“The suffering we collectively inhabit”: Relational understandings of citizenship by the Colombian post-accord generation

“Becoming” citizens in the colombian post-conflict

The MCM is the result of the joint efforts of local victims’ organizations underrepresented in the 2005 Justice and Peace Law2, which sought to create a sanctuary for the memories and experiences of the victims of the armed conflict. Inaugurated in 2012, the casa element of the museum relates to its mission to house “open and plural dialogues, with critical and reflexive views, that aid the understanding and overcoming of the Colombian armed conflict and the diverse violences3 found in Medellín, Antioquia, and Colombia” (Memoria, nd). However, children under 14 were not allowed into the museum as there was a fear that the exhibitions could be traumatizing. When the museum decided to create a mediating team made up exclusively of young college students in 2015, the mediators pushed to eliminate the age restriction, and children and youth became part of the museum’s objective of “participatory construction of memories.” It was then that the objective of civically engaging children and youth through peace education originated, bolstering the idea that children were ideal citizens who would help end the protracted violence. At this time, school visits were established to educate future generations and not repeat past mistakes.

All school visits are mediated by young museum workers (aged between 16 and 26) who guide the visitors and aim to “humanize the conflict,” focusing on the victims and their stories, not on data and statistics. Some of the most experienced mediators had been at the MCM for over 4 years, while others worked at the museum for one or 2 years until they graduated from university and were no longer eligible. The permanent exhibit comprises multimodal and interactive devices that invite visitors to learn from victims’ testimonies and artistic representations of the ongoing Colombian armed conflict.

Considered one of the longest ongoing civil wars, the origins and reasons for the Colombian armed conflict are the cause of continued debate4. Despite the discrepancies regarding the start of the war, its study has traditionally focused on three aspects: land control and reform, the dynamics and flow of the violence, and the reconfiguration of new actors motivated by past atrocities and drug trafficking. However, according to Daniel Pécaut (2000), the logic of terror imposed by the armed groups upon civilians, the prolongation of the conflict, and its degradation rendered violence aphasic (145). Gutiérrez Sanín et al. (2005) also argue that the Colombian armed conflict is an “unnamable” war due to the unspeakable atrocities, its political roots, and the causal weight of the global illegal economies, furthering the academic obsession among Colombian and international academics for decades.

Nevertheless, the MCM resisted describing the Colombian armed conflict through Manichean explanations, as most combatants come from rural, poor, and racialized backgrounds. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Army of the People (FARC-EP founded in 1964), the National Liberation Army (ELN founded in 1965), and the April 19th M-19 (founded in 1974) are some examples of a long list of guerrilla groups that have participated in the war. By the 1980s, a new set of circumstances rearranged the dynamics of the armed conflict. First, drug trafficking networks established by the cartels in the 1970s were consolidated. Second, the guerrillas had already institutionalized kidnappings, assassinations of the so-called oligarchy, and the destruction of mega-infrastructure projects to finance the war effort. And thirdly, to retaliate against guerrilla groups and their influence, landowners, drug cartels, stock farmers, and emerald barons created private armies (sometimes with the assistance of the Colombian armed forces) that coalesced into several paramilitary forces. By the end of the 1980s, Colombia was embroiled in a period of violence, uncertainty, and fear, and particularly, rural communities were caught in the crossfire between socialist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and the Colombian armed forces. The historically weak Colombian state declared war against the drug cartels with the aid of the United States. Simultaneously, prominent judges, political candidates, union leaders, and human rights activists were assassinated.

