Economy of Death and Youthcide in Pacific Town El Charco, in Nariño, Colombia

Gustavo Santana-Perlaza
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6449-2361
Universidad del Quindío, Colombia
gasantanap@uniquindio.edu.co 

Abstract

This article performs a critical situated approach to the events, moments and the day-to-day of the relations between violent deaths and young people in El Charco, Pacific region in the Colombian department of Nariño, as well as a pauperization of Afro-descendant populations. Drawing from the fundamentals of autobiography and ethnography, we link historic processes of pauperization of Black lives to structural racism, giving birth to what we will call Afro-youthcide, as a form of violence that systematically kills both objectively and subjectively the presence, existence, and ways of being of Afro-descendant population in Colombia. Through biographic accounts we aim to describe youthcide practices in varied individuals and we attempt to spot the ways and modus operandi of political interventions eroding Black people’s lives in Nariño’s Pacific.

Keywords: Afro-youthcide, economy of death, racialization, violences.