The process of weaving in Crianzas Mutuas began in 2017, and has been going on for six years now. This time has brought us very valuable learnings. The process has gone through different phases (which are not always progressive) and in each of them we have been able to identify challenges and valuable tools to establish a warp that we hope will be long-lasting. During this time, we have strengthened ties between processes located in three different territories or bioregions: 1) The Geographic Valley of the Cauca Region; 2) Kumanday (Manizales); and 3) the Black Line-Sierra Nevada of Gonawindua (Santa Marta).

The creation of Crianzas Mutuas Colombia was preceded by other weavings that had been developing since 2009. In Colombia, weaving has been an alternative for the defense of life, and there have been weavers before Crianzas Mutuas. Tapestries are not the result of an academic or activist project, but the result of webs (entramados) nourished by women, artivists, collectives, peoples and academics.

In 2023 we held two in person national encounters. This allowed us to recall some of the key issues for the Crianzas Mutuas process.

A first point that we have been able to identify is the importance of building trust through encounters and dialogues where the word can circulate horizontally and where we recognize that each of the processes and participants has important contributions based on the path they have traveled. We believe that weaving must be done through ways that give rise to closeness, because this is the only way to undo subordinate and arbitrary hierarchies in order to establish true bonds of camaraderie, friendship and affection. It doesn’t matter if we meet just once, because living fabrics are not static; they always involve cultivating them, untying knots, creating others, deepening divergent processes in long-lasting conversations that do not begin or end at a static point.

Invitation to the first National Encounter of Crianzas Mutuas

We have also seen the importance of having material resources that facilitate the transportation of people, as well as food, lodging and the development of group activities. However, we have worked to ensure that access to material resources is not identified with the need for external financial resources, as this may jeopardize autonomy. Regarding resources administration, we have stressed the importance of supporting solidarity and circular economies during the encounters. Our objective is that the communities that receive us are the ones that manage the resources. This is a way of contributing to their autonomous economies.

We have also weaved under the conviction that relations are created by visiting the territories. Walking through the territories allows us to get to know the process not only through reason, but also through our hearts and throughout our bodies, with our senses and affections. This triggers the possibility of collectively imagining, in a rooted way, other possible futures. Also, this has allowed us to establish strong ties not only among the human beings that are part of the weave, but also with the life places that have made possible and inspired each of the processes.

Invitation to the second National Encounter of Crianzas Mutuas

We believe that radical alternatives are those that incorporate and enact what they think, the ones that in their daily practices integrate what is being theoretically proposed as an alternative. That is why in the encounters we have created spaces for the co-learning of the tools that are useful to weave life.

To end with colonial and patriarchal forms of knowledge production it is necessary to create mechanisms and collective spaces to produce knowledge. In Crianzas Mutuas we have focused on collective practices of writing our historical memory. This text is an example of collective writing.

With strength, bravery and perrenque we are going to heal life. Let's hope we heal, learn, strengthen, and enjoy!!!!

Invitation to the second National Encounter of Crianzas Mutuas

• Sharing/distributing the resources of our tapestry in such a way as to guarantee co-learning processes and rotation among the members of the weaving. It is important to guarantee the rotation of resources and tasks to avoid accumulation of “privileges” and work;
• In the distribution and allocation of resources, we need to make a distribution that takes into account the needs and urgencies of each of the processes;
• Receiving and visiting in our territories people from other weaving processes to continue sharing our experiences;
• Exchanging our knowledges by creating a database where each person and process include their skills. This can be useful to support and to promote forms of exchange and solidarity. We need to create this database based on other ways of situating ourselves in the world, for example, we will use the water map;
• Coordinating the agendas of the processes to see how we can participate in them and make them visible;
• Establishing solidarity mechanisms based on the urgencies and real situation of each of the processes of our tapestry. These mechanisms should contribute to the forms of resistance of the processes.
• Giving life to the warp that we have created through writing in Crianzas Mutuas. This writing and wraps should spread into academic institutions in order to inhabit such spaces in a different way. We need to learn to inhabit the public university and not only to defend it, we need to create concrete places for the defense of life within the academic institutional spaces.
• Activate the other “bag” or “pocket”, an alternative “bank” that we design in the warp to facilitate small weavings-contacts between processes. For instance: scholarships to favor specific learnings, support of socio-territorial economies for life, to favor the extraction of fair gold without using cyanide and based only on ancestral practices that take care of the territories.

Weaving is one of the acts that is part of the notion “feeling-thinking”, it is a way to take care of the relationality of life. Weaving between processes, through non-violent struggles, and from autonomous processes should be activated in each one of our territories. However, these processes need to be accompanied by other frameworks (entramados) that are emerging transforming the forms of producing, of doing, of knowing, of feeling. To weave is to stress singularity within and among a plurality.

About the authors

Andrea Melenje Argote is part of Crianzas Mutuas Colombia, the Global TapestryThe weaving of networks of Alternatives of AlternativesAre activities and initiatives, concepts, worldviews, or action proposals by collectives, groups, organizations, communities, or social movements challenging and replacing the dominant system that perpetuates inequality, exploitation, and unsustainabiity. In the GTA we focus primarily on what we call "radical or transformative alternatives", which we define as initiatives that are attempting to break with the dominant system and take paths towards direct and radical forms of political and economic democracy, localised self-reliance, social justice and equity, cultural and knowledge diversity, and ecological resilience. Their locus is neither the State nor the capitalist economy. They are advancing in the process of dismantling most forms of hierarchies, assuming the principles of sufficiency, autonomy, non-violence, justice and equality, solidarity, and the caring of life and the Earth. They do this in an integral way, not limited to a single aspect of life. Although such initiatives may have some kind of link with capitalist markets and the State, they prioritize their autonomy to avoid significant dependency on them and tend to reduce, as much as possible, any relationship with them. (TGA), the Transitional Tapestry for the Geographic Valley of the Cauca River and is a professor in the Design Department of the University of Cauca. It is currently consolidating the Design Collaboratory for social innovation, a creative space in which design processes are developed from relational, collaborative and sensitive approaches.

Natalia Giraldo is a Walker, Caretaker of the Territory, Researcher and University Teacher; Anthropologist (U of Caldas) and Mg in Wild Areas and Nature Conservation (U of Chile). Specialized in Biology of Knowledge and Human Communication (U de Chile). Collective Weaving: Pluriversidad de la Madre Sierra Nevada; Unitierra; Crianzas Mutuas and Tejido Global de Alternativas. Experience in National Parks and Land Restitution. Born Kumanday (Colombia).

Patricia Botero-Gomez works in the Center of Independent Studies, Color Tierra editorial and she cooperates with Tejido de Colectivos-Universidad de la Tierra, Caldas and suroccidente colombiano.

Lina Álvarez Villarreal is a Colombian activist researcher. She is interested in unveiling the practices/knowledges that give existence to a politics of an inhabited earth, and in contributing to weave a dialogue between those geo-historical practices. She is currently teaching political theory at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá. Member of the GTAGlobal Tapestry of Alternatives Facilitation Team.

Arturo Escobar is a Colombian activist-researcher, working on territorial struggles against extractivism, post-development, regional transitions, and ontological design. He taught anthropology and political ecology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill until 2018. Member of the GTA Facilitation Team.