Psychosocial Accompaniment of Collective Nonviolent Resistance in an Informal Settlement

Altos de la Florida is an informal settlement in the city of Soacha, located in the mountains outside of Bogotá. About half of the population of migrants were forcibly displaced from rural areas during the mid-1990s due to Colombia’s half-century-old internal war. As the migrant population grew, so too did guerrillas, paramilitaries, and countless criminal groups. In addition to being exposed to violence, migrants were exploited by pirate developers who sold them parcels of land that the actual landowners also demanded compensation for. The threat of evictions catalyzed nonviolent collective resistance by migrants who had settled in Altos. This chapter describes tactics that were successfully used to resist eviction nonviolently. We also discuss how Codo a Codo engaged in psychosocial accompaniment, a process wherein practitioners eschew the traditional role of expert and walk alongside, support, and collaborate with migrant community members. This chapter highlights how practitioners can serve as a proxy for societal support by engaging in psychosocial accompaniment. The chapter concludes by discussing the potential of higher education to promote well-being via a program at the Jesuit Pontifical Xavier University that provides psychology students with course and fieldwork experiences in psychosocial accompaniment.