Narratives of walking: women, territories, dialogues and r-existences with the assemblies of the Paravachasca and Punilla valleys

Abstract

Here we present the routes that we are building as teachers, students, women from the optional seminars entitled Critical Physical Geography and Natures of the Anthropocene; Counter-cartographies of neoliberalism. Social struggles and movements in defense of territories and life; and, Politics of the landscape and (in)justices: production and shadows -colonial, racial, patriarchal- of the landscape, from the Department of Geography, Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (FFyH), National University of Córdoba (UNC), together with members of the Assemblies of the Paravachasca and Punilla Valleys, in the Córdoba province (Argentina). The starting point was not the extension, but the struggle itself from the Assemblies questioning us in our daily practices in and from the university. In these pages, we share the walking in the territories from the classrooms of the FFyH to the organization of a route with students to be present at the Acampe por el monte (Camp for the forest), organized by the Paravachasca Assembly. Knowing what is happening, listening to the voices of those who are in the territory putting their bodies and their lives to resist and re-exist, gave rise to the movement of finding ourselves, of allowing ourselves to be affected by what we have lived in the Camp and (re)think in common the ways to create a framework committed to environmental defense from and in the territories.

From the participation in the Acampe por el Monte became "In defense of the territories and the forest: interseminar integrative tour-workshop and joint actions with defenders of the environment in Punilla and Paravachasca" as an extension activity co-organized with the Socio-environmental Assembly San Roque Despierta, self-convened neighbors of the Punilla Valley and in dialogue with the Paravachasca Assembly and self-convened neighbors of Paravachasca. From these experiences, we weave what we understand by extension and we are open to the possibility of rethinking the university and the ways of building knowledge.