During the 1990s, drug cartels were dismantled, and the drug trafficking structures were the new locus of dispute between multiple actors. Despite the United States’ influence, coca cultivation in Colombia rapidly expanded, becoming the world’s primary producer. Consequently, the guerrillas’ and paramilitaries’ economic structures became dependent on drug trafficking networks. As Arnson and Whitfield (2005) explain, the abundance of the economic resources of cocaine trafficking “meant that the armed actors had the capacity to arm and sustain indefinitely substantially larger numbers of fighters” (242). After years of civil conflict, the war in Colombia had morphed from partisanship struggles to struggles for social and land reform to the struggle for control of the territories linked to the extraction of drugs. The Colombian armed conflict, thus, is a multi-player, multi-tiered dispute where the three main armed actors —the leftist guerrillas, the extreme-right wing paramilitaries, and the Colombian Armed Forces— dispute over control of the territories between other participants, such as the BACRIM (bandas criminales - criminal networks formed by demobilized paramilitaries and guerrillas) and drug trafficking armies that have also entered the scene. This constant influx of actors increases the sentiment of uncertainty in the population.

Paradoxically, the longevity of the Colombian armed conflict also entails Colombia’s vast experience with peace processes. Since the peace process between President Virgilio Barco (1986–1990) and the M19 guerrilla in 1990, Colombia has over 30 years of experience designing strategies and institutions for “post-conflict.” However, the lack of institutional continuation and commitment to peace processes between successive regimes and the competition for control of resources among illegal groups might explain why we have yet to succeed (Pizarro 2017). The most recent peace process between former president Juan Manuel Santos (2010–2018) and FARC-EP saw the official end of the longest-running guerrilla in the world. Unlike previous peace processes, victims’ organizations were key promoters and participants, increasing and consolidating their political and social capital. Additionally, transitional institutions such as a truth commission and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace were established for the first time. Under this most recent transitional context, the MCM was founded, and the youth and children visiting the MCM are becoming political subjects, growing up as what I have termed the post-accord generation.

More than a praxis: literature on children’s citizenship

Childhood studies scholars invested in children’s political status have discussed children’s citizenship in contexts such as Europe and North America (James, 2011; Lister, 2007) vis-à-vis the rights of other marginalized communities. Central to these theorizations around children’s citizenship and rights lies the cultural politics of childhood, questioning how concepts of citizenship unfold for children and young people in society. Cockburn (2005) elaborates on the idea of children as “becomings” rather than “beings” to explain how societal views of children ground them as pre-political and part of the historical process that resulted in the cultural politics of childhood. As James (2011) explains, the continued reliance on the determinism of the developmental paradigm led to children’s citizenship status to reflect societal constructions of childhood linked to their (lack of) capabilities to exercise full citizenship. This is why different theorists proposed discussing children’s political belonging as a semi-citizenship (Cohen, 2005), partial-citizenship (Roche, 1999), and social involvement (Jans, 2004), where adult’s power over children continues to be legitimized.

However, contemporary citizenship theory expands citizenship beyond the constraints of legal rights and sees it as a social process where groups can reclaim, expand, or lose their rights. Drawing from feminist scholarship on citizenship, Lister (2007) explains that citizenship includes the individual’s legal rights and relationship with the state —otherwise known as formal citizenship— as well as the cultural norms and responsibilities towards one’s community. This allows us to recognize the idea of “lived citizenship” as the value that citizenship has for a community and how it is shaped by cultural, material, and social circumstances. Furthermore, these horizontal views on citizenship criticize previous theorizations that solely focused on its legal ramifications for children as it proved to be insufficient for “the analysis of children’s citizenship or for their political claims-making” (Lister, 2007: p. 718) as it obscured the experience of “lived citizenship.”

Postcolonial scholars have also critiqued theorizations of children’s citizenship that focus on formal and legalistic perspectives. One of the critiques stems from the overly individualistic approach that citizenship has taken regarding the vertical relationship between the individual and the political apparatus. In addition, Global South scholars have also commented on the centrality that the concept of agency has taken within the study of childhood as it amplifies the antidevelopment discourse at the expense of the erasure of structural violence and communitarian belonging. An example is Moosa-Mitha’s, (2005) difference-centered approach, which takes a pluralist stand and is situated within the politics of solidarity, stemming from communitarian and intersectional subjectivities. She explains that by seeing children as “differently equal” members of society, we are not only broadening the possibilities of citizenship itself but are forced to question what we define as political. Balagopalan (2019) also questions liberal constructions of citizenship as universalizing and ahistorical, theorizing children’s citizenship through the lens of relationality. As she explains, “In postcolonial contexts, the ability to exercise one’s entitlements as a citizen gets differentially worked out” (p. 2), as the violent creation of the nation-state meant that colonial subjects were never fully recognized. In these contexts, political apparatuses differentiated between secular networks of governance for those in power and a different set of practices of direct domination and subordination for the colonized.

