No abstract

The indigenous Nasa are recognised in Colombia for using innovative strategies to deal with violent conflicts and to claim political rights. One of the most visible and permanent strategies is the Guardia Ind ıgena -GI (Indigenous Guard), a community watch to patrol and protect indigenous people. This study investigates how the Nasa frame the history of the GI, with what purposes and consequences. A language-based perspective was used to analyse how the Nasa frame the GI history and how this framing process affects their actions and practices. Our analysis shows that the Nasa refer mainly to four historical events when talking of GI history. These events function as identification points that contribute particular elements to the guards' collective identity in specific situations. This framing process has become an important power resource for constructing a non-violent collective identity and reconstructing their historical memory for peacebuilding.

The Nasa indigenous group's Guardia Indígena, whose primary goal is to protect indigenous people and their territories from all types of armed groups, is a nonviolent self-protection organization in Northern Cauca, Colombia. On 5 November 2014, while peace talks were ongoing between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government, two Guardia Indígena members were shot dead by FARC guerrillas. Without guns or physical violence, indigenous guards captured seven guerrillas responsible for the crime, and, four days later, indigenous organizations held a trial and sentenced the rebels to imprisonment. This article describes those events and investigates how the unarmed guards managed to capture the guerrillas and bring them to trial. The self-organization concept is used to gain insights into the mechanisms and strategies deployed. The mechanisms of the Guardia Indígena include constructing and applying specific social norms and values, developing a common goal, and applying a flexible mix of centralized and decentralized ways of organizing. By combining and activating these mechanisms at carefully chosen moments, indigenous people have succeeded in organizing themselves as a collective movement that is powerful enough to confront armed groups without using violence.