Black Women's Struggles against Extractivism, Land Dispossession, and Marginalization in Colombia

The neocolonial turn toward extractivism intensifies the use of violence while fostering land dispossession, racism, and militarization of social life. Afro-Colombian women resist this process by using their subjectivities politically, strategically, discursively, and textually. An examination through the lens of black/decolonial feminism of the first national Mobilization for the Care of Life and Ancestral Territories, led by 40 black women from the Department of Cauca in 2014, shows that black women's emotions and collective affections were driving forces that exhibited both their exclusions and their resistance. These feelings may be seen as catalysts through which their lived experiences are expressed and performed in the material world. Examination of this event suggests that a more radical analysis of black women's historicity, subjectivities, and struggles is needed to better capture and understand experience-based epistemologies that challenge hegemonic forms of knowledge production.