forcibly urban: internally displaced persons' experiences of bogotá's neoliberal transformation

366 Pages·2017·6.51 MB·English

FORCIBLY URBAN: INTERNALLY DISPLACED
PERSONS’ EXPERIENCES OF BOGOTÁ’S
NEOLIBERAL TRANSFORMATION
By
Sonia Garzón Ramírez

Submitted to
Central European University
Department of Gender Studies

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Gender studies

Supervisor: Professor Sara Meger

Budapest, Hungary
2017
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To Carine
To Mercedes
To the memory of my father Efrain

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DECLARATION
I hereby state that the thesis contains no materials accepted for any other degree in any other
institution. The thesis contains no materials previously written and/or published by another
person, except where appropriate acknowledgment is made in the form of bibliographical
reference.

Sonia Garzón Ramírez

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright in the text of this dissertation rests with the author. Copies by any process, either full
or in part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the author and lodged
in the library of Central European University. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This
page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such
instructions may not be made without the permission of the author.

Sonia Garzón Ramírez
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ABSTRACT
This research explores the extent to which neoliberal urbanization being implemented in the
global South allows marginalized populations, and specifically displaced people, to enjoy the right
to the city. Drawing on the narratives of forcibly displaced people living in Bogotá, this research
highlights the links between the dynamics of race, gender, class, sex and ethnicity that lie beneath
this city‘s spatial order and the mechanisms of violence and intra-urban displacement that shape
displaced people‘s urban experiences. Despite the expectations that Bogotá‘s urban renewal
would bring about a homogenous city, this research shows that this process has not been able to
overturn the city‘s segregated spatial order north-rich-white vs. south-poor-mestizo. It highlights
that, in so doing, the existing urban order has allowed a continuum of gendered violence to flow
from rural areas of armed conflict to the city as well as the re-emergence of forms of
exploitation. This research therefore examines how such mechanisms hinder forcibly displaced
people, particularly displaced women, from overcoming victimization and participate in
deepening their socio-spatial exclusion.
Through this research, I seek to contribute to the existing literature on global South cities by
excavating the spatial and gender-related challenges faced by urban societies undergoing
democratic transitions such as post-conflict situations. Based on eight months of fieldwork
conducted in 2012, combined with media and discourse analysis as well as archival research
undertaken up to 2016, the analysis brings to the fore displaced people‘s itineraries of
displacement, including the paths they have covered through their experiences of mourning,
survival or resistance. Inspired by feminist political thinkers and geographers as well as
postcolonial urban scholars, this research proposes a gendered right to the city aimed at two
interrelated purposes. First, as a methodological platform from which to identify the hurdles
faced by displaced people in their struggles to overcome their condition of victim and, second, as
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a venue to enable this population the chance to access transformative transitional justice in the
cities they have come to inhabit.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
While writing these acknowledgments, I bear in mind Patricia Tuitt‘s words (2004b), as she states
that ―those who are mentioned by name are unfairly burdened with the task of representing‖
numerous people who have influenced and contributed to the completion of a long-term project
like this. Nonetheless, at the risk of forgetting someone, I will attempt to thank all of those who
have influenced the path I have covered along these years of academic work.
I am especially indebted to my supervisor, Sara Merger, who took on the enormous challenge of
supervising this dissertation in the midst of the writing process. Many thanks for your faith in
this project, for your intellectual support, challenging questions and your encouraging words. In
a most particular manner, I thank you for having pushed me to engage with a stronger feminist
approach and for having re-sparked my feminist curiosity. Perhaps the many strands of this
project would not have achieved to be one sole piece without your guidance.
I am also glad to have the opportunity to express my thanks to many people I met at the CEU
Department of Gender Studies. My thanks go first of all to Allaine Cerwonka whose guidance,
full of kindness, humanity and intellectual brilliance, accompanied the first years of my research.
This dissertation owes much to your course in gender and geography. This course was such a
significant experience that it is one of the academic spaces I have appreciated the most while
being a student at CEU.
I also wish to thank many professors at the Gender Studies Department, in particular Francisca
de Haan, Andrea Peto, Susan Zimmermann, Hadley Renkin, Elissa Helms, Ėva Fodor, Eszter
Timár and Jasmina Lukic. I really appreciate the way in which you have made this Department
such a cosmopolitan, nomadic, and intellectually rich space. I feel really honored for having had
the chance to be part of it.
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A special thanks also goes to the staff members of CEU department, especially Natalia Versegi,
and to my fellow PhD students Dorottya Réday, Rahel Turai, Rita Béres-Deák, Barna Szamosi,
Eva Zekany, Edit Jeges, Irina Cheresheva, Heather Tucker, Marianna Szczygielska, who during
these years have made my life easier in ways too numerous to mention.
I should like to thank also the supervisors of my GEMMA M.A. thesis, Dorota Golanska from
the University of Lodz and Soleda Vieitez from the University of Granada. A large part of this
dissertation is related to the reflections I developed in my M.A. thesis. But also, I must say that it
was your vote of confidence that pushed me to believe that I could undertake the challenge of
pursuing a Doctoral program.
I especially acknowledge the Gender Department of the National University of Colombia, where
I took my very first courses on feminist theory, and the support of other scholars of this
university, Sylvia de Castro Korgi and Claudia Mosquera Labbé. I am deeply grateful to feminist
researchers and activists Maria Eugenia Ramírez and Osana Medina, to urban architect
Carmenza Orjuela and Javier Torres who provided me with invaluable knowledge about the city
during the fieldwork in Bogotá. I remain grateful for the feminist insights I gained from feminist
researchers and activists Milena Gonzales and Ochy Curiel.
I should like to thank the many women of social movements and organizations such as the
Pacific Route of Women, the Women‘s House, the women of CPC-FASOL, and the women of
the ESCR in Bogotá. Thank you for your generosity in courageously sharing part of your lives
that enormously enriched my research.
I do not have enough words to thank the many displaced women and men who, with generosity
and bravery, share with me and Carine their stories, life and experiences. Various contrivances at
play, even reenacted by those who are expected to provide them with protection, have stripped
displaced people of the chance to speak out about their plight, to name their victimizer, or even
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to keep the memory of the loved ones they lost. Despite this compulsory anonymity, they let me
into their life, oftentimes into their own places, and allowed me to see their memory objects.
This research and my feminist spatial consciousness have grown out of your struggle for justice.
Other special persons participated or influenced this project in different phases. My heartiest
thanks also to my friends Sanja Kajinic, John Hubbard, Lina Lozano, Eileen Mcloughlin and
Marie Claire Delcros. Thanks again John for having read and revised many of my manuscripts.
Of course I also thank my Garzon and Middelbos family members who, by virtual means, were
with me at every stage of this project. Especially, I am indebted to my brother and sisters, Omar,
Lulu, Derly, Nelcy, to Marcela and Anita and to all my nieces and nephews. My warmest thanks
go to Maryvonne, Estelle and Serge who have shown to Carine and me their invaluable moral
and material support along these ten years of rhizomatic academic life in Europe.
This dissertation is especially dedicated to my wife Carine, to my mother Mercedes and to the
memory of my father Efrain. Thank you for your faith in me. Carine, this dissertation would not
have become real without your unfailing faith and investment in this project. Thank you for your
passionate activism, for the feminist-French touch you put in the revision of all the manuscripts
time and again and for the blissful vie en rose that you share with me.

