A Park or the Countryside? The Materiality of Rural Life in La Macarena Park

Tim Stork, Tilburg University (Netherlands)

Environmental peacebuilding always emerges around and sparks political discussions
about ecological and human sustainabilities. This is especially true in Colombia’s
national park system. To curb deforestation and support peacebuilding efforts in these
parks, the Colombian government strives to sign conservation accords with farmers.
Conservation accords define productive activities in line with the conservation goals of
a protected area as well as living conditions of farming communities, thereby
guaranteeing their fundamental rights.
A murkier story emerges from my sociolegal ethnography of politics inside La Macarena
Park. By embedding myself with both peasant communities and park rangers in this
national park, I realized these conservation accords – now targeting ‘vulnerable’
campesinos specifically – cannot be divorced from the structural context in which they
move. Despite the de jure recognition of peasant vulnerability, I encountered a de facto
continuation of discriminatory politics in this park.
While these conservation accords are meant to bring the Constitutional rights of parks
and people in sync, I show how the interplay of signing practices, legal norms and
materiality set many of these accords up to fail.