From Conflict to Conservation: The Consolidation of Colombia’s Difficult Heritage as a Peace-Building Opportunity

Over the past decades, a growing group of scholars has expanded the knowledge about a type of heritage that emerges from painful experiences related to conflicts, through which many societies have historically lived. The physical remains of these events, as well as the negative meaning these objects may acquire, compose what is known as “difficult” or “dissonant” heritage, whose conservation and, subsequently, enhancement creates a series of theoretical and functional difficulties in relation to the purpose and role this heritage could acquire in post-conflict scenarios. As an example, a country like Colombia, in South America, has experienced in its recent history an acute armed conflict, which has left a considerable number of physical legacies that have been systematically left out of heritage management and conservation programs due to the discomfort caused by the revival of the events and the generalized will to remove any memory of them. For this reason, the research explores the potential role that the conservation and enhancement of Colombia’s difficult heritage could have in the construction of more peaceful and stable communities; through the analysis of two different cases, the first one is the Bellavista Religious Complex in the remains of Old Bellavista in Bojayá in the region of Chocó, and the second one is the rural settlement of Almaguer in the region of Cauca, both epicenters of heavy fighting and widespread destruction in different moments of the Colombian armed conflict. Thus, the research analyses how the conservation of difficult heritage could act as a precursor of regeneration processes and peace-building instrument through the consolidation of dissonant heritage in Colombia.