreo de la Amazonía Andina (MAAP), se indica que las principales causas de la pérdida de bosques son la tala, el avance de la agricultura de pequeña y mediana escala, pero también la de gran escala, la reconversión a tierras de pasturas para la ganadería, la minería ilegal, los cultivos de coca, y las obras de infraestructura, como las carreteras.

Las zonas más afectadas en Perú están en la Amazonia, en las regiones de Huánuco y Ucayali, pero también existen otros sitios degradados en los departamentos de Madre de Dios y San Martín.

En Colombia, los datos más recientes muestran una pérdida de más de 120 mil has de bosques en 2015. Esa superficie deforestada es menor a la del año anterior (más de 140 mil has en 2014), pero de todos modos muestra que el proceso continúa. Según el Ideam, para el año 2015, el 60 % de la deforestación nacional se concentra en cinco departamentos: Caquetá, Antioquia, Meta, Guaviare y Putumayo.

En Argentina continúa el problema de la deforestación, con el agravamiento que un tercio ocurre dentro de áreas protegidas, las que supuestamente servirían para proteger los bosques. Según Greenpeace, el 80% de la pérdida de bosques ocurre en Santiago del Estero, Formosa y Chaco, en el norte del país.

Por lo tanto, la tendencia que se observa es que las mayores selvas, como la Amazónica, así como otros bosques tropicales y subtropicales, como el Cerrado o el Chaco, están gravemente amenazados. Cada año se pierden seguramente más de un millón de hectáreas de bosques en esos países, y con ello toda la biodiversidad que albergan, desde otras plantas a una enorme variedad de animales. Esto impone severos impactos ecológicos para miles de especies de insectos, aves, mamíferos, etc. La deforestación de cada año se suma a las de los años anteriores, ya que los planes de restauración y reforestación son débiles y limitados, y a que los tiempos de recuperación de un bosque son muy largos.

For the full article click here.

SPECIAL FEATURE: Chocolate de Paz Documentary Screening at Warwick

Screen Shot 2017-06-05 at 17.20.36.png

Extract from interview with co-director Gwen Burnyeat

The policies of the state have always been aimed at violence, because for the governments of Colombia maintaining the war is business. It’s beneficial to big businessmen, so it’s a very big challenge, it’s a process that will take many years. Hopefully one day we will see peace, but I think there are lots of obstacles

The Peace Community

I have been visiting the Peace Community and talking to members about how they perceive national-level political developments for over four years. As part of my research as an anthropologist, I have been talking to them about the peace process which began in October 2012 between the FARC and the government of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018).

The Peace Community is comprised of some 900 farmers who live in eleven settlements scattered across the low parts of the Abibe mountain range, seven in the department of Antioquia and four in the department of Córdoba. The settlements are between two hours and two days’ walk or mule-ride from each other. They are one of the groups that have suffered the most human rights violations in Colombia. They have lived through massacres, multiple forced displacements, selective assassinations of leaders and stigmatisation in local and national press. In contrast to three previous failed attempts to negotiate with the FARC, the current peace process has emphasised the importance of including as protagonists the more than seven million victims of the armed conflict (about 15 percent of the population). This emphasis has been celebrated as ground-breaking by many NGOs and international bodies and has set the bar for future models of conflict resolution around the world. Additionally, the first partial agreement on agrarian reform, published by the parties in May 2013, stipulates the need for a “territorial approach” in order to address differentially the needs in the regions of Colombia and permit community participation in the formulation of development policies.

But how much of what goes on at top level politics filters down to the people who are supposed to benefit? The sceptical narratives that I have heard from many members of the Peace Community, reflect the common perceptions of many victims’ groups and other sectors of society around the country.

Screen Shot 2017-06-05 at 18.23.22.png
Debate with co-director Gwen Burnyeat at Warwick after the screening of Chocolate de Paz

To read the full interview click here.