Abstract
The conflict in Colombia is deep-rooted and it is the most-prolonged intrastate conflict in the Americas. Since 1946, Colombia has been fractured by armed conflict among multiple actors. This led Colombian people’s experiences and their daily lives to be narrated by the violent conflict in the country while paying little attention to peacebuilding initiatives by the people. Drawing from the testimonies they heard over their 8 years of iterative visits to Colombia, in their book Peacebuilding in Colombia: From the Lens of Community and Policy, Beth Fisher-Yoshida and Joan C. Lopez provide us with the answers to the question ‘Why aren’t things worse in Colombia?’ (p. 2). The authors intend to capture different youth-led peacebuilding initiatives in Colombia while paying great attention to arguing that youth leaders are active agents not only capable of transforming their own personal history but also the making of the country. The purpose of the book is to make the work of leaders, youth and otherwise, visible—so others who are interested in peacebuilding can learn from their experiences, and so that they also can receive the support to sustain and grow their effort for sustainable peace.
After a brief introduction in Chapter 1, they lay out their argument in Chapter 2 that is to change the dominant narrative around the one from the violence to one around the people who peacefully seek racial, class, gender, ethnic and political inclusion. They portray a history of the conflict not only from the violence that is witnessed but they also include the story of everyday practices of people to sustain life and build peace in the midst of a war.
Chapter 3 illustrates the different peacebuilding initiatives that are led by youth in their respective communities. Indeed, they amplify the voices of youth to reframe the conventional way of seeing the youth as victims or victimizers. Their intention is to approach youth from an angle that also highlights their role as providers of peace. Accounts of peacebuilding initiatives by youth in different regions deliberately urge readers to contemplate two things: the complexity of the Colombian conflict, and what it means to be a young person living amidst a long-lasting violent conflict.
In varying degrees, Chapters 4 and 5 engage with the methods Fisher-Yoshida and Lopez choose to employ in the making of this book. Their approach to working with youth leaders was multifaceted and included participatory action research (PAR), appreciative inquiry (AI), coordinated management of meaning (CMM), ethnography, participant observation and narrative analysis. The underlying reason behind each approach was well explained in the respective chapters. They were conscious of their positionality as outsiders, as researchers who are engaging with peacebuilding communities. It was clear in both their stated intention and in the way the book unfolded that they put effort into building relationships and trust, as well as making their interaction with these communities as useful as possible for their work on the ground. As the authors of the book, they weaved the testimonies of these youth leaders together with theory and their reflection on what had been told to them. It was clear the authors were not the main characters in the book, but they were also not as invisible to the point of signalling a false pretence of objectivity in their writing.
Chapter 6 makes the case for treating youth in their own right as a category of analysis. The main thesis presented in support of that was young people’s understanding of peacebuilding as an inalienable part of their lives. Different youth leaders and people in their communities in the different regions deeply correlate their peacebuilding work with joy, pleasure and community building. Explaining the importance of hanging out with peers to youth, the authors discussed the Colombian terms parchar and juantanza used by youth leaders to call together their peers for peace work. It’s the simplicity of peacebuilding work for them and the joy it brings when they are together, they described as the ‘magic happens’ (p. 92).
Art plays a crucial role in social transformation, and creative spaces serve many purposes including the healing of past traumas, igniting creative ideas and building community. Chapter 7 deals with the role of art in the peacebuilding process. It is clear throughout the chapter that when youth leaders are involved in creative projects such as music, dance, poetry and graffiti, they are getting the whole person involved physically, psychologically, emotionally and socially. It is the power of art that paves the way for this holistic engagement and encourages fuller participation, which in return increases the chances of sustained commitment and involvement.
The final sections of the book are mostly about the longevity and sustainability of the peacebuilding efforts in Colombia by the community leaders. While explaining some of the ways that community leaders manage to access resources such as the municipality’s participatory budgeting programmes, the authors point out the difficulties of accessing other sources to fund their peacebuilding initiatives. In order to inspire other peacebuilding initiatives, they showcase different inspiring social entrepreneurships. They make a compelling case regarding the need for capacity building, infrastructure development and funding to sustain peacebuilding efforts to prevent conditions from sliding back to being worse than when the intervention was first made.
As a reader, I sometimes felt that the way the book was structured was too whirlwind-like and at times very repetitive. While I understand the need to emphasize several concepts such as ‘community building is peacebuilding’, I am not sure how helpful it is to repeat it in the same context several times. Further, I feel like dividing the book into 11 different chapters contributed to the repetitive tone of the book, and I was left wondering about other ways this book could have been structured.
With that said, the book offers an incredibly relevant academic contribution to understanding the Colombian conflict from a peace lens as opposed to a violence lens. As one of their interlocutors says, ‘Please narrate me well … if you are going to narrate my story, to talk about me, please do it well’ (p. 52). Indeed, Fisher-Yoshida and Lopez do a great job of providing a platform to amplify the voices of those who have been silenced or narrated falsely for so long. With their approach to accounting for youth-led community initiatives building peace in Colombia, the book goes above and beyond being merely stories of painful violent situations and becomes a hymn for hope.
As a Turkish PhD student studying conflict analysis and management, and as a youth peace worker and activist, I think the book fills an important lacuna in the literature on the characteristics of peacebuilding and shows the importance of youth as a category of analysis. I recommend this book to all students, activists and practitioners interested in questions such as what it means to practice peacebuilding in violent contexts.