Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia

by Angie Lederach

On November 24, 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed a revised peace accord that marked a political end to over a half-century of war. Feel the Grass Grow traces the far less visible aspects of moving from war to the decades of campesino struggle to defend life, land, and territory prior to the national accord, as well as campesino social leaders' engagement with the challenges of the state's post-accord reconstruction efforts. In the words of the campesino organizers, "peace is not signed, peace is built." Drawing on nearly a decade of extensive ethnographic and participatory research, Angela Jill Lederach advances a theory of "slow peace." Slowing down does not negate the urgency that animates the defense of territory in the context of the interlocking processes of political and environmental violence that persist in post-accord Colombia. Instead, Lederach shows how the campesino call to "slowness" recenters grassroots practices of peace, grounded in multigenerational struggles for territorial liberation. In examining the various layers of meaning embedded within campesino theories of "the times ( los tiempos )," this book directs analytic attention to the holistic understanding of peacebuilding found among campesino social leaders. Their experiences of peacebuilding shape an understanding of time as embodied, affective, and emplaced. The call to slow peace gives primacy to the everyday, where relationships are deepened, ancestral memories reclaimed, and ecologies regenerated.

Genres: Nonfiction

300 pages, Paperback

Published June 20, 2023

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most profound books I have read on peacebuilding in recent years. Angela Lederach constructs an ethnography from time in accompaniment with local campesino peacebuilders in Columbia. Lederach eloquently builds critiques and possibilities from a beautiful integration of participant voices and stories with relevant theories and literature. At the root of her text is the understanding of paz sin prisa (peace without hurry) and an understanding that peace and human flourishing are ecological and embedded in a web of multi-species flourishing. The temporality of slowness is in direct contrast to government and ngo prisa (hurry) that works from arbitrary timelines to extract fotos y firmas (photos and signatures) and the performance of (negative) “peace.” The final chapters offer new ways of living into time, accompaniment, relationality, non-linear memory, and placemaking that offer a profound way forward.