Spatial appropriation and order in La Fila and El Oso ETCRs, Tolima, Colombia

Abstract

After the signing of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the former FARC-EP guerrilla, some Territorial Training and Reincorporation Spaces (ETCR, by its Spanish acronym) were allocated around the country as part of the reincorporation process for ex-combatants, whose development and achievement has had great difficulties in achieving what has been agreed in the framework of the peace process (delays, negligence, clear routes of reincorporation, security, political tensions). Based on fieldwork in two ETCRs, one La Fila and the other in El Oso in Tolima (Andean region, in the center-west of the country), we spoke with some signatories of the Peace Agreement. During our visit, we recorded at the audiovisual level how these spaces are being appropriated and intervened where members of the Comunes party, national institutions, foreign countries, and neighboring communities converge. This paper proposes a perspective on the ETCRs as ghettos of integration and exclusion of ex-combatants. In addition, we highlight how coexistence in spaces has created ways of inhabiting the ETCRs expressed in the adaptations to spaces, orders, and symbols given by peace signatories in the process of reincorporation.