School of Social & Political Sciences

By Julieta Lobato

On 16 October 2025, colleagues from the GLARN network (Irene Piedrahita, Emilia Arpini and Antonio Ivan Sanchez Hervas) organised, together with the collective Cinemaattic, a film screening of the documentary ‘The Deepest Red’ (El Rojo Más Puro) by Yira Plaza O’Byrne. In this documentary, Yira reconstructs the militancy of her father, Luis Alberto Plaza, a teacher and trade union leader who became a key figure in the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica), a left-wing party in Colombia that gained prominence in the mid-1980s but was decimated due to the persecution and assassination of its leaders. Luis Alberto Plaza survived this. The documentary places the militancy of Luis Alberto and the relationship between him and Yira at centre stage. Beyond this specific case, the film invites reflection on broader historical processes in Latin America.

Image credit - Esteban Zapata Paez

Literature in the field of memory studies continually reminds us that the ways we look at the past and the questions we ask about it are always situated within a specific present. This means that the ways in which societies make sense of and elaborate on what has happened to them are always constructed from the specific circumstances of the present in which that inquiry is formulated. From this standpoint, the documentary triggers an interesting first question: How can revisiting the struggles of the 1970s help us better understand processes currently unfolding in Latin America? One dimension of this question, which features prominently in the documentary, pertains to the role of the law in projects of social emancipation.

Projects of social emancipation – the fight for a more equal and just society – are consistently highlighted throughout the documentary. The film is filled with references to utopian thinking: ‘They were carrying, without knowing it, a dream that went beyond their own lives;’ ‘Love humanises the world. Capitalism destroys love;’ ‘The importance of having an ideal of society to fight for;’ I felt I was part of a whole capable of changing the world.’ These references are used by Yira to reconstruct the militancy of her father and her own militant trajectory. However, the documentary also navigates through the process of exhaustion of those utopian energies. Yira soon becomes disillusioned with leftist movements in Colombia, perceiving them as merely competing against each other to show ‘the deepest red in the revolution.’ El rojo más puro.

Despite Yira’s skepticism, Luis Alberto seems to cling to utopian imaginaries. He states, ‘According to the circumstances, wherever there is a movement defending rights, I’ll be there. What else can I do?’ In this way, Luis Alberto emerges as a representation of a certain type of militant: A person involved in the insurgency movements of the ‘70s, who eventually had to go into exile and returned to Colombia where he found himself lost amid what he perceived as an extremely depoliticised society. As a spectator, one wonders what transpired in between. This is precisely where the portrayal of law in the documentary provides some clues.

Law appears in the documentary at two specific moments: once at the very beginning and again at the end. At the outset, law emerges when the documentary showcases Luis Alberto's books. We see, for example, books by Lenin, books on imperialism and Latin America, and among them, a book on human rights. This is a powerful aesthetic decision. If we agree with Rancière that aesthetics encompasses the political operations that organise our perception – aesthetics as the distribution of the sensible – then the choice to present law in this particular manner is no coincidence. It illustrates that for those movements of the ‘70s, law and forms of legality were integral to the intellectual universe of these emancipatory movements. In other words, law was conceived as part of a broader agenda for political transformation.

Law reappears towards the end of the documentary, which concludes by explaining that after 30 long years of litigation, the victims finally received the reparation they deserved through a ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte IDH, Caso Integrantes y Militantes de la Unión Patriótica vs. Colombia, 27 July 2022). Again, this representation of the law is significant. It signals a happy ending. The spectator – who has been taken through the violent repression of emancipatory movements in Colombia for over an hour – can now rest assured, knowing that, no matter how much suffering and no matter how much violence, the law will eventually provide justice. It will always come to save us. We will always have the law. This is exactly where the documentary raises critical questions about the role of the law in social transformation.

Albeit with notable differences, the processes of democratic transitions that occurred in many Latin American countries in the 1980s and 1990s shared one common feature: the idea that social transformation must be achieved not through political mobilisation, but by institutional reform, and particularly through interventions in and from the legal arena.

This operated under the assumption that utopias had to be replaced by the language of rights. In the post-genocidal era in Latin America, therefore, the revolutionary subject is replaced by a subject of rights. In other words, the central political subjectivity is that of a legal subject, and a very specific kind of this: a victim. A subject who does not conquer rights or fight for a more equal society, but rather demands reparation from the State. By replacing utopias with rights demands, law allows us only to read society as composed of victims and perpetrators – the other side of that binary. All social relations are consequently characterised not by antagonism and solidarity, but by harm and responsibility.

Both identities – victim and perpetrator – are constituted through their relationship with the past. A victim is someone who suffers from something that has happened previously, while a perpetrator is someone who committed a crime or an illegal act in the past.  At most, these identities project themselves into the present by claiming reparation today or establishing responsibility today for a harm caused in the past. However, under no circumstances can these identities – specifically that of the victim – project themselves into the future. The language of the victim/perpetrator, therefore, appears as depoliticising; it does not allow for the articulation of a horizon of social transformation. There is no project for a more equal society that can be built upon the identities of victimhood and perpetrator, wherein social relations are framed solely in terms of harm and responsibility.

