︎
Mark







We are facing the offensive of a globalized right that tends to fascism. It no longer needs the mask of humanism and manifests itself more and more cynical, brazen, and brutal. A mafia armed with laws and armies that shamelessly impose the policy of death and uprooting, dispossessing lands and bodies in the name of development, and that, depending on the latitude in which it operates, acquires greater or fewer gore overtones.
    In Colombia between 2016 and 2019 —the three short years passed since the signing of the Peace Deal with the FARC guerrilla—, more than 700 social leaders have been assassinated.
This is a genocide aimed to uproot dissent systematically killing an era of political activists, community leaders, and guardians of human rights.
    Intending to articulate the resistances to respond to that violence, CaldodeCultivo produce El Coliseo del Pueblo (The People’s Coliseum), a training space, physical, performative, and symbolic, proposed to train the people's struggles as if they were a combat sport. CaldodeCultivo intervened / occupated El Pueblo Coliseum, an emblematic sports arena in the city of Cali, transforming its uses and its meaning to turn it into an agora-coliseum,
a popular parliament, and a training camp for the political battle. In the agora, social leaders, black and indigenous grassroots, feminist groups, and academic organizations intervened. Local boxing, wrestling, and parkour teams led the training. Among all the guests and the public, the political situation was addressed, and urgent actions were proposed to confront it, all within a framework of training and collective awareness that made it possible to meet, recognize, and articulate the different forms of struggle that fight opression in Colombia.





EXERCISE 1
 

THE STORMING OF THE COLISSEUM

Sifakas Parkour








































Banners, English translation:

FOR OUR DEAD PEOPLE, DAMN!

POWER TO THE PEOPLE, DAMN!

THE PEOPLE DON’T GIVE UP, DAMN!

COME ON PEOPLE, DAMN!






INTERIOR

AGORA - COLISEUM















How come life,
unarmed,
exposes itself
to the fire of weapons,
and the body
does not tremble?











How come the skin
faces the steel,
and the steel,
fearful,
retreats?


A SCENARIO TO TRAIN
THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLES


THE PEOPLE'S COLISEUM





¡CARAJO! = DAMN!












EXERCISE 2
 

ON GUARD!


Maroon Guard of Northern Cauca
Indigenous Guard Cabildo Nasa Kiwe
Maroon and Indigenous Guard of Cali




































EXERCISE 3:

TERRITORIES IN FIGHT


With:
People's Congress; PCN, Black Communities Process;
Buenaventura’s Strike




























EXERCISE 4:

RESISTANCE EXERCISES:
WRESTLING


Vallecaucana Wrestling League 
 






EXERCISE 4:

AMPLIFY YOUR VOICE


Whith:
 Soyla Crew + Smoka (Rappers)
Molico, Community Leaders Movement.  

How do you coin your own political voice,
capable of challenging your adversaries and
asserting yourself as an interlocutor?


























EXERCISE 5:

CONSTELLATION OF DIASPORICAL ROUTES

With:
Francia Márquez, Aurora Vergara, Amber Henry, Nidia Góngora, and Mary Grueso.





















EXERCISE 6:

RESISTANCE EXERCISES: BOXING

Box Phanters


Box Phanter is a resistance process carried out by Gustavo Mosquera, AKA “Mosquera Phanter", a boxer who represented Colombia in the Atlanta 96 Olympics, and now tries to keep the youth away from criminal gangs through boxing. CaldodeCultivo especially accompained this group, ending up creating to them a complete set of sports equipment with the slogans and graphics of the Coliseum. In this way, these young panthers represent the people every time they fight.





















EXERCISE 7:

MUSEUM OF NEOEXTRACTIVISM


Etcétera Collective

The Museum of Neoextractivism seeks to tell the unofficial story of the new forms of looting and appropriation in South America.






























EXERCISE 8:

STRIKE BACK


Intervene:
Cadhubev Benkos Vive (Black Grassroot Organization); CRIC, Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca; Espacio Regional de Paz, Valle; Lila Mujer

Fighting skills and attitudes towards the neoliberal onslaught of the international right.
Health, body, life, and territory.


















EXERCISE 9:

THEY ARE KILLING US!


Intervene:
AFRODES, National Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians; Victim Participation Board of Cali; Community of Isla de la Paz, Buenaventura.












EXERCISE 10:

KRUMPING


Cali Buck

Krumping is an African-American street dance style used as a means to discharge accumulated aggressivity, and as an alternative to violence. An expression of anger and a release of repressed emotion by the struggles of life.















EXERCISE 11:

COLOPHON









El Coliseo del Pueblo (The People’s Coliseum) is a CaldodeCultivo project produced by the Goethe-Institut, and is part of "Carretera al mar", an initiative of the Goethe-Institut in coproduction with the La Tertulia Museum of Cali. This project served as a colophon for the program The Future of Memory, in which artists, thinkers, and activists reflected around memory and oblivion in Latin America.

CREDITS:



CALDODECULTIVO

Direction: Unai Reglero
Direction of photography: Guillermo Camacho
Reserch: Gabriela Córdoba Vivas
Photography and video: Joan Pablo Ramirez
Production: Jhon Jairo Pinzón, Carolina Marquez
Poems: Alejandro García
La Carretera al Mar
— The Future of Memory

Goethe Institut +  La Tertulia Museum
Curatorship: Úrsula Mendoza, Yolanda Chois, Alejandro Martín.
Production: Richard Bent, Magola Moreno.



BLACK VENUS
PROTEST

Gdańsk (Poland), 2017.




ESTE PREDIO

NO SE VENDE

THIS LAND IS NOT FOR SALE
Bogotá (Colombia), 2016.