Not quite quiet, not quite encroachment: Interrogating the political nature of urban subaltern community engagement in Medellín, Colombia

Abstract

In Medellín, Colombia, hundreds of youth and community groups participate in activities aimed at transforming their lives and the interconnected lives of their neighbors. These activities are not necessarily conceived of as activism but they are also not politically passive; they are distinct from both survival strategies and “everyday resistance” but their relationships to the state and/or the rich and powerful are unstable. In this sense, these activities relate to but do not fit neatly within Asef Bayat’s framework of “quiet encroachment,” describing the “silent, protracted but pervasive advancement of the ordinary people on the propertied and powerful in order to survive and improve their lives”. Rather, they suggest a malleable kind of “quiet” action, one that moves both against and with state prerogatives. Building on the notion of quiet encroachment, and even more nuanced depictions coming out of Bayat’s later work, we describe the politics of recent activities accomplished by youth and community groups as a kind of “nonmovement” work, accomplished through spatial, affective, and organizational gains, that sits upon the more active political networking of previous eras.