Peace and Violence

On January 14, 2020, a new Central American Caravan left San Pedro Sula: the first of that year. Although the COVID-19 pandemic was only starting, these caravans would continue. By March 2021, an unprecedented number of Central American migrants were located on the border with the United States. In complex humanitarian emergencies such as this, not only the causes and effects are multiple, but so are the ways in which States and societies respond to them. By observing these responses, we established the link between peace, violence, and migration in three ways.

In a Colombia marked by violence, it would seem that some people and geographies count, while others do not so much. Enriched peoples who matter and inhabit geographies of accumulation and tranquility, often operating in the place of whiteness, contrast with other racially marked and impoverished peoples who inhabit geographies of dispossession and terror.

Mientras que el siglo XIX y, especialmente, el siglo XX en Europa pueden ser interpretados como una era de grandes guerras interestatales, suscitadas entre los Estados nación de ese continente,1 los doscientos años de vida independiente de los Estados nación latinoamericanos, y particularmente el siglo XX, se caracterizan por la sucesión de conflictos intraestatales: guerras civiles, guerrillas, golpes de Estado y gobiernos dictatoriales-militares. 

Violence and conflict are structures that appear continuously in the history of Latin America and have also become drivers of social change. From the time of Latin American independence, violence was manifested as a product of both colonial inheritance and inequality, as well as the confrontation of new political projects inspired from Europe and adapted locally. These unresolved conflicts dragged on from the 19th century to the 21st century, readapting themselves as a product of new conflicts generated by Modernity.

"Paisajes en transición" (Landscapes in transition) is the result of a sensorial exploration with eyes, notebook and cameras through territories and places of extermination in contemporary Mexico, as well as the ways in which they are intervened and re-signified by those who were traversed by violence, but who are not resigned to the passivity of the victim. In the midst of the pandemic that has installed a state of exception to the whole world, the story of this other emergency emerged, more deeply rooted and less visible.