Chronicle of a tragedy foretold: the Pescadero Bridge under the waters of the capitalocene and its sympoietic memories in the art of re-existence

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Crónica de una tragedia anunciada: el puente pescadero bajo las aguas del capitaloceno y sus memorias simpoiéticas en el arte de re-existir (Español (España))
Published: Dec 27, 2021
Keywords:
Waters Capitalocene Hydrocommunities Sympoiesis

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Aimée Martínez Vega
Instituto Regional de Estudios Socio-Culturales (IRES-CONICET)
Estela Posada Mazo
Asociación de víctimas y afectados por megaproyectos (ASVAM ITUANGO) - Organización de Mujeres AMARÚ
Horacio Machado Aráoz
Instituto Regional de Estudios Socioculturales (IRES-CONICET-UNCA)

Abstract

In 2018, the Pescadero bridge, next to the Cauca river canyon (Colombia), was flooded. This territory is part of the sedimentation of layers of colonial violence, which, in successive historical-political waves, at the rate of fluctuating development cycles, has been invading pre-existing territorialities, destroying landscapes and creating ruins of "progress". Also, in this territory, the hydrocommunal web has been reweaving despite everything, making life re-sprout and looking for new channels. In this framework, this writing offers an analysis of the expropriation logics in the era of the Capitalocene, with the imposition of works, in front of which the riverside hydrocommunities and their memories are forced to re-exist.To do this, first, we will make a contextualization of the Cauca river canyon before the short modern life of the Pescadero bridge, built in 1963. Then, we will reconstruct the events of the '70s that, together with the energy demand, detonated this last wave of dispossession, concocted in the' 90s under the roar of political-paramilitary violence, and perpetrated in the last two decades with the imposition of the Hidroituango hydroelectric plant. The analysis seeks to account for the sociometabolic disorders caused by this work. Finally, we will share the inner horizons of the Rios Vivos Movement, as a pedagogical-political warp bent on recreating the sympoietic force of landscapes of conviviality.

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Martínez Vega, A., Posada Mazo, E., & Machado Aráoz, H. (2021). Chronicle of a tragedy foretold: the Pescadero Bridge under the waters of the capitalocene and its sympoietic memories in the art of re-existence. Heterotopías, 4(8), 1–34. Retrieved from https://revistas.unc.edu.ar/index.php/heterotopias/article/view/36163
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Vol. 4 No. 8 (2021): “Estética, política y naturaleza: lenguajes y experiencias ecopoéticas".
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Author Biographies

Aimée Martínez Vega, Instituto Regional de Estudios Socio-Culturales (IRES-CONICET)

Aimeé Patricia Martínez Vega. (Colombia) Woman defender of water and life. Member of the women's association AMARÚ, adherent to the Ríos Vivos Antioquia Movement, Colombia, which is made up of victims affected by the hydro-energy extractive megaproject Hidroituango, of Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM). During the years of accompaniment to the movement, it has been working in co-labor from the perspective of women in rebellion who struggle to unravel the patriarchal, racist and classist traces that are linked to the different waves of political violence for plundering, where women and nature are the main victims and affected.

In the construction of networks that work for the care of all life, she is part of the director of the network of people affected by International Financial Institutions (IFI's) and an active member of the Early Warning System for investments in Latin America. She is also an active member of the Early Warning System for investments in Latin America and an active member of the Early Warning System for investments in Latin America, wherein particular she criticizes development, defends the way of life of the different territorialities, and opposes mining and energy projects that make water a commodity.

She is a professional in Social Work (Universidad Colegio Mayor de Cundinamarca). She has experience in community work with victims of armed conflict. She is currently a doctoral fellow of IRES-CONICET-UNCa and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Agrarian Social Studies (Center for Advanced Studies, National University of Cordoba, Argentina). She is conducting comparative research between the region of Antioquia (COL) and Catamarca (AR) that links a critique of the extractive projects of green and clean economies that today, once again, are shifting borders and affecting communities in the global south. She also integrates and is nourished by participating in the team of Ecología Política del Sur (Catamarca), being the political ecology of water her main interest from where she constructs onto-epistemically part of his defense for life.

