Fighting change: agrobiodiversity, livelihoods and gender in Montes de María, Colombia
-In Collaboration with Olga Lucía Hernández
One important source of variability in rural areas involves climate seasonality, which is an organizing force or principle in traditional rural societies and their relationships with humans and other beings. Seasons can influence the productivity of subsistence crops, which at certain moments of the year could meet a threshold of minimum resources needed to meet needs, but in other moments, they would not be enough. The experience of seasonality and resource availability is influenced by factors like the ecological integrity of the local landscape and social dynamics influencing resource access. Some of these dynamics are associated with the existence and intersection of categories of difference such as race and gender, which make it more difficult for some people to access resources.
In this project, I explored the interaction between seasonality, social factors influencing access to productive resources such as water and land, and gendered dynamics over the capacity to diversify and realize a secure livelihood in María la Baja, a fertile land that experienced violence during the armed conflict in Colombia.
María La Baja is embedded in a matrix of tropical dry forests and includes low mountainous areas. This region is close to Cartagena, the first colonial city in what is today Colombia, and an entry point for people brought as slaves from Africa. And Montes de Maria was a region occupied by the first African people escaping from the Spanish regime, who brought with them plants from Africa that persist in home gardens. But land cover was soon after transformed: local elites turned them into pastures for cattle ranching. Decades later, large-scale sugarcane plantations were established but this failed due to water scarcity and the establishment of profitable plantations in the Cauca Valley in Colombia. In the 1960s, a water district was created to promote large-scale rice crops. When they expanded, this changed diversified livelihoods of local people. During the 1990s. Colombia opened its economy and rice imports outcompeted local rice production. Rice producers started switching crops and soon after, paramilitaries entered the region and committed hundreds of human rights violations, induced displacement of local people, and cleared conditions for the establishment and expansion of oil-palm plantations.
María la baja: contested land
María la baja: making and finding abundance
Creating abundance: women and their nurturing ––of people and the land
 Landscapes of (contested) abundance |  Land use change |
|---|---|
 Water enclosed |  Water |
 Water district |  Oil palm |
 Oil palm's shadow |  Shadows and gas |
 Complicated land |  Remoteness and oblivion |
 Fishing and offering with bare hands |  Abundance amidst scarcity |
|---|---|
 Abundance amidst scarcity |  Journeying |
 Companions |  Rice |
 Commercial crops |  Commercial crops |
 Commercial crops |  Water storage |
 Commerce |
 Creating abundance |  Creating abundance: backyard gardens |
|---|---|
 Creating abundance: backyard gardens |  Creating abundance: backyard gardens |
 Creating abundance: backyard gardens |  Creating abundance: backyard gardens |
 Creating abundance: (re)producing knowledge |  Creating abundance: (re)producing knowledge |
 Creating abundance: (re)producing knowledge |  Creating abundance: (re)producing knowledge |
 Creating abundance: (re)producing knowledge |  Creating abundance: (re)producing knowledge |
 Enjoying abundance |