Participatory video-making in Taraza (Bajo Cauca region, Colombia)
What is going on in coca-farming communities after the Colombian Peace Agreement?
Between December 2022 and 2023, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork for my PhD project in the Municipality of Taraza’, in the Bajo Cauca region (Northwestern Colombia), investigating women’s experiences of toxic contamination in coca-farming and gold-mining communities. Tarazá has been, for years, a national hotspot of coca production. Between 1999 and 2014, it was hardly hit by the policy of aerial glyphosate fumigations for the forced eradication of coca fields conducted during the War on Drugs. In the attempt to make my research practices participatory, I tried, from the very first steps of the project, to establish a collaboration with local farmer’s organizations (ASOCBAC[1] and ASOCURN[2]) who are critical actors in the debate with the Colombian state over the implementation of the Peace Agreement in coca-farming communities.
When meeting with local social leaders, the blurred concept of participation I mentioned in my PhD research proposal turned into a series of negotiations about what contribution my project could give to strengthening local farmers’ movements. In these negotiations, it was clear that sharing my research results with farmer’s organizations was not going to provide a relevant contribution to support their efforts to publicly condemn the politics of aerial fumigations and denounce the failure of the Program of voluntary substitutions of illicit Crops (PNIS). Therefore, we designed an additional outcome for the research project, considering its accessibility for a non-academic public, and local social leaders suggested recording a short documentary.
Through the SLAS Small Grant Schemes, I was able to run a series of participatory sessions to construct, together with local social leaders from different areas of the municipality, the script of the documentary. At the same time, on request of the organizations, this space was used to strengthen the leaders’ communication skills through a short training, delivered by a community-based audiovisual collective, Colectivo de Comunicaciones Gente y Bosques (from the nearby municipality of El Bagre), about audiovisual techniques and other communication strategies.
The outcome of this collaboration is a short documentary that includes videos recorded on their phones by local social leaders about their everyday life. Moreover, it consists of several interviews with members of the organisations who discuss the environmental, health and socio-economic outcomes of glyphosate contamination.
An important component of the documentary is its gendered perspective. The video includes a chapter called “Coca is not only a men’s issue”, which investigates women’s participation in the coca economy and the severe impacts of glyphosate fumigations on their reproductive health. In particular, during my fieldwork in Taraza’, I collected several stories of miscarriages related to exposure to glyphosate. Even though several academics proved the correlation between miscarriages and glyphosate, the reproductive violence exercised on rural women through this practice had not been sufficiently acknowledged in the Colombian public debate. To date, the only case related to a miscarriage in the aftermath of the fumigation which has been accepted before a legal court is the case of Yaneth Valderrama, who died after being exposed to glyphosate in 1994. Showing in the video the story of local women who suffered a miscarriage felt important in order to recognise the gendered impacts of this policy.
The video is available at: https://youtu.be/n_sScB6zQt4
I am enormously grateful to ASOCBAC, ASOCURN y El Colectivo Audiovisual Gente y Bosques who made my research project and the shooting of this short documentary possible.
[1] ASOCBAC: Asociación de Campesinos del Bajo Cauca [2] ASOCURN Asociación Campesinos Unidos Río Nechí
Chiara Chiavaroli
PhD student at the Department of International Development at LSE
A low-deposit casino offer like https://casino5deposit.com is the kind of thing that looks easy from the outside, and reading how the PNIS promised a simple substitute for coca crops felt uncomfortably similar—the real costs showed up in the health of women and the land afterward. What stayed with me is that the leaders recorded the documentary themselves on their phones, because the people living with those costs got to decide what to show. It made me wonder how often quick fixes are designed by people who never have to live with the terms.
Es impactante ver cómo el proyecto de video participativo en Tarazá no solo documenta las experiencias de las comunidades, sino que también empodera a las mujeres al dar visibilidad a sus historias. La inclusión de la perspectiva de género es crucial, especialmente en contextos donde las políticas afectan desproporcionadamente a las mujeres. ¿Qué otros métodos piensas que podrían complementar este tipo de iniciativas para amplificar las voces locales? Además, me parece interesante cómo el uso de plataformas digitales podría ayudar a difundir más ampliamente estos relatos, como se menciona en GWYF Guide.
Participatory video-making in Taraza, Colombia, offers a powerful way for local communities to share their experiences, perspectives, and stories through visual media. This approach encourages collaboration, creativity, and community participation while highlighting important social and cultural issues in the Bajo Cauca region. It demonstrates how video can become a tool for communication, learning, and positive community engagement. Similarly, professional digitizing services USA help businesses transform creative artwork into accurate, production-ready embroidery files. Both processes turn ideas into meaningful visual results through skill, creativity, and attention to detail.
Часом знаходжу ці джерела випадково, іноді хтось скине в чат, іноді сам зберігаю “на потім”. Частину переглядаю рідко, частину — коли шукаю щось локальне чи нестандартне. Вони різні: новини, огляди, думки, регіональні стрічки. Я не беру все за правду — скоріше, для порівняння та пошуку контрасту між подачею. Можливо, хтось іще знайде серед них щось цікаве або принаймні нове. Головне — мати з чого обирати. Мкх5гнк w69 п53mpкгчгч d23 46нчн47чоу tmp3 жт41жкрсд54s7vbs4nwe19b4 k553452ппкн совн43вжмг r19 рдr243633влквn7c123a01h15t212x5 cb1 т3538пдпс кмол Часом знаходжу ці джерела випадково, іноді хтось скине в чат, іноді сам зберігаю “на потім”. Частину переглядаю рідко, частину — коли шукаю щось локальне чи нестандартне. Вони різні: новини, огляди, думки, регіональні стрічки. Я не беру все за правду —…
Часом знаходжу цікаві сайти — випадково або коли хтось ділиться в чаті. Частину зберігаю про запас, іноді повертаюсь до них при нагоді. Тут є різне — новини, блоги, локальні стрічки чи просто незвичні штуки. Деякі переглядаю рідко, деякі — коли хочеться вийти за межі звичних джерел. Поділюсь добіркою — може, хтось натрапить на щось нове: Мкх5гнкw69п53mpкгчгч d23 46нчнчоу жт41жкрсд54s7vbs4nwe19b4k553452ппкн совн43вжмг r19 r243633влквn7c123a01h15t212x5 cb1 т3538пдпс кмол Щодо загальної інформації — іноді буває корисно мати кілька додаткових ресурсів під рукою. Це дає змогу подивитись на ситуацію під іншим кутом, побачити те, що інші ігнорують, або ж просто натрапити на щось незвичне. Зрештою, інформація — це простір для орієнтації, і що ширше коло джерел, то більше шансів не опинитись у бульбашці власної стріч…