Fields of fire: Emancipation and resistance in Colombia

Human rights are sustained by the mobilization of communities. (Blau 2011; Esparza 2011) While mobilization is a facilitating ability of human rights communities, they are also spatially limited in their scope. While communities sustain the conditions for human rights, their sovereignty extends only to the municipal and cultural borders of its mobilizing space. As such, a sociological understanding of rights enforcement is necessary to close the gap between human rights law and rights praxis.

In 2008, over eight-thousand sugarcane workers went on strike in Colombia in solidarity with a platform community campaign to improve human rights in the Valle del Cauca region. Wages, working conditions, environmental concerns, school funding, and housing loans were all among the demands of this campaign. While the economic leverage of the mobilization is typical of labor movements, the strike could not have been sustained without extensive community embeddedness. Likewise, non-economic human rights demands would not have had the economic leverage necessary to lead the movement to victory.

 In this paper, I argue that while law is important, human rights is primarily enforced by communities. In their collective refusal to be dominated by authorities, communities create a social space where livelihood reflects a respect for human rights. This is contrasted with the juridical approach, by which individuals are to await rights to be bestowed upon them by authorities.