Resilience and resistance to intersectional violence in Buenaventura, Colombia

Katharine A. Hinman

doi:10.17918/00011593

Violence is an important public health issue that contributes to a significant burden of global mortality and morbidity. While violence is addressed along single categories (i.e., gender based violence or community violence), different forms of violence intersect and influence each other within a local context. More research needs to look at violence intersectionally in order to design interventions that can sustainably reduce violence. This dissertation using mixed and participatory arts-based methods to examine how multiple forms of violence intersect in Buenaventura, Colombia. Aim 1 compared police records with resident experiences of community violence, finding that official homicide hotspots only partially aligned with neighborhoods residents identified as dangerous. Underreporting, driven by fear of retaliation and perceived police collusion with armed groups, meant that forced disappearances, threats, and sexual violence were largely absent from official data despite being described as deliberate tools of social control. Armed groups' invisible borders shaped residents' safety and movement independent of documented violent incidents, eroding community trust and creating collective trauma. Aim 2 used participatory and arts-based methods to explore how LGBTQ+ Black and Indigenous participants experienced gender-based violence and discrimination rooted in perceived transgression of gender norms across family, community, and institutional settings. This produced complex trauma compounding the effects of armed conflict, leading to many participants struggling with their mental health. Aim 3 explored resilience and resistance strategies, finding that participants adopted public restraint and self-censorship to navigate overlapping risks from armed groups and anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, while drawing strength from caregiving, creative expression, human rights organizing, and educating themselves. This research contributes to public health literature by demonstrating that violent crime statistics alone inadequately capture community violence and its health impacts, particularly the erosion of social cohesion under armed group control. It extends gender-based violence frameworks beyond cisgender heterosexual women to include LGBTQ+ populations, and advances socioecological understandings of resilience by situating individual coping strategies within nested contexts of family-level discrimination, community-level armed control, and structural violence. The findings argue against individually-focused empowerment interventions that overlook the real risks participants face, instead calling for interventions that address overlapping violence and support LGBTQ+ people as service providers, educators, and community members. It also highlights the strength of using arts-based participatory methods as a trauma-informed approach for working with people who have experienced intersectional violence. In doing so, this research advances health equity research for populations who continue to be marginalized in efforts to address both community violence and gender-based violence.

Resilience and resistance to intersectional violence in Buenaventura, Colombia

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Resilience and resistance to intersectional violence in Buenaventura, Colombia

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