Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Carolina Angel Botero
Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Recibido: 30 de octubre 2019
Aceptado: 1 de Abril 2020
After the signature of the peace treaty with the FARC guerrilla [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], the Colombian government ended a 60-year conflict with one of the oldest guerrilla movements in the world. Alongside the signature of the peace treaty began a national project to conduct biological inventories of species through a series of expeditions called "Colombia Bio". The idea behind these expeditions is to explore and register biodiversity in places formerly occupied by the FARC. I accompanied five of these expeditions as an anthropologist. My interest has been to understand the relationship between science and peace as they are specifically enacted in the post-conflict moment. More specifically, I aim to explore how concepts of biodiversity and transitional justice become intertwined in this particular scenario, bringing new understandings of peace and on the relation with nature in a post-conflict scenario.
Keywords: Colombia Bio expeditions; environment; FARC; transitional justice.
Después de la firma del de paz con la guerrilla de las FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), el gobierno colombiano puso fin a un conflicto de 60 años con uno de los movimientos guerrilleros más antiguos del mundo. Junto con la firma del tratado de paz, se inició un proyecto nacional para realizar inventarios biológicos de especies a través de una serie de expediciones llamadas "Colombia Bio". La idea detrás de estas expediciones es explorar y registrar la biodiversidad en lugares anteriormente ocupados por las FARC. Acompañé a cinco de estas expediciones como antropóloga haciendo trabajo etnográfico con el fin de comprender la relación entre la ciencia y la paz, como los dos motores de estas expediciones. Más específicamente, mi objetivo es explorar cómo los conceptos de biodiversidad y justicia transicional se entrelazan en este escenario particular, trayendo nuevas interpretaciones de la paz y de la relación con la naturaleza en un escenario posterior al conflicto.
Palabras clave: Expediciones Colombia Bio; medio ambiente; FARC; justicia transicional.
Expeditions have, for centuries, been one of the main vehicles for scientific research (W.E.C., 1919). Very popular among 19th and 20th-century naturalists and anthropologists, expeditions have resisted the turns of centuries, constituting as one of the practices used in scientific research still today. Nature magazine journal has documented since early 20th century natural and social expeditions around the globe, including the expeditions by Frank Chapman from the American Museum of Natural History in 1913, which resulted in the description of most bird species in Colombia. Along with this interest of inventorying and describing new species, the Colombian government launched, four days after the signature of the peace treaty with the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), the Colombia Bio expeditions to conduct biological inventories in the territories that used to be under the control of this guerrilla. The lack of biological registries convened biologists in different areas, as well as, social scientists, not only to show the great richness of biodiversity in Colombia but also, species as evidence about peace being true.
These new expeditions have caught the attention of the scientific community around the world (Baptiste et al., 2017; Eufemia et al., 2018; Reardon, 2018a, 2018b). The first idea that comes to mind when thinking about expeditions is the feeling of going back in time, as they are a reminder of the first expeditions made by Spaniards (Nieto, 2006); later, during the years preceding Colombia’s independence with the expeditions made by Humboldt and Caldas (Díaz Piedrahita, 2000; Humboldt, 1850); and during the Republic of the New Granada, right after Colombia’s independence, the Chorographic Commission took place (Restrepo, 1999). This expedition is different from other scientific expeditions since even though the discovery and description of nature are in the center of the debate, what is being discussed with the Colombia Bio expeditions is the peace process with FARC. It is in relation to this political event that the expeditions were designed and implemented. In this sense, it has proven to be a very interesting scenario for studying the relationship between transitional justice, science, and biodiversity. As an anthropologist following the work of field biologists in Colombia, I study the relationship between the scientific community and the peace process. I have been recording the practices of field biologists doing biodiversity inventories just to find out that what results from an expedition is more than simply a list of species. Much of the political work for arguing that Colombia is now a country in peace is done in the field while specimens are collected, identified, and inventoried for Colombia’s biodiversity catalog.
