Resistance Through Obedience: Ethnography for Resistance of Unarmed Civilians in Medellin

Abstract

I intend to show that the civilian population under control of the armed actors does not always become a passive victim of violence and armed aggression neither that their attitude is that of inevitable submissive loyalty to the domain of armed actors. The goal of this work is that of illustrating how, in urban contexts, characterized by control, dominium and violence of armed actors as in the City of Medellin, actors from poor neighborhood communities have had many and varied experiences of civil non armed resistance against the control by armed actors of their territories and their community. In other words, it shows that the scenario and the social, political, economical and cultural dynamics of urban territories are not only made by armed actors, but by neighbors who, with their leadership and collective actions, often illegal, secret or simulated, resist to their control. The core of this article is the summary of the narratives of two leaders of the «Comuna 9» and the narrative of some of the communal experiences of unarmed civil resistance.