Abstract
In this chapter, Vergara-Figueroa describes how people at Bojayá constantly face death. She identifies the main characteristics of the Atrato region on the Colombian Pacific coast and the living conditions of Afro-Colombians. In doing so, she places Bellavista, the municipality of Bojayá and the state of Chocó in the global context of violence and land dispossession. She argues that territories are historical formations that need to be understood within the context in which they are conceived, produced, lived, re-produced, and unproduced. So are the experiences of land dispossession. Bellavista-Bojayá illustrates the intricate power of the intersection between people, rivers and territories. Contrary to spaces that are design for enjoyment and for living a life with dignity, the territories of Chocó and its rivers are laboratories of death. The massacre at Bellavista is one of a series of violent events that have occurred in the Atrato River region and it is reviewed in the context of similar events around the world.
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Vergara-Figueroa, A. (2018). The Region: Emptied Spaces and Geographies of Death in Colombia. In: Afrodescendant Resistance to Deracination in Colombia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59761-4_2
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