Critical literacies in Colombia: between social struggle and performative practices

This article reflects on critical literacies and advances on the idea of performative literacies concerning non-schooled writing practices. Critical literacy posits that beyond literate-school practices there are alternatives to reading and writing. These include semiotic, multimodal, ritual and corporal elements that show knowledge of reality and how it can be adopted or criticised. This study examines the social organisation experiences of MAFAPOⁱ and three memory reconfiguration processes led by the communities of the Port of Buenaventura in Valle del Cauca, Colombia. It reveals how these groups of victims grieve and bereave through rituals and textualities, such as tattooing. These artistic and performative expressions can also be considered forms of critical literacy in which the reconstruction of history occurs through multi-languages, individual and collective exercises. Rituals express particular experiences of individual pain and loss, they lead to the collective recognition of common pains and, therefore, to a reconstruction of traumatic situations, a step towards transformation and political agency.