"Caminos condenados": Image and Space
By: Karrie Villarreal and Mayra Gurrola
In my visualization, I tried to focus on the imagery and its historical context. The way nature or the people have survived and how they are adapting to their surroundings. I tried to focus the images from the comic novel and some of the vegetation the characters mentioned in the novel to show what lays after the violence. That's the arrows are pointing towards the middle and are facts or other things to show context. This comic novel portrays the stories that are often forgotten during post-conflict and how the violence doesn't really end with forgetting but remembering and identifying what needs to be done.
Societies organize themselves around towns, cities, regions, states, countries, etc, and these communal structures are subject to hierarchical orders. This hierarchy reproduces a power structure that causes people to conform to a system that is supposed to benefit them. As we observe them through visualizations,we are informed how the lower class, marginalized communities are greatly affected by the ones at the top of the structure. In the graphic novel “Caminos Condenados” we observe three social classes inhabiting the land of the Montes de María region. This region is very rich and can be used for many forms of production. Entrepreneurs, farmers and women face different difficulties in producing from the land. The entrepreneurs have purchased land and have built roads, fences, cultivated new crops and have provided new jobs for themselves and those who are being brought in from the outside. The farmers who seem to have been there for most of their lives and are struggling with the access to natural resources. The biggest natural resource mentioned in the graphic novel was water. Access to water was hindered by the entrepreneurs who changed the infrastructure of the town. This took a toll on the farmers, but especially on the third social class, the women of the region. In the novel, the women are the ones who would spend what used to be a short time now spend almost an entire day as a part of their daily routine. The hierarchy is seen when the women are asked to attend a community meeting, but there is hesitation because they are reminded that the men in the household make the decisions. The hierarchical structure in “Caminos Condenados” demonstrates how money and status can affect and change the placement of communities.
This non-fiction graphic novel helps us understand how communities in Colombia, whether big or small have been affected by the ongoing conflict. The working class have been the ones to endure hardships like the lack of resources which this graphic novel illustrates to the audience. In these visualizations we tried to interpret our understanding of why the structure is the way it is and how the Colombian people are living through this battle by memory and other resources that the land has to offer