This paper builds on these critiques and centers on children’s and young people’s experiences and opinions regarding their citizenship within the context of a collective memory museum in 2019, foregrounding conversations that have been less prominent in the academy. It not only discusses the exercise of citizenship that cements children’s present existence (as beings and not becomings) concerning their formal citizenship, but it also grounds discussions on citizenship as a matter of exercising a political existence. It is a commentary on former formulations about citizenship in contexts that take for granted the existence of political institutions in seemingly unproblematic democratic contexts. The rise of extreme right-wing politics and disinformation globally, currently eroding democratic institutions, should incite new analysis about children’s citizenship in the West. In Colombia, however, the presence of direct violent threats to these institutions questions how children are participating and experiencing what it means to be part of a national community.

Leviathan a la colombiana: Youth’s critique of formal understandings of citizenship

In Colombia, the armed conflict affects the promise of formal citizenship, especially denying it to marginalized groups such as campesinos/as, victims of the armed conflict, Afro-Colombians, Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+, and children. In the conversations between children and youth during the school visits to the museum, Colombia was discussed as a fragmented, dynamic society continually reconfiguring its national identity. On the one hand, the political elite was categorized as untrustworthy, and their ineptitude was deemed as one of the causes of the ongoing violence. As representatives of political power, they symbolized normative understandings of the rights protected by formal notions of citizenship. On the other, victims of the armed conflict were discussed as the true defenders of justice and peace, memorialized through monuments, memory spaces like museums, or the transformation of public spaces via murals. In this section, I discuss children’s and youth’s critique of formal notions of citizenship concerning the networks of governance born out of violence and the domination relationships between the corrupt elite and those seen as “real Colombians.”

Revolutionary understandings of lived citizenship

Although children and youth at the MCM discussed violence as atemporal and ubiquitous —both the means and the end held by the ones benefiting from the war— this is not to say that violence became routinized or banalized, as Martin (2000) suggested. Instead, within the pedagogic framework of the collective memory conversations, there was a constant preoccupation with recognizing and dealing with the ongoing violence from everyday spaces and resistances. I have mentioned that the pedagogical purpose of the school visits was to foster the recognition of the experiences of the victims of the armed conflict alongside the lessons on historical literacy and peace education. But I also noticed how, as the history of the conflict was discussed, the children and youth identified being Colombian with the historical opposition of the sectors of society who resisted the war. Thus, being Colombian overlapped with the history of resistance and resilience by the victims of the armed conflict. As the post-accord generation, children and youth identified as their democratic responsibility the need to learn about and from the past to subdue, and not break, the cycle of Colombia’s inescapable violence.

The responsibilities of the post-accord generation: Healing and democratizing through collective memory

As Violeta, the mediator who had most recently joined the museum, concluded a school visit with students between the ages of 15 and 18, she explained:

“There are many circumstances in the country that we cannot change right now, that are not going to be [changed] overnight, but let's use everything that we are feeling, this [suffering] is necessary. We need to hurt. It is necessary to feel something for the other. Because if we remain indifferent, then what? Do we each remain individually, in this world, insensitive to the Other? Let's allow that sensitivity to make us also think about what we can do and what we can transform with small steps.”

