Black urban youth in the Colombian Pacific: political and memory practices

Framed in the current Colombian context that seeks to move towards a post-conflict society, the ethnographic and collaborative project focuses on the young Afro-Colombian people in the Chocó department (Pacific region). In the midst of daily experiences of violence and war, but also of creative and constructive social initiatives, the research aims to understand what it means to be young in Chocó, starting from the historical and cultural constructions of youth and considering dimensions of gender, ethnicity, race, class, and territoriality. Specifically, it seeks to determine the role of young people as makers and breakers of society. Therefore, in view of the on-going armed conflict, it is necessary to understand their relationship with the past, present and future, identifying practices and narratives of memory among youth and assessing their contributions to our comprehension of recent Colombian history. In this respect, I aim to explore the linkages between practices of memory and political practices for young people in the Chocó.

There are very few academic works with young people in the Colombian Pacific region (Camacho and Restrepo 1999; Jaramillo Marín, Parrado Pardo, and Louidor 2019; Restrepo 1999; Vega Pinzón 2016), and few have included young narratives in memory processes in Colombia (Riaño Alcalá 2006). Young people have been largely silenced at the academic, political, and social levels, a void that the present project seeks to address in the context of the Chocó department.