Visualidad y escritura como acción: Investigación Acción Participativa en la Costa Caribe colombiana

• Published in: Revista colombiana de sociología Vol. 41; no. 1; p. 133
• Main Author: Rappaport, Joanne
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Bogota Universidad Nacional de Colombia 01.01.2018
• Subjects: Data collection; Participatory action research; Peasants; Research methodology; Scholarship
• ISSN: 0120-159X; 2256-5485
• DOI: 10.15446/rcs.v41n1.66272

This article reconstructs the Participatory Action Research (par) methodology developed by Orlando Fals Borda and the Fundación del Caribe at the beginning of the 1970s in the departments of Córdoba and Sucre, Colombia in collaboration with the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (anuc) [National Association of Peasant Users]. A parallel reading of Orlando Fals Borda’s personal archives and of the illustrated pamphlets that his team produced to disseminate a narrated peasant history “from below” reveals that the production of these comics constituted a scenario the significance of research could be redefined. Instead of the traditional sequence beginning with the elaboration of a theoretical framework followed by data collection and subsequent analysis, research was transformed into a collective exercise of knowledge-building. At the center of this process was Ulianov Chalarka, an artist from Monteria who for two years drew the four comic strips produced by the project. The article analyzes the act of looking from the point of view of the artist: how Chalarka created iconic images to represent the histories of struggle narrated by peasants, using as an example the comic Tinajones, which narrated the story of the peasant struggle in the region of San Antero and San Bernardo del Viento. The article continues with a comparison of the stories presented by the team in different formats —prose and comics— to comprehend Chalarka’s contribution to the project. With the help of a group of cartoonists, an interpretation is made of the process of creation of the comics by the research team, which began with observations made by the artist of interviews and the production of “illustrated notes” highlighting certain events in the narration. Next, the creation of the panels is analyzed, showing how the visual notes were placed in vignettes containing further information. Finally, the article looks at various errors in perspective in the vignettes in order to study the collective process of the assembly of the comics, highlighting Chalarka’s role as evidence of the importance of taking into account all of the participants in a par project.