Marilyn Machado’s research while affiliated with Colegio Bennett Cali Colombia and other places

Free, prior, and informed consultation and consent has become an important interface in encounters between governments, corporations, grassroots organisations, and other actors, particularly in cases involving extractive activities. Based on over two years of collaborative research, this article examines the consultation and consent processes for the Environmental Management Plan for a large hydroelectric dam in Afrodescendant and Indigenous ancestral territories in Western Colombia. We identified several problems lessening the effectiveness of the consultation processes, particularly the seeming impossibility of crafting conditions for genuine interculturality, and the state’s lack of political will to uphold consent. We conclude that the most significant variable in achieving concrete benefits for the communities is the strength of their political organisations.

This text traces the genealogy of "good living" according to Afro Colombians as a way to track silencing, resistances, types of re-existence and re-emergences in the struggles of people of African descent in Colombia, and how they allow us imagine other forms of life and politics. The text addresses the Women of African Descent Mobilization Towards Life and Ancestral Territories Protection, and retells the living history of the existent links between ancestrality and futurity. It argues that the actions of Afro Colombian Women from Alto Cauca indicate ontological and epistemic-political expressions that coexist with globalization which lead to pluriverse.

El texto traza la genealogía del buen vivir negro como forma de rastrear silenciamientos, resistencias, tipos de reexistencia y emergencias en las luchas del pueblo negro en Colombia, y como éstas permiten imaginar otras formas de vida y política. Aborda la Movilización de Mujeres Afrodescendientes por el Cuidado de la Vida y los Territorios Ancestrales, y recuenta la historia viva de los vínculos existentes entre ancestralidad y futuridad. Argumenta que sus interpelaciones indican expresiones ontológicas y epistémico-políticas coexistentes con la globalización y que apuntan al pluriverso.