Geographies of Terror and Fear: Black Communities in Colombia and Displacement, 2004

<P>Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.</P><br>This research project sought to address the 'invisibilisation' of many 'terror' contexts through a geographical perspective. In particular it sought to develop an original conceptual framework through which to view and examine the impact of terror 'on the ground' and the multiple ways in which its manifestations affect human beings in a variety of settings.<br>
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The study was empirically sited in Colombia, where it sought to explain the ways in which the country's black communities in the Pacific coast region are displaced from their lands by the various armed actors of Colombia's internal conflict.<br>
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Evidence for this ethnographic study was collected with internally displaced persons (IDPs) and black leaders in the Colombian capital of Bogota and the small town of Guapi on the Pacific coast. Qualitative data was gathered from in-depth interviews and focus group sessions, which were recorded, transcribed and analysed, and also numerous informal conversations and observation in the field (the interview transcripts are included in the data collection, but the informal notes and observation data are not).<br><br><B>Main Topics</B>:<BR><br>Users should note that the interviews in this data collection are all in Spanish. No English translations are currently available. The documentation for this dataset is also limited.<br>
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The data comprise 14 interview transcripts, 11 of which are in-depth interviews, and 3 are focus group sessions. Interview length ranged from 30 minutes to 3 hours. The interviews explored the experience of forced displacement of Colombia's black Pacific coast communities, by gathering personal histories, enquiring into the changing 'sense of place' that people experience and into both mentally-constructed and real 'landscapes of fear'.<br>
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The interviews further give insights into the nature of the intense territorial dispute in the region (involving both right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerrilla groups), more recent trends of spatial confinement of local communities, marked gender differences of forced displacement patterns, and the multi-scalar politics of resistance enacted by the social movement of black communities.