Introduction

Summary

Shortly after midnight, early on Christmas Day 2010, the Cultural Centre of San Andrés Pisimbalá, a small town nestled in Colombia’s western mountain range, was transformed into a battlefield. Celebrations were interrupted by gunshots that left four people seriously injured, and machete attacks that left another dozen with minor wounds. This would be the first of many violent episodes in a conflict between indigenous and peasant residents over territorial control and the implementation of ethnocultural education in schools. For almost a decade now, life in San Andrés has been disrupted by a series of land invasions, house and crop burnings, forced displacement, and threats. Ten years after that fateful episode, the local school is still closed to peasant children and the conflict remains unresolved.