Hence, the question that I would like to answer is how transitional justice and biodiversity come together in the Colombia Bio expeditions. Particularly, the interest is on biodiversity and the scientific practices that make biodiversity possible, not on the environment as a whole, which is usual lens when thinking about relations between nature and transitional justice. Environment as an all-encompassing concept is left undefined, assumed as universal across time and space. The emphasis on practices pauses to observe how we have come to have what we call biodiversity. And in this case, how producing biodiversity enacts peace.
To show how biodiversity and transitional justice come together in a different arrangement and the implications for this new configuration, I will first explain how the research for this paper was conducted. Then, I will introduce a discussion on how it is usually thought of the relationship between transitional justice and the environment, to show the novelty of thinking in terms of biodiversity and scientific practices. I will take the argument further and show how the peace process impacts scientific practices but also, how science interferes with peace with three ethnographic examples. First, on how science is made to speak another language, one that is far from scientific papers -that is the place for species-, and closer to a language useful to communicate peace; second, on how species are made to speak about peace; and finally, on how science helps resignify territories heavily impacted by conflict in the past. To finally conclude that the distance between science and transitional justice is much closer than thought, actually, indistinguishable in some cases.
My initial interest was focused on exploring how the scientific community participated in the peace process. Usually, scientists are not thought of as agents taking part in the agendas on peacebuilding, but Colombia Bio expeditions proved this is not always the case. Hence, the expeditions were the perfect scenario for exploring how biodiversity and peace came together, where a new way of approaching the environment and peace is being put into place, one in which the role of science and the scientific community is central. Thus, Colciencias, the governmental office for the promotion of science, technology, and innovation, sees the transitional justice context as a moment to vindicate with the environment and those communities that have been direct victims of violence (Colciencias, 2016, p. 2). In this particular case, peace is a keyword in the Colombia Bio program as “Peace will allow exploring and having a better knowledge of biodiversity, turning to rural areas where the conflict developed for more than half a century” (Colciencias, 2016, p.1). Peace here comes to represent not only the possibility of opening new spaces for science, but also, the possibility of showing that is real, measurable -in the number of species-, and that species can give an account of the process.
I was given the opportunity to participate in the Colombia Bio expeditions to pursue this question. However, I decided to observe scientific practices and to follow the scientists wherever they went and record everything they did. At first, I could only see biologists in the field putting in place biodiversity science, identifying species, creating an inventory and building a natural history collection. But with time, I came to realize that the making of a bird, just to give an example, was interfered with the peace process and its programs.
As an anthropologist, my work during the expeditions consisted in observing and recording what scientists did. In this sense, I used the ethnographic method of observing, interviewing, and participating from scientific practices. Walking with biologists in the field allowed me to think of peace, not as an objective, or a moment or a state that society should reach, but on the contrary, to think of peace as an analytical and conceptual category. This means, allowing peace to stand for other meanings different from the lack of armed confrontation. Furthermore, allowing different actors, non-humans, to be part of the peace process as well (Angel-Botero, 2020). For example, animals and plants being presented as evidence of peace is much more than that. It is, in fact, making non-humans spokespersons on behalf of the peace process.
Studies on peacebuilding and transitional justice refer to a series of actions that are aimed at maintaining peace conditions in a post-conflict context (Galtung, 1976; Lederach, 1998). Their aim is to contribute to the restoration of the rights of communities that have been affected by internal conflicts. To meet that end, a series of laws, institutions and government programs are created to allow dealing with violations in the past.
Though Colombia has had a long history of transitional processes that started early in the 90s with the demobilization of the M19 group, later in 2005, the process with paramilitaries and most recently with FARC, this is the first time a project of its kind has been implemented. It is not an easy program to locate within the framework of transitional justice since it not only defies the traditional four axes that constitutes the transitional justice programs – truth, memory, justice, and non-repetition actions -, but also, it involves a different community in the transitional project: natural scientists. Furthermore, addresses the transitional justice and environment relationship in a different way.
