This book explores distinct forms of civil resistance in situations of violent conflict in cases across Latin America, drawing important lessons learned for nonviolent struggles in the region and beyond. The authors analyse campaigns against armed actors in situations of internal armed conflict, against private sector companies that seek to exploit natural resources, and against the state in defence of housing rights, to cite only some scenarios of violent conflict in which people in Latin America have organized to resist imposition by powerful actors and/or confront violence and oppression. Each of the nine cases studied looks at the violent context in which civil resistance took place, its modality, its results and the factors that influenced these, as well as the challenges faced, offering useful insights for scholars and practitioners alike.
Most recent works about the efforts of local communities caught up in a civil war have focused on their efforts to remain places of security and safety from the violence that surrounds them-neutral peace communities or zones. This book, in contrast, focuses on local peace communities facing new challenges and opportunities once a peace agreement has been signed at the national level, such as those in South Africa, the Philippines, Burundi, East Timor, Sierra Leone, and the present peace process in Colombia between the FARC and the Colombian Government. The communities' task is to make a stable and durable peace in the aftermath of a violent civil war and a deal on which local people have usually had little or no influence. Such agreements seek to involve them in both short and longer term peace-building, and expect local communities to cope with problems of armed ex-combatants, IDPs and refugees, law and order in the absence of much state presence, high unemployment and the need for widespread and massive reconstruction of physical infrastructure damaged or destroyed during the war. How local communities have coped with the demands of "peace" is thus the theme that runs through each of these individual chapters, written by authors with direct experience of grassroots communities struggling with such "problems of peace."
