One Hundred Years of Solitude, that when José Arcadio Segundo asked about the massacre of the three thousand workers who demanded their rights in front of the banana company and everyone answered that that had not happened, he made it his duty to explain this to his people, his nephews and those of his household, as a story, to experience it, so that their memory somehow kept the events a reality; one that the inhabitants of Macondo now considered strange and pure fantasy.
Garcia Márquez and Milan Kundera are two examples of how literature extracts the facts of reality and captures them in a lively, exhilarating way so that in reading the texts you can once again feel the indignation, dismay, laughter, joy and lament that make up life. This practice of transmitting emotions is also carried out by the indigenous communities of Colombia, who make it their moral duty to pass on stories and legends to future generations through the spoken word, recounting the facts and events of their people, with the purpose of forming an identity, of knowing that they are someone and that they belong to each other.
From this practice of the indigenous communities, and paraphrasing the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who affirms that the configuration of the Self is defined by interpersonal relationships and by the historical relations of one’s ancestors, it can be said that there is a close relationship between memory and identity, in that we can only know what we are if we remember what our ancestors were. Paraphrasing a quote from Marx, we can say that our identity rises from the shoulders of our ancestors.
The book before the reader is perhaps a clear example of how memory seeks to survive, to make its existence evident. This is stronger in the Colombian territories, where its presence was more direct. For that reason, although we do not want to talk about it, it is irremediable to do so; it seeps out through the pores, where one least expects it. This document is not creative literature or fiction but the result of research by experts with different fields of expertise, who intend to trace a reality, to record a small period in time where the noise of weapons and the smell of the cordite, which sowed anxiety and uncertainty, gave way to the grinding of beans and the smell of coffee, sowing hope and enthusiasm among populations that believed for many years that they were the doomed lineage of which García Márquez spoke.
Those who scroll through the pages of this book will find two planes of interpretation; an obvious one, which can be seen by simply deciphering the characters recording the research results, ranging from historical readings, to proposals for rural education and observations on the development model, as well as the analysis of the health situation in the municipalities that are the subject of the research project. The other not-so-obvious plane, reveals the period in which the authors live, where hope forges a path to peace, making itself evident in the issues they address, generating in the reader the idea that we are moving in the direction of prosperity and a different reality from the one drawn out by the past 50 years. The first plane transmits information, the second arouses feelings; dreams that are hoped to not be fleeting.
In short, this book is born of a time in which Colombians dream of finally moving on from a dark moment of violence, and so, beyond thinking about the information within its pages, it is necessary to look at the strength and spirit that motivated those who wrote it; to finally highlight how the facts narrated here, the data and reflections provided, are the living record of an era that is unprecedented in history. It is as if we wanted to hold on to what we have, to prevent the force of the current in which we have been sailing from returning us to turbulent waters. For that reason, the plurality of voices, perspectives and themes, recorded in these pages, do not see coffee as a concrete thing or object, but as an event from which Leiva, Policarpa and Los Andes formed different realities from what their pasts had mapped out.
In accordance with the above, we can say that this book is a memory of the attempt of the populations to seize the opportunity that they themselves have formed; of ex-combatants returning to the classrooms, of academics thinking about how to improve the quality of agricultural products and of reflections on rurality so as to cultivate solidarity. This type of memory contrasts with that which has persecuted Colombians for more than 50 years and shows the emergence of a new identity, which although real, is still fragile and is beset by many difficulties, especially the old habit of wanting to return to war due to a belief that this path is the only way to achieve transformations.
Apart from being a memory of hope for future generations to read, in the reflections that are woven between the lines of this document there is an implicit question that must be made explicitly and will be a constant concern of all professors, academics and researchers: If the entirety of the agreements signed in Havana are successfully implemented, can we (as Colombians) really identify ourselves as a people without armed conflict? Answering this question seems easy, but it is supremely complex. The question hides a dilemma of existence formulated years ago, in another country and with other situations, by the Greek poet Kavafis in his poem “Waiting for the barbarians”, where he alludes to the Greeks, seen by us as a splendorous and magical people who bequeathed us all their western wealth, but that in reality all their greatness was due to the barbarians and that is why, when the Greeks knew that the barbarians would no longer return, they said: “Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.”
Communities in the affected regions have already begun to think of a future without armed conflict and without armed actors; the evidence of this is here, in the results presented by the research project that motivated this book. All that remains is for the elites of our country to make the same reflection and hopefully they do not end up paraphrasing the last expression of Kavafis’ poem.
Romel Armando Hernandez Silva
Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, Campus Pasto
Contextualization of the collective work
The research “Rural development alternatives for peacebuilding: educational strategies to strengthen the ability of producers and young people that contribute to the coffee production chain in the municipalities of Leiva, Policarpa and Los Andes of the department of Nariño, with international impact in the province of Carchi-Ecuador” arose from a call addressed to municipalities with Development Plans with a Territorial Focus (Spanish acronym PDET); sub-regional programs of comprehensive transformation of the rural area, for a period of 10 years in the territories most affected by armed conflict, poverty, illicit economies and institutional weakness. PDETs are a planning and management instrument to prioritize the implementation of the components of the “Reforma Rural Integral” or “Comprehensive Rural Reform” program and the relevant measures established by the Final Agreement for 170 prioritized municipalities with a total of 6.6 million inhabitants; 2.5 million of whom are victims of armed conflict and represent 36% of the national territory (Educando paz. Café de paz, 2018, pp. 14-16).
In this post-conflict scenario, to effectively respond to the requirements identified in the prioritized areas, the Ministry of National Education in May 2017, launched the “Call for the formation of a bank of eligible higher education projects that promote rural development by forming inter-institutional alliances”. This call was intended to invite higher education institutions to base their inventory of educational actions and projects around rural development and peacebuilding through the formation of inter-institutional alliances. In the case of the department of Nariño, the PDET of Alto Patía and Norte del Cauca and the PDET of Pacifico and Frontera Nariñense were prioritized.
The initiative by the institutions should be to develop one or several lines of work proposed by the Ministry of National Education: flexible adaptable educational models, educational access and student retention, and alliances for rural development. In the department of Nariño, the Rural Development Alliance was formed between the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia (UCC) – Campus Pasto, the Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios (UNIMINUTO), the Corporación Unificada Nacional de Educación Superior (CUN), the Universidad Politécnica Estatal del Carchi (UPEC) in Ecuador and the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros – Comité Nariño.
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