The book is made up of three parts: Part 1 gathers sociological, legal and demographic works on the challenges of peacebuilding with the national and departmental context of Nariño, and looks at human rights from the perspective of population health and quality of life. Part 2 presents texts on the dynamics of rural education in Colombia; national challenges and lessons learned based on case studies of specific forms of education. Part 3 presents economic analyses regarding the models that are behind the conception of rural development and the productive and institutional dynamics of the local sphere for the generation of employment and income.
All three parts are relevant at both the national level and also the more specific area of the department of Nariño and within this, the Cordillera region. This area, historically affected by the armed conflict, despite experiencing continuing uncertainty regarding the resurgence of violence and the increase in illegal crops, has also reignited hope with regards to finding solutions to the problems seen in the countryside; through educational, community and productive experiments.
Although there are contradictory dynamics, the authors agree that the rural territory is a scene of permanent and collective construction, mediated by constant social struggles and power disputes with the State. It is therefore necessary to rethink the strategies for implementing the Peace Agreement in this region, with participatory scenarios being provided to include the rationale specific to rurality, such as: justice and reconciliation, social pedagogy, pertinence of study and student retention rates, social and solidarity economy, productive associativity, demographic conditions and health; including the physical, mental and social wellbeing of rural workers. With this work, we hope to reflect collectively with academics and human rights activists, spurring an increase in studies of rural areas and those analyses of community and innovative strategies that reinforce the road towards the construction of a lasting peace with social justice in Colombia.
Keywords: peacebuilding, human rights, rural development, rural education, rural economy.
Contents
Contextualization of the collective work
part 1. Peacebuilding and human rights
Chapter I. The challenges of building a stable and lasting peace in Colombia
Chapter II. Dynamics of conflict and post-agreement in the Nariñense territory
Chapter III. A sociodemographic view and a look at health conditions prior to the implementation of peace agreements in the municipalities of Leiva, Policarpa and Los Andes in Nariño
part 2. Education for Rural Development
Chapter IV. Education and pedagogy when faced with the challenges of rural Colombia
Chapter V. Challenges and opportunities of rural education in Nariño in the post-conflict context
Chapter VI. Strategies for student retention and wellbeing using virtual higher education as a tool for inclusion in the cases of Leiva, Policarpa and Los Andes - Sotomayor
Chapter VII. A look at rural development in Latin America: the agrarian question and the established economic models
Chapter VIII. Development and the solidarity economy: reflections on the peace agreement in Colombia
Chapter IX. Rural associativity and agricultural producers
Chapter X. Social responsibility: a strategy for rural strengthening
Chapter XI. The impact of good practices in coffee production as an alternative for rural development in the municipalities of Leiva, Policarpa and Los Andes
General conclusions of the study
Acknowledgments
To the Ministry of National Education of Colombia, for making it possible for higher education institutions in Southwest Colombia, to participate in the “Call for the formation of a bank of eligible higher education projects that promote rural development through the formation of inter-institutional alliances”; an exploration of ideas to improve the conditions and quality of life of the department’s coffee growers.
To the institutions that participated in the inter-institutional alliance, led by the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia - Campus Pasto, the mediator for this research exercise, bringing together institutions such as the Corporación Unificada Nacional de Educación Superior (CUN) sede Pasto, Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (UNIMINUTO), Centro Regional Pasto and the Universidad Politécnica Estatal del Carchi (UPEC), as allies within International Higher Education; and to the National Federation of Associated Coffee Growers in the department of Nariño, who joined forces to achieve the proposed objective during the development of the research exercise with the implementation of various strategic proposals.
To the community, the coffee growers and rural youth, who opened the doors to their homes, their land and their experiences when accompanying them in the process of formation and active participation, and were willing to take on new challenges.
To the research groups that formed the articulation of research processes between higher education institutions.
To the authors who, with their dedication and effort, have managed to collect, experience, interpret and reveal to the academic community, the reality of our country and the reality of the communities that participated in this project.
Prologue
In his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, the Czech writer Milán Kundera, recounts how communist leaders, not related to the Russian government, were erased from history. The crude and uncomplicated process consisted of modifying the photos where the indicated character had appeared, changing his name in the records of the speeches and forcing people to affirm that they did not know them. Obviously, this move, whose purpose was to stimulate oblivion, generated a public dynamic of acceptance, but promoted intimate reflection exercises, where people, in the most remote part of their homes and their memory, remembered those who no longer existed, with the purpose of keeping them alive, separated from slander.
This same form of memory preservation appears in the works of Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian winner of
