Displacement and configuration of new subjectivities in wounaan boys and girls from the Colombian Pacific Region

The article presents the results of a research process that inquired into the configuration of new subjectivities in eight boys and girls belonging to the Wounaan indigenous community(2). Given their condition of displacement, they are currently located in urbanmarginal contexts, specifically in the Bahia de la Paz neighbourhood, in the district of Buenaventura. The objective of the research project was to understand the impacts of forced displacement on these children, especially on their ways of living in the world and on the configuration of their subjectivities. The main conclusion that can be drawn from the findings is that the configuration of subjectivities is linked to two dimensions: first, territory, as a space of tension between the loss and reappropriation of a new sense of belonging to a place "other" than their community, and, second, the body as locus of material inscription of new forms of expression that combine with their ancestral customs and daily practices. This makes evident the tension between tradition and westernization, expressed through the ethnic identity reproduced in Waunana traditions and the adaptation to a foreign and westernized context that provides certain improvements to their life patterns, yet "deprives" them of other aspects that they long for. Thus, subjectivization processes arc built in terms of identity. In the attempt to preserve their ancestral customs, these subjects reaffirm ethnicity as a cultural and political matrix that operates especially in the use, occupation, and appropriation of a new geographic space. Since this space is perceived as foreign, it is replaced by the body as the genuine territory of the identity locus.