Emerging from the Shadows: Civil War, Human Rights, And

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Anthropology Department Theses and Anthropology, Department of Dissertations Summer 6-16-2014 EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS: CIVIL WAR, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND PEACEBUILDING AMONG PEASANTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN COLOMBIA AND PERU IN THE LATE 20TH AND EARLY 21ST CENTURIES Charles A. Flowerday University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthrotheses Part of the Biological and Physical Anthropology Commons, Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Christianity Commons, Community Psychology Commons, Comparative Methodologies and Theories Commons, Counseling Commons, Ethics in Religion Commons, Folklore Commons, Health Psychology Commons, History of Christianity Commons, International Relations Commons, Multicultural Psychology Commons, New Religious Movements Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons, Rural Sociology Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Social Psychology Commons, and the Sociology of Culture Commons Flowerday, Charles A., "EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS: CIVIL WAR, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND PEACEBUILDING AMONG PEASANTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN COLOMBIA AND PERU IN THE LATE 20TH AND EARLY 21ST CENTURIES" (2014). Anthropology Department Theses and Dissertations. 33. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthrotheses/33 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Department Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS: CIVIL WAR, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND PEACEBUILDING AMONG PEASANTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN COLOMBIA AND PERU IN THE LATE 20TH AND EARLY 21ST CENTURIES by Charles A. Flowerday A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts Major: Anthropology Under the Supervision of Professor Martha McCollough Lincoln, Nebraska August, 2014 EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS: CIVIL WAR, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND PEACEBUILDING AMONG PEASANTS AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES IN COLOMBIA AND PERU IN THE LATE 20TH AND EARLY 21ST CENTURIES Charles A. Flowerday, M.A. University of Nebraska, 2014 Adviser: Martha McCollough Peacebuilding in Colombia and Peru following their late-20th and early 21st century civil wars is a challenging proposition. In this study, it becomes necessary as indigenous peoples and peasants resist domination by extractive industries and governments in their thrall. Whether they protest nonviolently or rebel in arms, they are targeted for human- rights violations, especially murder, disappearance and displacement. The armed actors, state, insurgency, paramilitaries or drug traffickers, destroy civic institutions (local or regional government) and the civil (nonprofit) sector and replace them with their own authoritarian versions. Therefore, peacebuilding has emphasized rebuilding civic institutions, civil society and local initiatives, also personal relationships across scales and sectors. What has been called “the third side” has become an important resource for the parties materially affected by the conflict, a role well suited to civil society. I examine peacebuilding across levels of authority, complexity and interaction, as well as across scales such as international, national and local. I also look at peacebuilding across a hierarchy of human needs and the full complement of human rights. In the centerpiece of the thesis, I focus on case studies from two postmodern ethnographies. One looks at highland villagers in Peru undergoing Western-style evaluations and treatment for their trauma in the wake of the civil violence and rituals of reconciliation allowing former rebels who abused human rights back into the community. The professionalization of human rights, along with a Western bias in official discourse, has blunted the full affect (emotions) and hidden the full effect of the mass violence from the broader audience. With human-rights professionals in Colombia, this professionalization also came at a price. The costs there were the fissures in the human-rights community across the local-to-national and reconciliation-to-liberation perspectives. Both groups required spiritual and psychological resources to anchor them in the midst of horrific violence. A new ethic and cultural paradigm of “interculturality” could greatly assist conflict resolution and peacebuilding in these situations. Peacebuilding for the long term depends on sustainable-equitable development; respect for rule of law and transitional justice; retraining state and rogue armed actors; effective land reform; and resettling the displaced. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank Martha McCollough for her invaluable efforts. I also want to offer my gratitude in particular to the other members of my committee, Stephen Glazier and Robert Hitchcock. I am grateful as well to the Department of Anthropology and the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. I also owe a debt to Union Theological Seminary in New York, where I received a master’s in theological education and where I first studied liberation theology. In addition, I want to thank my father, Dr. A. D. Flowerday, formerly professor of agronomy at the University of Nebraska, who took his family to Colombia from June 1967 to June 1969, where he was a U.S. Agency for International Development agricultural adviser to Colombia, where my eyes were opened to poverty and racism. ii When they resisted Shining Path directives, the peasants were warned that the communal ranch would be burned down just like the [agrarian society] cooperative. The threat obliged the comuneros [the members of the collective] to divide all of the animals among themselves and divide the remaining equipment among the neighborhoods of the community. It was a painful decision, executed only out of fear of the reprisals that would result from disobedience. The objective was not only to liquidate all productive projects that might divert the peasants from the path of the people’s war, but also, in the words of senderista cadres, “that every type of organization disappear.” Nelson Manrique, “The War for the Central Sierra,” Shining and Other Paths, 1998 [emphasis added] This impact [of FARC] can be assessed not only in terms of its role as a state with an almost undisputed territorial control and its monopoly expansion of commerce, providing means of transportation (such as speed boats [mostly for the drug trade]), constructing landing strips, and adjudicating and arbitrating social and personal conflicts. This is in addition to providing health and education services. In many municipalities [similar to counties] of these areas, the only authority, beyond the symbolic state police station in the capital centers of the municipalities, is that of the FARC, and it is the sole provider of essential public services. Nazih Richani, Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia, 2002 [emphasis added] What is at stake in postwar contexts is the reconstruction of social relationships, moral communities, cultural forms, and economic networks, and the reinvention of ritual life that allows people to make sense of suffering endured and suffering inflicted. Kimberly Theidon, Intimate Enemies: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru. 2013 [emphasis added] For the NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] that focused on state-sponsored and paramilitary violence against community activists, simply ending the guerilla violence was not enough. They argued that without ameliorating the root causes of the conflict – poverty, inequality, and political corruption – the dissolution of the guerillas’ military machine would not lead to a reduction in violence. Many human rights defenders viewed the peace activists’ slogans, such as blanket rejections of violence and generic statements in support of peace, as a competing discourse that undermined efforts to ensure justice and accountability. In fact, many of the early peace initiatives, such as mass demonstrations against guerilla violence and the symbolic votes [non-binding referendums] for peace, did not address the issues of social reform that NGO activists viewed as the foundation for a lasting peace. Winifred Tate, Counting the Dead: The Culture and Politics of Human Rights Activism in Colombia, 2007 [emphasis added] iii CONTENTS Chapter I. The Terms of the Discussion and the Difficulties We Face / 1 Chapter II. The History of the Conflict, the Depth of the Violence and the Nature of the Armed Actors / 47 Chapter III. In Search of Peace: Religion, Ritual and Reconciliation in Postmodern Face- to-Face Communities amid Mass Violence in the Andes / 79 Chapter IV. Church and State, Peasants and Indigenous Peoples: Conflict Mitigation, Mediation and Transformation / 144 Chapter V. Lessons Partially Learned: Local, National and International Connections / 183 References Cited / 232 APPENDIXES Appendix 1: Summary of The Third Side / 245 Appendix 2. Models of Genocide and Mass Violence / 252 Appendix 3: CESR Joint Statement: Human Rights for All Post-2015 / 259 Chapter I The Terms of the Discussion and the Difficulties We Face 2 INTRODUCTION The social and moral chaos that engulfs any community during times of civil war is the result of an exceeding complex phenomenon,

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