INDIGENOUS FEMALE YOUTH IN COLOMBIA - Resisting the Powers of Internal Armed Conflict

Abstract

This study aims to investigate how the vulnerabilities of indigenous female youth in the Colombian region of Vaupés are expressed in terms of intersections of ethnicity, class, age and gender, ways in which these youth exert resistance to the power structures within the internal armed conflict, and how these youth experience their life situations. This qualitative research is based on multi-sighted ethnographic approaches entailing numerous data collection sources. Results of this research indicate that its targeted population suffers from discrimination, oppression and numerous vulnerabilities. Still, these youth exert a substantial amount of individual and collective non-organized hidden resistance in ways that may undermine political, economic and patriarchal power structures within the region. Research results show that the cultures of the indigenous ethnicities constitute and enable such resistance among the indigenous female youth of Vaupés.