Rebellious regions. Ethnography of the political identity and the territorial construction of the "Llanos del Yarí, Colombia"

Abstract

The Llanos del Yarí is a region experiencing with particular intensity the war between the Colombian state and the guerilla group FARC. This scenario involves peasant communities who have suffered throughout their history different stages and events of political violence. This particular kind of violence operates as a common and shared matrix through which people’s subjectivities, political identities, in short, the idea of the Yarí as a territory are built, this latter element being the central issue of this article. These reflections are the product of an ethnography that explores the way in which both violence and political identities shape a particular regional character. The article is organized in three sections: Prelude, Interlude (that includes five ethnographic between sections) and Analytic Scenario (divided in three acts that portray the Yarí region as a territory defined by the experience it contains).