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Table of Contents
Declaration ................................................................................................................. iii
Copyright Notice ......................................................................................................... iv
Abstract ...................................................................................................................... v
Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... vii
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... x
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations.......................................................................... xiii
CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1
1.1 Timely Recognition, Spatial Unwelcome ................................................................................ 1
1.2 Why Urban Space? Why Internally Displaced People? .......................................................... 5
1.3 Epistemological and Methodological Considerations............................................................ 13
1.4 Fieldwork Methodology ....................................................................................................... 15
1.4.1 People, Location, and the Uses of Improvisation ..................................................................... 17
1.4.2 Data Collection and Processing ............................................................................................... 23
1.5 Outline ................................................................................................................................ 26
CHAPTER 2 – BRINGING DISSONANCE INTO THE BOGOTÁ WE WANT: HISTORICAL CONTEXT
AND IDPS AS A KEY SOCIAL PROBLEM ......................................................................... 31
2.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 31
2.2. Neoliberalism, Human Rights, and the Colombian Constitution: A Model to Build Colombia’s
Future or a Contentious Puzzle? ......................................................................................... 37
2.3 Challenging the Dream of The City We Want ....................................................................... 47
2.4 Displaced People in Colombia and Their Long Road to Recognition .................................... 55
2.5 In Colombia, the War Does Exist: A Meaningful Recognition for a Whole Universe of
Displaced People ................................................................................................................ 62
2.6 Building the Path towards the Country’s Normalcy: Economic Liberalization, Bogotá’s Urban
Regeneration, and the Human Rights Discourse ................................................................. 70
2.7 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 76
CHAPTER 3 – THEORIZING THE URBAN: FROM THE GLOBAL CITY TOWARDS A GENDERED
RIGHT TO THE CITY ..................................................................................................... 79
3.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 79
3.2 The Making of the Global City: Which City? Made by Whom? .............................................. 81
3.2.1 A Network of Cities or the Return of Space ............................................................................. 81
3.2.2 Critical Urban Theory and the Male-Centered Critique ............................................................ 89
3.2.3 Defining the Urban and Its Sole Way of Life ........................................................................... 95
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