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Performative Reintegration: Applied Theatre for Conflict Transformation in Contemporary Colombia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

MARÍA ESTRADA-FUENTES
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Abstract

Civil wars and internal armed conflicts are commonly followed by transitional justice processes known as Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration programmes. Focusing on the social reintegration of ex-combatants in Colombia, this article examines the role of embodiment and secondary care in conflict transformation, and outlines the process of incorporating creative and embodied practice as core elements of transitional justice mechanisms. It discusses the relational qualities of applied theatre, policy development and implementation to demonstrate how embodied practice enables peace-building practitioners and ex-combatants to develop a better understanding of how affective transactions and emotional states shape transitional societies. In so doing, this article discusses some of the challenges of devising sustainable arts-based interventions when working with communities that have been significantly affected by war.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , October 2018 , pp. 291 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2019 

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Footnotes

Feedback offered on early versions of this article presented at Magical Dispossessions: Nature, Capital and Representation in Colombia, University of Cambridge (2017); at Performance Studies International, Hamburg (2017); and at European Theatre Perspectives, Wroclaw (2016) helped advance the ideas for this article. I also benefited from conversations with Felipe Cervera, Rebecca Earle, Silvija Jestrovic, Yvette Hutchison, James Thompson, Milija Gluhovic, Bishnupriya Dutt, Shrinkhla Sahai and Janelle Reinelt. I am very grateful for Paul Rae's generous comments on multiple drafts of this text. I am also in debt to my reviewer for the detailed feedback and thought-provoking suggestions on how to develop this article.

References

Notes

2 United Nations, ‘Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards’ (United Nations, 2006).

3 Nilsson, Anders, Reintegrating Ex-combatants in Post-conflict Societies (Stockholm: Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), 2005)Google Scholar.

4 Dayton, Bruce W. and Kriesberg, Louis, Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding: Moving from Violence to Sustainable Peace (London: Routledge, 2009)Google Scholar. For informative accounts on the diversity of global challenges and approaches to reintegration see Ozerdem, Alpaslan and Podder, Sukanya, eds., Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Nussio, Enzo, ed., Desarme, Desmovilización y Reintegración de Excombatientes: Política y Actores del Postconflicto, vol. 77, Colombia Internacional (Bogotá: Universidad de Los Andes, 2013)Google Scholar.

5 Lederach, John Paul, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 María Estrada-Fuentes, ‘Affective Labors: Love, Care, Solidarity in the Social Reintegration of Female Ex-combatants in Colombia’, in Janelle Reinelt and María Estrada-Fuentes, eds., Lateral (2016), at http://csalateral.org/issue/5-2/affective-labors-love-care-solidarity-colombia-estrada-fuentes, accessed 16 October 2018; María Estrada-Fuentes, ‘Becoming Citizens: Loss and Desire in the Social Reintegration of Guerrilla Ex-combatants in Colombia’, in Bishnupriya Dutt, Janelle Reinelt and Shrinkhla Sahai, eds., Gendered Citizenship: Manifestations and Performance (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 271–89.

7 The AUC was an umbrella paramilitary organization. Founded in 1997, it brought together multiple counterinsurgent groups that were active throughout the country. The AUC disarmament and demobilization process took place between 2003 and 2006.

8 ARN, ‘La Reintegración En Colombia “Una Oportunidad lo Cambia Todo”’, at http://www.reincorporacion.gov.co/es/la-reintegracion/Cifras/Hoja%20de%20datos.%20Marzo%20de%202018.pdf, accessed 16 October 2018.

9 In the pilot outline we envisioned working with no more than twenty participants, and fourteen was an ideal number.

10 The ARN provided the working space, a spacious room in a state-run building in the city centre equipped with a good sound system, pens and notebooks for all the participants, snacks, coffee and tea. I provided snacks and a large piece of fabric for some of the activities.

11 In 2012 I worked in an NGO arts-based reintegration programme for former child soldiers. Over the course of seven months I was part of a team that included two psychologists (one of whom was training to become an art therapist), a social worker, artists (another dancer, an actor, a publicist and a circus artist), a drama therapist and a philosopher. We worked through the multiple pitfalls and successes of designing and implementing arts-based methods specifically tailored for approximately a hundred former combatants who, due to their age, are considered victims of forced recruitment. My work was mostly focused on providing care and support to female ex-combatants. See the UN Cape Town Principles for more information on the definition of child soldiers: Unicef, Cape Town Principles and Best Practices (Cape Town: Unicef, 1997).

12 My deepest gratitude goes to Alejandro Garzón López and Ottoniel Romero for providing all the support in this pilot study, and to the workshop participants for their enthusiastic involvement in this project. I also appreciate Alejandro's generous comments on an early draft of this article.

13 Sheila Preston, Applied Theatre: Facilitation: Pedagogies, Practices, Resilience (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

14 John Paul Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2003).

15 James Thompson, ‘Towards an Aesthetics of Care’, RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 20, 4 (2015), pp. 430–41.