In the last years, she participated in an investigation to know the current impacts in the framework of rights due to the installation of a lithium mining company in the locality of Fiambalá, in an area of high Andean lagoons, entitled "Transnational Lithium Mining in High Andean Lagoons of Catamarca. Liex S.A. Case".

aimee.martinez.vega@gmail.com

 

Estela Posada Mazo, Asociación de víctimas y afectados por megaproyectos (ASVAM ITUANGO) - Organización de Mujeres AMARÚ

Rudy Estela Posada Mazo. (Colombia) Human Rights and Nature Defender. Peasant woman, barequera, and weaver. Mother of two children and grandmother of two grandchildren. A passionate collector of stones, a woman with the aroma of tropical dry forest, river, and mountain. Lover of biodiversity and birdsong.

For eleven years she has been a member of the association ASVAM ITUANGO (Association of victims and affected by megaprojects) and the women's organization AMARÚ, which fights for the defense of life and territories. Both organizations are members of the Ríos Vivos Antioquia Movement, Colombia, which is made up of victims affected by the Hidroituango extractive megaproject of Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM).

Since the construction of the Hidroituango hydroelectric dam, she has been the victim of six evictions from the beaches of the Cauca River, where she built her home and settled her family. These evictions have not only wiped out her property but have especially affected the construction of the barequera and fishing community of the Cauca River canyon.

As a defender of the territories, she opposes mining concessions and the use of the river as a commodity for the construction of hydroelectric complexes; she fervently denounces the shortcomings and neglect of the state in rural Colombia and rejects state militarization, as well as the conflict that arises from the struggles and territorial control by illegal groups.

In the process of struggle and resistance, she has highlighted the importance of women in them, defending the vindication of their rights, their symbiotic relationship with nature, and their empowerment. In addition, she promoted the creation of the association of women affected by "Hidroituango" AMARÚ, and undertook the denunciation of the multiple victimizations by the hydroelectric extractive megaproject Hidroituango towards women.

In 2018, she traveled to Europe through the Temporary Shelter for Human Rights Defenders program in the city of Madrid. There, she went on a tour to talk with some members of academia, diplomats, and bankers about the effects that their countries' investments were having on their territory, especially on women.

 

Horacio Machado Aráoz, Instituto Regional de Estudios Socioculturales (IRES-CONICET-UNCA)

Horacio Machado Aráoz (Catamarca, Argentina) has a degree in Political Science (Catholic University of Córdoba), a diploma in Social Planning for Local Development (Sur-Cepal, Santiago de Chile), a Master's degree in Social Sciences, and a PhD in Human Sciences (National University of Catamarca). His PhD thesis ("Mineral Nature: A Political Ecology of Modern Colonialism", 2012) addresses the investigation of transnational mining as one of the key veins of the colonial sociometabolism of capital and the historical-geographical constitution of Western hegemony.

He works as adjunct researcher of the National Council of Science and Technology (CONICET, Argentina) coordinating the Research Collective of Political Ecology of the South, at the Regional Institute of Sociocultural Studies (IRES-CONICET-UNCA http://www.ecologiapoliticadelsur.com.ar/) and as Professor of the Chair of Sociology (Faculty of Humanities, National Univ. of Catamarca).

His field of research, Political Ecology of the South, includes studies on the modern forms of social production of "Nature" conceived as a central factor in the ontogenetic structuring of the capitalist-colonial-patriarchal pattern of power as the axis of world domination. Within this framework, she has taught courses and postgraduate seminars in several Latin American study centers and has published several texts in scientific journals, parts of books and books, among them, "Mineração, genealogia do desastre. O extrativismo na América como origem da modernidade" (Editora Elefante, Sao Paulo, 2020), "Potosí, el origen. Genealogía de la minería contemporánea" (Various editions), "Economía Política del Clientelismo. Democracia y Capitalismo en los márgenes" (Grupo Editorial Encuentro, Córdoba, 2007); "15 Mitos y realidades de la minería transnacional en la Argentina" (Herramienta Ediciones, Buenos Aires, 2011, co-authored with Maristella Svampa, Norma Giarracca, Mirta Antonelli et. Alt.).

Along with academic work, she has participated in various assembly spaces in defense of the territories, learning and encouraging together with socio-territorial movements in the region on civilizational disputes around the reappropriation of Nature and the construction of emancipatory horizons from popular environmentalism.

 

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