Going back to the idea of the construction of the past from a specifically situated present, what this documentary enables us to contemplate is that relying only on the law to channel processes of social transformation in post-genocidal Latin American societies has left us with no political vocabulary to articulate a project of social emancipation. What was once considered part of a project of social emancipation – let’s recall the way that law appears at the beginning of the documentary – has now produced a totalising and demobilising effect. Law, in itself and by design, is unable to produce emancipatory imaginaries.

Fast-forwarding to the present, it is through this lens that we can understand, for instance, the exhaustion of the emancipatory energies of Chile’s 2019 social uprising following the failure of the constitutional reform in 2023, the ambivalent character of Colombia’s recent peace processes, or even the rise of right-wing authoritarian regimes with broad popular support, as exemplified by Milei in Argentina. Although these are distinct phenomena, a common thread among these historical processes is the prominent role of law and the tensions between legal equality and material inequality. Therefore, there is an urgent need for critical and systematic evaluation of the limitations of the language of rights to comprehend society and to articulate political projects. This is one of the many relevant reflections that El Rojo Más Puro leaves us with.

For communities living along the Río Atrato in Chocó, Colombia, ‘the river is life’. Rivers play a central role in the cultural, economic and social life of the people of Chocó, as a means of transport, a source of livelihood and an actor in daily life.  However, gold mining, linked to Colombia’s long-running internal conflict, has caused devastating social and environmental damage along the Atrato.

We are all Guardians of the Atrato

Bernandino Mosquera, a human rights defender and community leader from the Atrato, came to Glasgow in February 2018.  He travelled as part of a delegation of Colombian human rights defenders and academics to raise awareness about the Colombian Constitutional Court Ruling, T-622.  This landmark ruling recognised the Atrato river as a bearer of rights.

It also identified the rights of communities to physical, cultural and spiritual survival, guaranteeing their traditional livelihoods on the Atrato. Local communities worked with national and international development organisations to help achieve the Constitutional Court Ruling T-622.

Founded on the idea of a sustainable socio-environment, this new paradigm of rights in Colombia has been expressed as ‘bio-cultural’ rights: demanding the river’s ‘protection, conservation, maintenance and restoration’ and the safeguarding of the rights of communities. The ruling calls on the Colombian state to ensure these rights are enforced, as well as empowering local people to manage their river and participate in the implementation of T-622.

As part of this process, Bernandino was elected to be one of 14 ‘guardians’ of the Atrato.  Drawn from local people, the Guardians will represent the communities in pressuring for the full implementation of the ruling.

T-622 ‘Denounces the complete abandonment of the state in terms of basic infrastructure in the region.’

Bernandino and the other guardians face major challenges. The Atrato’s abundant precious metal deposits have made the river a target for a range of different groups. They look to exploit the Atrato for financial gain, through both legal and illegal means. In recent decades, alluvial gold mining has become closely interwoven with the internal conflict.

Armed groups have sought control of lucrative mining operations.  This mining has not only devastated the river itself, but the social fabric of river communities. Toxic metals used in mining, aggressive dredging and widespread deforestation have had deeply damaging effects on traditional farming and fishing, while different armed groups control and terrorise communities - especially those who attempt to stand up for their rights.

‘The humanitarian crisis has worsened’

The historic 2016 peace accord with the FARC – the largest guerrilla group in Colombia – promised to bring the country’s internal conflict to a close.  While some progress has been made with the implementation of the accord, the security situation in Chocó has worsened.  Violence has increased as the remaining armed groups have moved to capture territory vacated by the FARC.  The Colombian Human Rights Ombudsman has signalled the region’s ‘particular vulnerability due to location on areas of strategic interest for legal and illegal actors’. These interests include control of lucrative gold mining operations along the Atrato.

Not only is Chocó Colombia’s poorest department, it has been one of the most affected by the armed conflict. In this ethnically diverse region, almost 60% of inhabitants live below the poverty line and 34% in extreme poverty. This is more than six times the poverty level of the country’s capital Bogotá.

Social organisations and human rights defenders have characterised the situation in Chocó as an ongoing ‘humanitarian crisis’. The crisis is manifest in ongoing violent confrontations between different armed groups over territory and resources, continued displacement of communities due to the violence, and the lack of access to sustainable livelihoods for many of the department’s inhabitants.

Local community organisations have responded to the crisis by renewing calls for dialogue between different groups in the conflict - a process that has been frustratingly slow and difficult process. Human rights defenders and community leaders face daily threats in their struggle to bring the case of the Atrato to world attention.

The number of human rights defenders targeted across Colombia has risen dramatically, with 330 social leaders killed in Colombia between 1st January 2016 and 26th July 2018. To put this into context, every third human rights defender killed in the world in 2017 was Colombian.  In Chocó, violence increased. In December 2017 and the Prosecutor’s Office declared that homicide rates increased by as much as 230% in 2017, the first year following the peace agreement.

Building lasting peace

Progressive legislation, such as T-622, and ‘historic peace accords’ are only meaningful if implemented. The thousands of displaced citizens in Chocó and throughout Colombia are a violent manifestation of the record of non-implementation in Colombia. T-622.  Together with the peace process, it provides a unique opportunity to build the scaffolding of peace - the rule of law, and recognition of and respect for bio-cultural rights.

Without the inclusion of historically excluded communities in the political process, the danger of non-implementation, the persistence of conflict and the production of new problems are high. The guardians of the Atrato and human rights defenders like Bernandino confront these risks, as they seek the physical, cultural and spiritual survival of their communities.