San Pedro de Urabá and Tierralta Dwellers’ Experiences in Times of Transition in Colombia

Abstract

This article analyses how local powers and dwellers’ connections reconfigured themselves in the municipalities of San Pedro de Urabá (Antioquia) and Tierralta (Córdoba) following the demobilisation by the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) in 2005 under the Justice and Peace Law. The starting point was a theoretical approach that interrogates the rationales governing social orders, how they were configured and reproduced, and how and why they transformed themselves in order to understand how local orders reconfigured within a transitional scenario. Methodologically, this research work incorporated the labors of memory to recover dwellers’ experiences and perceptions in territories moving from scenarios with armed actors fighting towards new political contexts in which traces and survivals of the conflict coexist. Expectations emerge for the transition towards a new context in which forms of relationship and interaction between actors are also constructed in the process of transformation.