Extracting Displacement: Material Heritage, Extractivism, Paramilitarism, and La Guardia Indígena in Colombia

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Landscapes in Dispute, Territorial Futures: Restitution and Reparation in the Face of Enclosure, Industrialization, and Extractivism", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The legacy of colonial tensions fueled by resource extraction continues to affect numerous aspects of Indigenous-Nation state relationships in Colombia. Franco (2017) points out these tensions concerning dominant academic interpretations of material heritage in Cauca, a territory impacted by an extensive history of armed violence against Indigenous and rural inhabitants. Between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Nasa Indigenous community in Colombia's Cauca region pioneered the peaceful solidarity movement known as the Guardia Indígena as a “life plan” to secure autonomy and self-determination in their territories (Sandoval Forero, 2008, p. 61). Their struggle for peace-building amidst the backdrop of the Colombian nation-state has prompted a growing solidarity movement, inspiring other Indigenous, Campesino, and Afro-descendant communities to form their own Guardias. This paper delves into the interplay of extractivism, paramilitarism, and material heritage in Cauca to consider how Indigenized historical archaeological investigation (Piñacué Achicué 2009) can contribute to human rights processes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025   •
• Landscapes in Dispute, Territorial Futures: Restitution and Reparation in the Face of Enclosure, Industrialization, and Extractivism

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Contact(s): Nicole Haddow