Abstract

NARANJO BOTERO, María Elvira. Contributions of Colombian housing activists to post-agreement peace: Participatory Action Research with neighborhood founders. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2018, vol.41, n.1, pp.157-174. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15.446/rcs.v41n1.66673.

This article synthesizes a Political Studies doctorate thesis based on Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology. The study reconstructs the memories of a housing activist organization which has operated for 58 years in Latin America in spite of state persecution and internal difficulties. The article illustrates the eviction, dispossession, uprootedness and the struggle for housing of millions of Colombians and promotes the non-repetition of this scenario for a lasting peace.

In line with the PAR methodology, the thesis looks at a collective construction with neighborhood founders and directors of the repr Nacional Provivienda (Cenaprov), an organization that represents the history of 100,000 families without homes that were able to become owners of their homes. This is a social experience based on self-managed collective actions that was silenced by hegemonic thought. Nevertheless, it has been reconstructed by its actors through a shared relection to understand the internal dynamics as well as some circumstances that influenced the organization from its origin, with perspectives on the post-agreement. With some particularities, this experience is an example of a long organizational process by homeless settlers who collectively overcame uprootedness to form a neighborhood identity and dream of a better daily life.

The central argument is that the neighborhoods founded by the Cenaprov settlers were based on a new, solidary and self-managed neighborhood model. Through resistance to state violence, most of the surviving founders have preserved their personal dignity as political subjects. Despite continuous stigmatization, they transmit their experience to the new generations, continue with alternative projects in the framework of the post-agreement and dream of a lasting and stable peace with social justice.

Keywords : homeless; housing activists; post-conflict; self-manged; urban working-class; settlements.

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