The relationship between conflict and environment or environment for peace has been thought generally from two main paths: on the one hand, the war for natural resources after a demobilization process (Blundell & Harwell, 2016; Yoboué, 2018; Talbott et al., 2018), which is something that is happening now in Colombia (FIP, 2018; IDEAM, 2018). On the other hand, the role of natural resources in the construction of peace (Conca & Wallace, 2009; Jensen & Leveonergan, 2013; UNEP, 2009). The idea, as the United Nations has stated, is to integrate the natural element in the comprehension of the conflict. Hence, understanding its potential to initiate, finance, or be the center of conflict, and turn it into a potential to build dialogue and cooperation between groups that have been historically divided in Colombia (Naciones Unidas Colombia, 2014).
For the peacebuilding agenda that takes environmental issues into account, it is also a matter of concern how resources can contribute to “development and help build and protect human security in all its forms, including human dignity and citizenship”(Harwell, 2018, p. 633). This requires making institutional arrangements that promote natural resources management as part of the peacebuilding agenda, as one of the strategies for a society recovering from violence (Harwell, 2018, p. 659). This stand on governance of natural resources in post-conflict societies opens questions such as who owns the land and the natural resources; how to rebuild economic conditions for promoting rights and citizenship; how to prevent natural resources plunder and the refueling of war; how to restore and build strong institutions that control equitable access and use of natural resources (Bothe et al., 2010; Bruch et al., 2018, p. 2). But the lens on biodiversity sciences and the practices that put biodiversity in action pushes the discussion in another direction. One that does not approach these questions, at least not directly, and that focuses on species and collections.
What follows is a perspective on the role that biodiversity plays in this scenario after signing the peace agreement with FARC. What I came to understand is that peace produces science at the same time that science produces peace. Therefore, I introduce three scenarios in which science and peace interfere. Interference is a concept I take from Michel Serres (Serres, 2000), a French philosopher that dedicated his life to the study of science, to explain how sciences come together. Interference proposes a way of understanding connections. So, for example, it may occur when talking with someone on the phone. The sound will impact the call but will not change it. Though it appears to be the same call with the same person on the other side, it is not the same. It has been interfered, making a new call out of it. Something similar occurs for biodiversity science and transitional justice interfered: something new comes out of it even though in appearance it is science and a governmental program on expeditions to raise awareness about peace. So instead of separating nature from transitional justice and placing them on two different ends to find common ground, what I was observing, on the contrary, was how science and peace occur at the same time. In this sense, I couldn’t separate the practices that produce biodiversity sciences from the agenda that was put in place to explore Colombia’s biodiversity. Different questions arose: why to do expeditions; what language was used by science to communicate findings; what was the role played by species; and why to do inventories. I will develop each of these statements next.
Much is said about opening new spaces for science after the signature of the peace accord. And although it is partly true that biological research was limited, most of the researchers participating in the Colombia Bio expeditions were still very active, conducting inventories and biological research even during the worst years of conflict. That is to say, biodiversity research was not on hold. However, how science and peace have been brought together during the peace negotiations and now, after signing the peace agreement, has taken an interesting turn. The Colombia Bio expeditions have become, besides an enterprise for inventories and collection of specimens, an expedition for the search of peace.
Expeditions are huge and complicated enterprises, and each one is distinct. The participants change, the locations change, and so does climate, rain conditions, except for the scientific practices. In general, it involves a field effort of approximately thirty researchers specialized in different biological groups, including reptiles, birds, fungus, insects, plants, mammals and fish, plus media. In some expeditions, there are also groups of biologists who conduct participatory science programs; and finally, but not least, a small team of social scientists. But people are not the only ones that make an expedition. For each taxonomic discipline, there are tons of materials and equipment that they bring with them, including ethyl alcohol, which is fundamental for the preservation of all manner of biological samples. And cutters, formaldehyde, and animal guides, no birding could be done without them. The list goes on, but it’s clear to me that a biologist has an intimate relationship with their equipment, to such an extreme that it is often an extension of their sensory apparatus. In spite of all their equipment, biologists would be lost without the regional knowledge provided by the local guides. Without this effort, there would be no species, and with no species, there won’t be anything to show. Species are central not only for the peace project but also, for the biodiversity inventory.
