LIVING ARCHIVES : Tracing Territorio–Cuerpo–Tierra and Re‐existencia in Moravia, Medellín

Source abstract

Abstract Territorio–cuerpo–tierra has emerged in Latin American decolonial feminist scholarship as an ontological, epistemic, and political formulation grounded in struggles against violence, extraction, and dispossession. Yet its development has remained largely outside urban debates, despite cities increasingly concentrating displacement, environmental degradation, and contested forms of belonging. Drawing on collaborative research in Moravia, Medellín, this article examines how territorio–cuerpo–tierra is enacted in urban contexts through practices of re‐existencia that sustain collective life amid dispossessions. We approach living archives as a methodological orientation emerging through co‐created practices around tenure insecurity, migration, and ecological harm. Mobilizing decolonial feminist debates alongside community‐based urban epistemologies, we argue that living archives trace and sustain forms of territorial reclamation through practices such as staying put, homing, and ecological repair. Living archives operate as situated and relational processes through which communities maintain belonging and defend urban life.