Insurgent Peace: Community-Led Peacebuilding of Indigenous Peoples in Sagada, Philippines

Abstract

ABSTRACT In a global era when most wars are fought between state and non-state actors, how do people make peace? This article examines the processes through which civilian communities imagine and build peace during a prolonged active armed conflict. It presents a case of a demilitarized community—popularly understood as a peace zone—of the indigenous peoples community of the Municipality of Sagada in the Philippines in the context of 50 years of armed conflict between the Philippine state and the New People’s Army (NPA), a rebel group waging a Maoist-inspired insurgency. For 30 years, the indigenous community of Sagada has effectively regulated military and rebel operations and prevented conflict-related civilian deaths and internal displacement. While existing research identifies Sagada as a pioneer model of the phenomenon of peace zones in the world, we know very little of the community work that sustains this model. Situated within the “local turn” in peacebuilding literature and emergent field of peace geographies, this article examines the kind of work required from a civilian community to protect their lives during conflict, and what this tell us about peace. I use the term insurgent peace to refer to peace as dynamic processes rooted upon a refusal and disruption of the spatial logics of violence imposed by the competing structures of power of state and non-state armed actors upon civilian communities. Further, insurgent peace captures the quotidian work of civilian communities in carving alternative political spaces and enacting peaceful futures during armed conflict.