PelaCon Zine

Pela consciente (the aware young girl) embodies the colloquialism of Colombian culture. This title aims to bring forth and promote a space that enhances the voices, experience, and Indigenous practice and initiatives to counter existing power dynamics. By contributing to ongoing conversations for environmental justice and Indigenous movements, the zine hopes to raise awareness to the creative avenues in which Indigenous people’s power at the margins stimulate subaltern knowledge making and collective imaginaries of security and liberation. Hence, the subtitle “Preserving our Heritage.” The overarching focus are the relationships and impacts of extraction and mining conflicts to land and water rights. Not just the perpetuation of environmental injustice but the violation of Indigenous rights as enshrined in the Constitution of 1991, and how these are contested.

According to the 2018 Census, the Colombian Indigenous population belongs to 115 different tribes and holds across 65 Indigenous languages that can be grouped into 12 language families including: Arawakan, Cariban, Tupian, and Quechuan. There are 70 “national” languages ​​spoken in Colombia. In light of the multicultural and ethnic diversity of the Colombian Indigenous population this Zine project follows the Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia (ONIC) as they represent the communities at the national level and la Guardia Indigena (The Guard) which defends the territory and ancestral cultures of various communities across the country. The Guard protects the territory and people not only in situations of armed conflict, but also against the aggressive action of the public force towards the population to contain protest and dissent.

As a mediator for Indigenous communities’ self-government, the ONIC embraces multiple institutions at the regional and even local level that take care of the needs of their members. I have learned that even though creative expression and resistance movements take similar forms, every single act or practice is embedded in particularities of the communities. Therefore, via case studies, the Zine will revisit some communities' political expression, approaches to justice, and the ideas of preservation and heritage.

The zine’s intended audience is anyone interested in environmental, indigenous, developmental, and resistance studies. Whilst most audiovisual sources are in Spanish, descriptions and explanations are in English, signifying the intentionality of disseminating not only information but raising awareness on the impacts development has on Colombian Indigenous communities across an international community that can provide international pressure to the government and various forms of assistance towards communities. El pueblo no se rinde! The community never gives up, that is the message. Even when their lives face precarity, Colombian Indigenous communities keep finding ways to counter threatening powers.

Some of the content that can be found on the zine includes: case study videos, discussion pages on indigineous creative expression (murals, songs, games, etc.), and original content in the form of text.

The digital Zine PelaConsciente can be found below and via this hyperlink.