Violeta’s intervention discloses the necessity to “suffer for the other” and characterizes “our hurt” as relational. It allows us to see that children’s citizenship is cemented on notions of interdependency echoing Balagopalan’s (2021) arguments regarding children’s embodied understandings of non-sovereign relationalities that allow them to “refuse, neoliberalism’s subjective and penalizing technologies” (p. 330).” Thus, for the children and youth visiting the MCM, suffering as a binding force disrupts individualizing approaches to citizenship, instead relying on relational vulnerability as a mundane step to disrupt the cycle of violence. Hence, the advantage of grounding citizenship on interdependency “is that children and adults are placed on a more clearly equal footing” (Wall, 2012: p. 92), and responsibility is no longer bound to “notions of capacity, capability and autonomy to be thought outside such framings” (Vögele, 2020: p. 580). It does not come as a surprise, then, that the children and youth visiting and working in the MCM expressed a sense of relational and collective responsibility with the most vulnerable since these same notions are the ones used by formal citizenship to keep them inhabiting depoliticized margins.

In these new conceptual configurations, citizenship is no longer “a status given and the final destination of childhood” (Jans, 2004) but the everyday practices of solidarity, mutual dependency, and precarity (Butler, 2015). Citizenship is redefined in relational terms, allowing us to address children’s “agency and acknowledge their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact” (Moosa-Mitha, 2005: p. 369). And although there is some debate about whether children’s and youth’s political participation should be promoted through their involvement with “mundane engagements” or with formal public action (Kallio, 2012), distrust in the Colombian elite and its institutions draws the children and youth visiting the museum to the former. Specifically, their involvement as marginalized citizens in the MCM materialized through their participation in collective memory and learning from the experiences of collective suffering. Alberto, one of the younger mediators (aged 17), who had been at the museum for 2 years, explained it thus:

“My part is to empower myself and thus build a national identity from these kinds of acts [acts of collective suffering]. But above all, is about questioning, about confronting things in our own history that we sometimes do not want to face. So, it is a battlefield, undoubtedly, collective memory is a battlefield, but it also is the foundation, or the main axis for the possibility of recognizing ourselves in the other, and in this territory that we share with each other.”

Emulating what students mentioned in previous sections regarding the corrupt elite’s manipulation of mass media, misinformation, and not knowing what some communities had suffered during some of the most horrific events of the armed conflict was deemed by mediators and visitors as one of the main reasons why Colombian society remained ignorant. This ignorance was seen as a tool to sustain individualistic modes of living that prevented the collectivization of suffering. To counteract the elite’s need to misinform and censor some of the gruesome experiences of the armed conflict, “confronting our own history” by participating in collective memory was seen as one’s responsibility as a “good citizen.” As a young student mentioned during one of the visits:

The state is not the institutions, neither the president, nor the congress. No, it is me as a young person, as a leader, who has a responsibility, and that responsibility is that I am part of a country, and that country is not me alone; it is all of us, and I am part of this society, and this society is part of me.

For this young woman, her political participation was not related to her involvement with formal politics or her vote validating a corrupt system. Rather, her responsibility as a citizen stemmed from her commitment as a young leader active within her community. In Kallio’s (2012) terms, the student is asserting her political subjectivity through “politics of noise,” that which might not be as visible or intelligible as traditional political engagement but is more transgressive as it discloses the importance that she places on everyday relationships. She transfers political power from the traditional political institutions or the “state” into horizontal dimensions of relations (Larkins, 2020) and mundane spaces like the neighborhood and school, while simultaneously asserting her political presence and subjectivity. She defines her political belonging in terms of her lived reality of marginalization as a young woman, which shapes her understanding of citizenship in relation to other vulnerable members of society. Unlike the liberal subject who “makes other individuals responsible for their situation in society, the vulnerable, embodied subject understands her life in relation to others and the social condition that sustain them all, collectivizing responsibility” (Vögele, 2020: p. 583). This collectivization of responsibility does not come without a toll. The conversations on what it means to be Colombian between the post-accord generation often put an emotional, psychological, and physical burden on the young mediators. Nonetheless, as Cata explained to me as we were wrapping up an emotional school visit:

“I put a lot of effort into these [school visits] because I think this is where hope lies. Sometimes you have some days when you say, ‘damn, I don’t want to root for this country anymore’. But when you meet young people, young people like you, who listen to you, that's when you still feel that hope is alive”.