This is probably one of the first stances in which peace has transformed scientific practices. Though much work has been done in biology, Humberto Mendoza, the lead researcher in botany explained one afternoon after long walks, that this was the first time he has been paid to do this work. The surprise was major since he has been one of the most active and senior researchers of the group. “What do you mean by that?”, I interrogated. “Yes”, he answered in his serene tone and his characteristic way of talking with few words. “I have never been paid for doing complete inventories and then to dedicate my time identifying and describing species”. This was key to understanding that the peace process had had a major impact on the kind of scientific work done. Inventorying and describing species resulted from the peace process but not necessarily something planned by scientists. It was something new to many of the field biologists, despite a lifetime work trajectory. Furthermore, when I first arrived at the Humboldt Institute as a doctoral researcher, the social sciences division had only six people working on the team. In the next year, and thanks to the funding that came from the expeditions, the group grew to 17 people. The same happened with the field biologists. Most of the researchers had just been hired to work on the expeditions. The task was clear of what they had to do: only taxonomy and genetics, ecology, phylogeny, or other kinds of studies were not included. And this as well required bringing a complete laboratory to remote areas in the interest of conserving the specimens. If anything goes wrong with the conservation and transportation of the samples, the field effort would be lost. The resources required for this to happen are huge, and peace was there to make it possible. Probably, no as part of the funds for the special programs for peace, but it does show that peace, as the possibility of accessing different territories and opening new spaces for scientific research, was behind the motivations for a project like Colombia Bio to happen. Now, not to say how to prepare the skin of a bird, but to place the making of inventories as something that needs to be done in a country preparing for peace. This is by no means a banal impact of peace into scientific practice. Guiding the research efforts before, in and after the field is an important way of impacting scientific research but is just the beginning for it what comes next.
Figure 1. Buffer zone of the Chingaza National Park. Abandoned FARC campsite. Documentary camera crew. Photograph from the author.
On one of the last expeditions for Colombia Bio we went to the buffer zone of the Chingaza National Park, at around 200 kilometers away from Bogotá. The expedition took place where the Oriental Andes mountain range meets with the grasslands that end in the border with Venezuela. This used to be a FARC controlled area, due to its strategic location connecting the southern part of the country with Bogotá, Colombia’s capital city. We set the base camp at Medina, Cundinamarca and researched an elevation gradient that went from 600 to 2300 ma.s.l. Along this route, we found out from Oscar, the local guide at Medina, that there had been an abandoned FARC campsite that served from 2004 to 2006 and had held up to 100 guerillas. Hence, we decided to do a social expedition to the ruins of this site abandoned more than ten years ago to explore the traces of war. Along with us came a camera crew and the photographer, both were in charge of recording not only that about the specimens found, but also, what scientists do in the field, as part of the effort to socialize these expeditions and show the benefits of the peace process. So far, ten of the expeditions have documentaries, which have been screened in festivals around the world and broadcasted in Colombia’s public television.
Figure 2. Remains of FARC’s occupation. Instant drink. Photograph from the author.
