Imagining a new order together: a transmedia narrative about social science, media, and legal change in the case of peasant and indigenous movements in Colombia 1960–1991

Research Project

This project studies the configuration process of Colombian peasant and indígena movements during the second part of the 20th century. In particular, it focuses on a collective known as ‘La Rosca de Investigación y Acción Social’, which – combining the tools of social science with activism – sought to establish a collaboration between academics, indigenous groups, afro-descendants, and peasant-based communities in support of their political struggles. This collective struggle, which did not separate the academic from the political terrain, relied on the proposal for a methodological transformation in social science called ‘Investigación Acción Participativa’ (IAP).

The members of ‘La Rosca’ and other collectives that sought to combine scholarly knowledge with social change were some of the many actors supporting popular rights struggles during the second part of the 20th century. These struggles usually included a critique of existing law and used different forms of communication as a fundamental part of their reflections. One of the main elements of these critiques was the creation of new forms of interaction focused on collaboration with grassroots communities, that went far beyond the written word: cinema, theatre, testimonial literature, radio and graphic novels, among others. These new methods opened spaces for interaction and discussion between different sectors to improve society.

I argue that these discussions gave rise a contestatory narrative of existing law, aimed at transformation and with a strong spirit of methodological innovation and community participation. From these discussions, for instance, emerged the concept of Derecho Mayor (Escobar, 2020), a principle of justice that, although emerging in the 1980s, stemmed from reflections on the memories of past legal practices by indigenous peoples and marked a transformation in political struggle and social mobilisation over time. These reflections were the result of multiple activities to recover historical memory, such as the so-called Mapas Parlantes (Speaking Maps) technique, which involved oral history and archival work to recover the historical past of indigenous peoples in Cauca. They also led to new research paradigms based on the concept of ‘solidarity’, as it was then termed, diverging from traditional ‘collaborative research’.

Within the discipline of legal history, the significance of exploring these contestatory narratives of law is twofold. Firstly, for legal historians aiming to adopt a non-state-centric perspective (Duve & Herzog, 2024; Pirie, 2022), such reflections are crucial for interrogating the concept of legal pluralism. This concept often obscures the intricate processes through which non-state legal systems are formed. By examining the diverse debates that emerged during the formation of the indigenous movement regarding the role of history and law in shaping a better future, we gain insights into the non-linear or heterogeneous nature of these apparently systemic orders. Additionally, for scholars interested in understanding how other sectors have questioned the relationship between social movements, law, and social transformation, this case study provides valuable insights to inform their ongoing inquiries (Boutcher et. al., 2023).

Moreover, these narratives hold particular relevance for contemporary movements. For instance, the Misak Students Movement recently invoked the motto from the 1980s, ‘recover the land to recover everything’, adapting it to their current context as ‘recover the land and memory to recover everything’. This adaptation underscores the enduring significance of historical narratives and their role in informing present-day struggles for justice and rights.

Methodologically, this research draws on various sources. Disciplinarily, it seeks to combine a multiscalar perspective that, while privileging the local, aims to contextualise these dynamics through the analysis of global dynamics (Duve, 2020; Berg, 2023). This disciplinary perspective seeks enrichment through another methodological approach not usually linked to this type of historiography: creative methodologies (Karan, 2020), decolonial methodologies (Tuhiwai, 2021), debates on public history – particularly those related to transmediality (Basaraba & Cauvin, 2023; Lähteenmäki, 2021) – and furthermore, it is inspired by the methodological flexibility and interest of this group of researchers, who since the 1970s sought to de-individualise research processes and create social impact. To this literature, we can add studies on imagination (Ricoeur, 2024; Adebisi, 2022), which highlight the relevance of historical imagination for social transformation and the urgent need for historians to rethink our relationship with creativity and fictionalised narratives. The combination of these theoretical and methodological approaches constitutes what I have defined as Transmedia Historytelling, a concept inspired by Jenkins' notion of transmedia storytelling, which describes how a story unfolds across multiple media aimed at different audiences and develops as the product of constant interaction with the audience. In our case, we will combine several media.

The research will focus on the systematic study of the following archives in Colombia: the audio archives of the Fundación Colombia Nuestra (Cali), the private archives of Víctor Daniel Bonilla (Bogotá) and Orlando Fals Borda (Montería), both founders of La Rosca, and the archives of the Acción Cultural Popular (ACPO). These archives hold significant collections of written, graphic and audio sources. Remote and in-situ interviews along with various transmedia products will be at the heart of this work.