Usme: A Space for Hope. A case study of decolonial resistance and processes of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation in Bogotá, Colombia.

The increasing urbanisation of Latin America posits challenges for the rural life, especially for those places around the cities where the land is being transformed from farms to heavily industrialised zones or dense populated zones. Usme is an example of that transformation: a former farmer town that was co-opted by Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia. In 1954 the city took control over the jurisdiction of Usme, and since then the town has been subject to deep transformations that are in conflict with the everyday life of the rural culture of Usme. Among the most negative changes are the construction of the third biggest landfill in Latin America, the mining contracts multinationals have in Usme, and a badly planned housing project. This thesis is a case study of Usme, it provides an account about how the community of Usme is reacting to those challenges by proposing an alternative way to understand the world.<br><br>This thesis explores how the aforementioned negative transformations of the land are a consequence of the oppressive side of modernity; coloniality. In that manner, the thesis argues that governments have created an assemblage of Usme as a place that has no productive value unless it is used as a repository of natural resources for the city. This assemblage lies in the modern/colonial idea of development.<br><br>But this thesis is not only about the oppression and exclusion of Usme. It also addresses how the activists from Usme challenge the modern/colonial impositions over their land. In that manner, the thesis describes how Usme activists are creating an alternative way to understand their world; one in which the memory of the pre-Hispanic joins with the campesino[1]’s memory to de-locate modern ideas of science and environmentalism. For the activists, human and nature can dialogue as equals and science is the language used to communicate with nature.<br><br><br>[1] In this thesis the word campesinos refers to the small farmers of Usme. I will use this term as a loanword from Spanish. This is very important, as the literary translation of campesinos into English is peasant, but as it was pointed out by one of my thesis examiners, peasant is attached to feudal systems, and therefore to the past. Instead Campesino, and as pointed out by the social movement organized as La Via Campesina (2011), campesino is the word used to name a broader community of “millions of peasants, small and medium-size farmers, landless people, women farmers, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world”