Over the past ten years, the jungle had reclaimed this place, so what we saw was very different from what one imagines a FARC base would be like. A piece of a radio, a deodorant, a mosquito net, a pot and lid, the lemon and coca plants were part of the remnants of the FARC occupation, but not the proof of conflict or peace. Those pieces from the past had a meaning and a relation with peace and conflict only through Oscar’s memories, words, and actions. However, those objects left to decompose and an armed group that is no more (at least not here), were made into a manifestation of peace as it was recorded on camera. He picked up a piece of radio. “I know this is not a landmine because it has no cables attached”, he explained to me. I have to admit this was the first time it crossed my mind that there could be mines around us. The way he leaned, grabbed and discarded every object left behind by the guerrillas, it was a manifestation of something that was no more, something that needs to be left behind. This moment was interrupted by the Woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lagotricha), the now inhabitants of the campsite (who knows if they got to cohabit with the guerrillas). We ran to get a closer look at the monkeys. They did the same thing. They stared and moved the branches of the trees as a deterrent act. We took out our cameras, and the documentary crew continued recording. At that moment, science, specimens, and ruins were stitched together, articulating an idea of peace. Even if this does not go into the biodiversity inventory, the interest of showing how peace has opened new spaces for science is as important for the expedition as the list itself.
It was my first time with the camera but not for the other researchers who had stared in other documentaries about previous expeditions. “At first you feel very uncomfortable with the camera pointing at you all the time, but then you get used to it”, advised the lead herpetologist, which appears in all of the documentaries from the expeditions lead by the Humboldt Institute and has some amazing pictures done by the field photographer that documents every move. With a team recoding my steps, this was also my first time in a documentary.
But its relevance does not rely on us being television stars for a day. It is about science that is made to speak other languages, one that is not taxonomy, which does not go on academic papers, and does not include species descriptions. These pictures and documentaries are far from the academic world. They are making science circulate in other spaces and tell different stories. It is not only a kind of National Geographic documentary about scientists in the field. It is also about peace and violence and how these territories, unexplored by science, are given a new life. Researchers do not explain things about birds or butterflies, but on how fortunate they are to be able to discover Colombia’s biodiversity, thanks to peace, of course.
Figure 3. FARC’s abandoned campsite reclaimed by nature. Stove. Photograph from the author
As Woolly monkeys brought scientists, scientific practices placed animals in a different network of relations. “In each biological group there is a name reserved with the word peace for any new species to be found”, explained one of the leading biologists during the expedition. I’m unsure whether Carl Linnaeus, who introduced the system for naming species in the 18th century, thought of the naming laws to include political considerations, but it’s interesting how peace as war, moralizes and politicizes techno-scientific knowledge production (Lyons, 2018). At the first of Colombia Bio expeditions, the lead botanist of the expedition discovered a new species for science: a plant of the family of Elaeagia, of which there are seven species in Colombia and is related to the coffee plants family. It was discovered after long walks, and the researchers were fortunate enough to find the plant with its flowers, which is essential for the scientific description of a new species (Mendoza-Cifuentes & Aguilar-Cano, 2018). The scientists refer to this new species as “el árbol de la paz naciente” in English, “the tree of the rising peace”. Its white flowers make it a perfect candidate to use one of those names reserved for peace.
Names can also talk about international politics. Scientists from Kew Gardens in London, which signed a partnership with the Colombia Bio program, found a new plant species and named it “Espeletia praesidentis, in honor of efforts made by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to build peace in his country after over five decades of conflict” (Diazgranados & Sánchez, 2017; Kew Gardens, 2016). Later, in August 2017, a national newspaper El Tiempo published in its environment section a report titled: “Las nuevas especies que gracias a la paz estamos descubriendo”, in English, “The new species that thanks to peace we are discovering” (Pardo Ibarra, 2017) When a plant, a fish, a crab, or a mushroom is given the name of a species, and, that a species is considered to be found because of peace, that animal or plant or mushroom is made into a political actor, able of claiming peace with its existence. What is interesting here to explore is what are the implications of species speaking for the reality of peace.
