Colombian graphic narratives of the post-acuerdo

Abstract

This chapter examines the representation of human rights abuses and violations such as forced displacement, land theft, and blocked access to water in recent Colombian graphic novels. It connects Historia gráfica de la lucha por la tierra, developed in the early 1970s, to the more recent Caminos condenados (Guerra et al., 2016), La Palizúa (Guerra and Aguirre, 2018), and Sin mascar palabra (Guerra and Vieco, 2018), all published after the peace accords between the Colombian State and the FARC in 2016, based on voices and testimonies of victims of different modalities of human rights violations such as repression, assassinations, displacement, and land theft in the Bolívar, Magdalena, Sucre, and Urabá regions. The chapter examines these graphic narratives by looking at the visual and textual mechanisms they employ in conceiving, representing, and interrogating the violation of human rights discourse and practice in rural Colombia. After identifying the issues at the center of their demands, the chapter argues these works construct a narrative to display those human rights violations while proposing notions of justice and accountability, resorting to solidarity as a primary tool in that process. These graphic novels help communities revive, reinvent, and assert imagined alternatives as the foundation for rebuilding the displaced and dismembered fabric of the nation.