Liquid graves and meaning activism in the Colombian armed conflict: the �bottom-up� recovery and memorialisation of victims of forced disappearance

Abstract

Although the use of non-burial methods can be traced to the early 1950s, this conceptual paper seeks to define the agency of the community members of Puerto Berr�o (Department of Antioquia, Colombia) engaged in the recovery of human remains from the Magdalena River since the 1980s. Covering the preservation of the remains salvaged from these liquid graves, their �baptism� using fabricated names, and the �adoption� of their souls in exchange for small favours, this complex practice is political. This community-level meaning activism arises as a consequence of the harm-amplifying reality of a pathological state and is a form of resistance to (in)formal rules of necro-governmentality imposed by the non-state armed groups, the state, and the Catholic Church. We conclude that, despite the fact that relatives recognise the precarity of the legal�bureaucratic administration of forced disappearance, they have expressed a renewed expectation that the search, location, and identification be part of a new �virtuous state� in light of the 2016 Final Peace Agreement.