Expeditions are not only biodiversity inventories or lists of species. At least in the Colombian context of the Colombia Bio expeditions, what the ethnographic approach allows us to understand, is that biologists, animals, and plants, local guides, the ruins of war, teachers, and students, Woolly monkeys and FARC, get articulated in much more complex relations. They get to tell one part of the story of what it means to conduct biological research in a country in the transition for peace, or at least, ways in which peace produces science.
When new species are found, an argument about the reality of peace is being made, besides the scientific discovery. That is the story that wants to be told, and that’s why there’s the camera crew, the photographer and the filmmakers, to serve as witnesses of truth. Hence, this is also a question about reality. Not only about species, but about peace, and how those species can speak about peace being true. Like the researchers, specimens are subjected to a thorough photographic recording. These pictures are not only used in the papers that describe the new species, in case of a novelty, but they are also to be used in social media, magazines, newspapers, and any type of publication different from the scientific one. On the first forum where partial results from the expeditions were presented, that took place in Bogotá, the public was given a box with six postcards including pictures of very charismatic animals. Though the way of conveying important outcomes of the expeditions is to show charts with the number of species new to science, new to Colombia, or a specific region in Colombia, the picture of animals is a very compelling one. It’s a mixture of pictures and numbers which together allow saying that thanks to peace new species have been discovered, or, the new species of peace.
This special condition for articulating peace is not given to every specie found. For example, in 2018, a new plant of Miconia was discovered in Colombia by researchers from the California Science Academy. The plant was named Miconia rheophytica, after the fluvial conditions where it grows. Though it was discovered in a place where armed confrontations have taken place, and furthermore, during the years after the signature of the peace process, nothing with this plant has to do with the peace process. This special condition is given to certain species, that incorporate in their names, or are part of publications where it is claimed that because of peace their discovery was made possible.
What is being produced by the biodiversity inventories? Lists of species. Specimens are the evidence that a given species exists at a particular point in space and time; therefore, they are the fundamental data of biodiversity science. And a new species serves as evidence that its discovery is because of the possibility of reaching undiscovered places. At least, this is true for the Colombia Bio program that claims this is possible because of peace. But inventories produce much more than a list of species and new species, they also give new meanings to the places they visit.
There are many ways for making an inventory, but biologists in these expeditions are also interested in growing the biological collections at Humboldt Institution, which is why they collect animals and plants from all taxonomic groups. Ideally, inventories are documented with specimens, but because they are so time-consuming to collect and curate, sometimes scientists supplement the specimen records with observational records supported by sound recordings, photographs, and field notes, but this is not the case. The idea is to get hold of the specimen and include it in the Institute’s collection preserved in Villa de Leyva. The method is partial, but it’s the best for what they are trying to achieve.
But specimens are not everything that is being produced by this particular scientific practice of inventorying nature. Along with the making of a bird into a specimen, there is also a process of walking the territory, something that I have come to think of as a process of re-doing land. Different stories get to be told about these places that identify them with conflict and armed confrontation, but the scientific practice produces a new way of naming, seeing and walking the place.
Before the arrival of the first scientists in 2017 to the Chingaza National park buffer zone, it is said, no one visited the area. It was thanks to the sighting of Woolly monkeys that this became a site of interest to scientists. Not even the armed groups, since they left in 2006, more than ten years ago. “It was only Oscar and me”, explained Byron, one of the people working as a local guide for the expedition and the only permanent inhabitant of this territory. He was used to being alone. When he saw strangers walking through the path that guides to the high mountain, he unhooked his machete and asked the strangers to introduce themselves. He was afraid armed groups were making a comeback. It was only scientists and students.
