armed conflict | Platypus

Animals in War: Multispecies Agency and the Memory of the Colombian Armed Conflict

 Valeria Sánchez-Prieto  May 6, 2026

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In one testimony from Colombia’s armed conflict, a parrot named Lola repeated the phrases she heard around her: “Paraco asesino” (“paramilitary murderer”), “Viva la guerrilla” (“long live the guerrilla”), and “The vultures are coming” Her voice condensed the sounds, fears, and political tensions of war into a multispecies archive of memory. Far from being passive witnesses, animals moved within the infrastructures of conflict as companions, alarms, transportation, and sometimes even weapons. Yet these violent incorporations are only the most extreme expression of a broader multispecies world of conflict. (read more...)

The militarization of life under war, “post-conflict,” and the COVID-19 crisis

 Diana Ojeda, Lina Pinto García  April 6, 2020

Este contenido está disponible en español aquí.

Like many others in Colombia, Nairys is a campesina for whom the experience of confinement has been one of dramatic disruption. Marked by restricted mobility, which means very difficult access to water and subsistence crops, being locked down also implies the reduced possibility to buy medicine, food, and other basic supplies. As for many other women, stay-at-home ordinances have also meant more care work, as the responsibilities of feeding and tending for her relatives fall heavily on her. Likewise, confinement involves being permanently under the same roof with her partner, which has exposed Nayris to more possibilities of being mistreated and abused by him, particularly as pressures over mere subsistence increase. (read more...)

Mine Detection Dog ‘Unit’: More Than Humans in the Humanitarian World

 Diana Pardo Pedraza  January 27, 2020

How to “clean” and “liberate” contaminated territories occupied by remnants of war? How to perceive and remove explosive devices specifically designed to evade detection? How to remedy and undo the suspicion deeply sown in rural landscapes? In the political context of peace negotiation and post-agreement in Colombia, land decontamination and (partial) recovery has not been an exclusively “human” humanitarian affair. On the contrary, other species and nonhuman actors have been indispensable in the work of detection and in the slow but essential effort to regain trust, not only among former enemies, but also between rural communities and territories. In the case of Colombia, mine-sniffing dogs have been the best co-laborers (de la Cadena 2015, 12). (read more...)