Sanaduría

Sanaduría is a word resulting from the encounter of the Spanish words curaduría (curatorship) and sanación (healing). The word refer to the healing of experiences of pain and despair, and caring for collaborative work. The curatorial process sought to select and organise concepts and practices of peace proposed by members of Indigenous peoples and survivors of the Colombian armed conflict, in order to imagine richer and more complex meanings.

Juntanza is the movement that brings us to encounter and recognise others. This movement is not spontaneous, nor does it occur in haste: it requires sitting alongside one another and learning to listen. It is persistent work, an invitation to imagine futures shaped by the effort of coexistence. It is the beginning of a path strewn with difficulties, but one that offers the possibility of healing wounds and dreaming of possible futures.

Opening Paths

To gather together is to open new paths where violence, anger or despair would otherwise raise dead ends. Opening a path means transforming oneself: entering into relation with new territories, new people. Peace is never a fixed state: it is relational, unfinished, imperfect. To open paths is to believe that there are always ways of transforming conflict, even in the midst of the harshest or darkest situations.

Cooling or Softening Words

Cooling or softening words means calming conflict. It is not a rhetorical trick nor a clever strategy to deceive an opponent. It is a way of easing tensions to better understand the situation. This kind of speech is performative: it acts. It does not remain at the level of declarations of commitment, but unfolds in gestures, practices and concrete transformations.

Mediating to Cultivate

To mediate in order to cultivate, or pa’labrar – mediating words – is the art of transforming an explosive situation into a space where differences can be heard, where a conscious discussion emerges from each person’s concerns. Mediation is not only about calming tensions: it is also a gesture that sows the seeds of future coexistence, through rituals in which plants, substances, songs and dances take part. To mediate is to coexist with dissensus, and to assume responsibility for futures that do not depend on eliminating others.

Weaving the Community

To weave the community is to welcome the many threads of which we are made. We are plural and different, yet this diversity prevents neither dialogue nor recognition. In this weaving, peaces are invented as relational bonds, spun through the ties that connect us.

Dancing Memory

To dance memory, during festivals and carnivals, is to reclaim spaces scarred by violence and terror and transform them into places where life is affirmed. Memory, like dance, is never static: it is movement, an energy capable of opening breaches in silence and making marginalised stories perceptible and audible. Carnival and festivity, like memory itself, are renewed each time they are enacted, inviting the participation of all as acts of liberation and reappropriation of space.