16 James Thompson, International Federation for Theatre Research Conference Keynote, Belgrade, 11 July 2018.

17 John Paul Lederach, ‘On Space: Life in the Web’, in Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Sould of Building Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 75–86; Preston, Applied Theatre, p. 61.

18 Founded in 1964, the ELN is rooted in the Liberal guerrilla movements of the first half of the twentieth century and was deeply influenced by the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the success of the rebels of the Sierra Maestra. Initially comprising mostly students, members of workers’ unions and intellectuals, this group was also influenced by the thought and work of Marxist Christians in an early stage of liberation theology. The group has participated in several peace dialogues with the Colombian government since the 1980s. Dissident factions of the ELN demobilized during the 1990s. The group is still active and is the largest guerrilla organization in the Americas. Since 2017 they have been in peace dialogues with the Colombian government.

19 Following a failed peace negotiation with the FARC, in 2002 Álvaro Uribe Vélez was elected president. His hard stance against guerrilla organizations was conceptualized within the frameworks of the global war on terror. Guerrilla organizations were therefore conceptualized solely as terrorist organizations, and accordingly there was no internal armed conflict but instead ‘just a terrorist threat against democracy’. In this context, Uribe Vélez did not recognize that there were victims of the armed conflict because the latter did not exist.

20 Mary Starks Whitehouse, ‘Creative Expression in Physical Movement is Language without Words’, in Patrizia Pallaro, ed., Authentic Movement: A Collection of Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow (London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2000), pp. 33–40, here p. 40.

21 In 2011 and as part of planning the workshop I was given a DVD with a documentary of a six-month artistic project called The Future, Our Stage. This project explored ideas of reconciliation and resilience among ex-combatants using a combination of dance, music and theatre and provides a good example of how art practice is conceptualized and used as part of the reintegration programme. The documentary is now accessible via YouTube. See Agencia Colombiana para la Reintegracion (ACR), ‘El Futuro, Nuestro Escenario’, 30 January 2013, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=irmRgKJFeU8, accessed 16 October 2018.

22 James Thompson, Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

23 Denov, Myriam and Marchand, Ines, ‘“One Cannot Take Away the Stain”: Rejection and Stigma among Former Child Soldiers in Colombia’, Peace and Conflict Journal of Peace Psychology, 20, 3 (2014), pp. 227–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baines, Erin K., Buried in the Heart: Women, Complex Victimhood and the War in Northern Uganda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 I made audio recordings of the discussions that took place at the end of each session with authorization of the participants, and these have been used privately and for the purpose of this research only.

25 Claid, Emilyn, ‘Still Curious’, in Carter, Alexandra and O'Shea, Janet, eds., The Routledge Dance Studies Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 133–43Google Scholar, here pp. 133–4.

26 Ibid., pp. 135–6.

27 ‘Que los cuerpos hablan, que tú eres parte de tu historia, y tu cuerpo es parte de tu historia.’ All translations are my own.

28 Beausoleil, Emily, ‘Dance and Neuroscience: Implications for Conflict Transformation’, in LeBaron, Michelle, MacLeod, Carrie and Ackland, Andrew Floyer, eds., The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement, and Neuroscience (Chicago, IL: American Bar Association, 2013), pp. 3–14Google Scholar, here pp. 3–6.

29 ‘Y en lo laboral, entender que una mirada puede desestructurar cualquier tipo de agresividad que se tenga. Poder con el lenguaje no verbal transmitir cosas, y poder también enseñar al otro a que si yo no lo estoy enjuiciando con mi lenguaje no verbal, él pueda tener como la apertura de, y tener la posibilidad de dejarse explorar, pero que esa exploración sea con respeto. Que si yo tengo la autonomía de preguntar y de venir a develar muchas cosas en ese espacio con esa persona, esa persona sienta la confianza de que puede permitírselo, que es vulnerable en ese momento, pero que no va a tener ningún riesgo dentro de ese espacio.’

30 ‘Algunos tienen heridas en su cuerpo, y las ocultan. Algunos tienen una postura… seño fruncido, eso da cuenta de con qué carga vienen. Y a veces uno no ve al otro como lo tiene que ver sino uno hace de pronto una proyección de los miedos que uno también va como reintegrador entonces eso le permite a uno como ver al otro tal y como es, con que viene y también como… Porque ellos a su vez están mirando qué tanta proyección de confianza uno tiene hacia ellos, entonces pues pienso que es bonito esa comunicación.’

31 ‘Poder permitir que nuestros participantes logren salir de esa oscuridad en que se encuentran, sobretodo los que acaban de llegar.’

32 Schechner, Richard, ‘Performers and Spectators Transported and Transformed’, Kenyon Review, 3, 4 (1981), pp. 83–113Google Scholar.

33 The partnership is funded by the University of Warwick International Partnership Fund. It is a joint initiative between the School of Theatre and Performance Studies (Estrada-Fuentes) and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (Alison Ribeiro de Menezes) at the University of Warwick, in partnership with the Department of Art at the Universidad de Los Andes (Lucas Ospina) and the ARN (Alejandro Garzón López), both institutions based in Bogotá, Colombia. For more information on this project see https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/research/colombiatransformation, accessed 16 October 2018.