Becoming activists of meaning: resisting violence and enforced disappearance in Colombia

In this dissertation, I explore human rights activists' training and learning practices in times of transition to democracy in Colombia. The peace agreement that President Juan Manuel Santos and the Marxist guerrilla FARC signed in 2016 opened a political window of opportunity to victims' struggle for recognition. My starting point is the experience of the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation for Human Rights, an organization of victims of forced disappearance based in Bogotá, and from there I argue that social organizations of victims deploy powerful pedagogical strategies for the construction of peace and offer alternatives for reconciliation. Assuming the daily life of the Nydia Erika Foundation as a starting point, I argue that the pedagogical processes of training activists are possible thanks to the configuration of three different types of communities: memory, practice, and emotional. By participating in these communities, victims and non-victims constitute activism of meaning aimed not only to reconstruct the identities of victims exterminated by the practice of enforced disappearance. It also offers ways to re-signify the experience of citizenship amidst transitional moments. Activists of meaning deploy symbolic strategies to raise awareness about the atrocious experiences that victims experienced and struggle to strengthen human rights discourse in Colombian public opinion. The activism of meaning is the product of merging local knowledges of victims of enforced disappearance with academic knowledge. It is a paradigmatic space of encounter that aims to overcome structural inequality that makes it difficult the recognition of victims of political violence as citizens. From a perspective of collaborative sociology, this dissertation gives an account of the joint work of "seeker-women" and non-victim populations in Colombia's defense of human rights. Through this joint work, seeker-women and volunteer professionals configure ethical – and political horizons for renewed collective action. Therefore, the activism of meaning recreates horizontal bondages between victims and non-victims and deeply renewed ethics of care