The students stayed for three months and marked trails that followed the places that Woolly monkeys frequent. We used to walk along these same paths, translations on the ground of monkey routes. But it is not only a matter of translation or research interests, it proposes another way of walking and hence, another way of knowing. We walked not along FARC’s routes built to serve the needs of war, but with monkeys above. The routes taken by scientists can also mean including new references that help navigate the territory. For example, along with “the place where the soldier was killed”, we also used “the place for the mist-nets”, signifying and giving other meanings and purposes to different sites. For the local guides that walked with the scientists, their knowledge was a new way of interpreting their reality. Finding out all the different kinds of frogs present, and that each has a name, was a pleasant discovery for Byron. Not only he now walks with his sight set on everything that quickly moves on the ground, but he has new places to name. Now Byron can say: “the place where Cecilia’s breed” (a type of reptile).
What for many years stood as a FARC controlled territory, cannot be reduced to a number of new registries for science, nor a FARC controlled area. Science and specimens articulate peace in scientific practice, giving other values to a place. On the first expedition of the Santander Bio at El Carmen de Chucurí, a place well known because of being very violent and harsh confrontations, one of the locals was very happy about an expedition taking place in his locality. We were presenting to the community what was going to take place during the next 20 days and few people, including this tourism entrepreneur, went to listen to what he had to say. “At least we will get to be known for a reason other than violence”, he said to me, and smiled. And dreamed of having a brochure with species that he could show to the very few tourists that visit this place. “All foreigners, of course”, he answered when I asked who came this way. “Colombians are too afraid to come”.
The expedition serves more than a scientific purpose as do specimens. It is not only a matter of scientific concern but also, the possibility of another future. A future that is forged in relation to other non-humans.
Colombia Bio, despite being an expedition conducted by biologists with the interest of producing biodiversity inventories, is as much about peace as it is about science. In this particular program, transitional justice, science, and biodiversity get intertwined, including new actors into the peace process in Colombia. Not only is the scientific community, a community not fully studied in the works on transitional justice, but also, species are made into political actors having the ability to speak about peace being true.
This scenario of the expeditions in the search for peace opens new questions for transitional justice studies. It approaches environment and peace studies from a different lens, and positions peace differently. Furthermore, transitional justice, ideas of peace or violence, can impact a scientific laboratory or the practices of making new species into scientific life.
At the same time, I am telling a story about a transitional justice process in Colombia, new important discoveries are being made for the biological domain. So when I say that documentaries produced a visual identity of peace, at the same time it transformed the usual channels for communicating science, beyond papers and the academic realm. The same thing happens with the naming of species. It continues to be a biological practice with a history of more than 200 years. Nonetheless, the naming of new species serves the peace project. Or the simple idea about doing biological inventories. This is as well a practice that has been going on for centuries, but not so common nowadays, to the point that it was something new to expert and senior taxonomists. And with the inventories and the practice of expeditions comes along a way of walking and observing that can even allow places associated with conflict and confrontation to acquire other meanings.
While I write about peace, expeditions, and scientific practices, conflict has transformed into different forms of violence, with persisting confrontations and killings. Understanding peace as the end of confrontation will question it as being true. However, my approach to peace as an action and not as a description of an external situation allows for peace to be enacted by different actors such as natural scientists, species, Woolly monkeys, documentaries, among other human and non-human actors. In this sense, a particular definition of peace is produced, one that does not exclude the persistent forms of violence.
This also helps to understand the argument I am making: peace produces science at the same moment science produces peace. Though, a different way of defining peace. If I allow peace to stand for something different than the lack of armed confrontation, new ways of understanding peace can emerge. Peace, in all, can be found in the very practice of making specimens into species, something thought as reserved to biologists.
All translations from Spanish to English are my own.
All photographs in the text are from the author.
I thank Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, in Bogotá, for supporting this research as I conducted a doctoral fellowship at the Institute. I particularly thank the Colombia Bio, Santander Bio projects and Gobernación de Santander, for allowing me the opportunity to conduct fieldwork. Also, the recognition to Universidad de Los Andes and Colciencias Convocatoria Beca Nacional 647 for the doctoral fellowship. The positions here raised compromise only the author, not the Institute, Colciencias, or any of the funding institutions. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to c.angel958@uniandes.edu.co
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