OxPeace 2017: Chocolate, Politics and Peace-Building: An Ethnography of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado

The Peace Community of San Joseì de Apartadó is a peasant farmer community in Urabaì subregion who declared themselves 'neutral' to the Colombian armed conflict in 1997. One of the most emblematic victims’ groups in the country, they have been alternately glorified and condemned, but this paper, based on five years’ ethnographic work, shifts the human rights frame with which they have typically been viewed and proposes a gaze based on Galtung’s ‘positive peace’ concept, revealing two key narratives which co-exist in their collective identity: the radical narrative, according to which the Community interprets politics; and the organic narrative, the way in which they perceive their relationship to the environment and to their organisational process. These combine with the cultural practice of production of cacao (cocoa) and produce a concept of alternative community.