The middle basin of the La Chigüazá stream, located in the borough of Rafael Uribe Uribe, south of Bogotá (Colombia), is today the scene of a community process that promotes the re-existence of the territory subject to La Chigüazá. Through the socio-territorial fabric, the communities that inhabit and feel this space strengthen their connection with water, nature and the place where they live. This generates a deep sense of belonging to the socio-ecological and cultural corridor, which takes its name from the geographical element that integrates it: the La Chigüazá watershed.
This sense of belonging is materialized through the collective narrative and historical memory of the territory, which recognizes emblematic places such as Hacienda Los Molinos and the old neighborhoods of South 40th Street. Likewise, the history of resistance and struggle for the defense of the Entre Nubes Park and, currently, for the creation of vegetable gardens and the promotion of urban agriculture.
While the defense of the rights of the ravine is positioned as a priority in the community agenda, progress is being made in overcoming the political-administrative divisions that have created distance and rivalry between neighboring neighborhoods. In this process, the collectives of the territory are transforming exclusionary logics and hierarchies, giving way to forms of horizontal leadership and interconnected organizations around the care and defense of the common territory. In this way, La Chigüazá continues to exist thanks to resistance, community organization, and commitment to the defense and care of its territory.
Landing in the territory: the experience of Aula Libre La Chigüazá
We met Sebastián Ayala in different collectives, and in our conversations, he told me about the experience of the Aula Libre La Chigüazá, located in the south of Bogotá. This space is the result of collective struggles, woven from the diversity of groups and actors that inhabit the territory.
I suggested to Sebastián, who lives with his grandparents in the San Agustín neighborhood in Rafael Uribe Uribe, that we make a podcast to share this story. Stefanía Bustos, one of the pioneers of Aula Libre, also joined the conversation. Sebastián joined the community process since his return to the neighborhood, getting actively involved in the initiatives that give life to the space.
In the dialogue about Aula Libre La Chigüazá, Sebastián and Stefanía explain: “The District Institute for Risk Management and Climate Change, IDIGER, intervenes and relocates families living in high-risk areas for human settlements. This is also the case in a 30-meter corridor on either side of the La Chigüazá stream. In this sector there are many intervened lots”.
After the collapse of a house and the deterioration of others, IDIGER closed several lots, fencing them with barbed wire and planting grass. Sebastián recalls: “When I was a child, the place near the ravine scared me, because it became a garbage dump, inhabited by homeless people, with drug consumption and sales”.
Faced with this reality, several people from the sector began a process of dialogue to recover these spaces, opening them to the community and transforming them into safe places, cared for by everyone. Sonia Lodoño, a neighbor who lives half a block away from the space where the Aula now operates, was one of the first to invite children to participate in play activities. Little by little, Stefanía Bustos, Leidy Hernández, Christian Zuluaga, Nicolás Mendoza and many other neighbors, children and friends joined the initiative, turning the intervened and recovered lots into an alternative and community space for the neighborhood.
It should be noted that there are very few green areas in this sector, and those that do exist are generally occupied by consumers of alcohol and other substances. And these are not the only social problems facing the neighborhood.
Stefanía summarizes the process: “The Aula Libre La Chigüazá shows that the inhabitants of the neighborhood can take charge of recovering spaces. We have appropriated the place to create a free classroom (aula libre)” and Sebastián complements: ”Since the pandemic, people from different strata started to plant food in public spaces. Although there were already some community gardens, their number grew. At that time, the red rags hung in the houses showed that there was hunger. Since we got the Aula Libre, with its garden, there are neighbors who come to us bringing plants that no longer fit in their baskets or pots. We have transplanted those saplings to the classroom. There are also neighbors who have begun to plant corn in other closed lots”.
Today, the neighborhood feels the Aula Libre as its own green space, self-organized and safe, where children play in the afternoons and where, when possible, activities such as “cinema in the neighborhood” are organized, an open-air screening that brings the community together in the evenings.
Living territories
Do you think it is feasible to initiate similar processes in marginalized urban areas, strengthening the identity of the territory and the self-determination of the social fabric? Do you see it possible?
Six years of Aula Libre La Chigüazá: a space for life, planting and resistance
The Aula Libre La Chigüazá, six years after its birth, is the result of a process of “urban acupuncture”, managed by Stefanía, Sonia and many other people who live in the area. Thanks to their work, they have managed to recover for the community several lots closed by IDIGER, located near La Chigüazá creek.
Today, this space has become a place for planting food, medicinal and aromatic plants, composting and agroecology practices and, above all, a meeting point for the collective. There are workshops and activities with children, artistic dynamics, open-air cinema, theater, music and much more: a living mosaic of community initiatives.
However, the district protocol for community gardens, implemented by the Bogotá Botanical Garden, has generated tensions. This protocol, which has not been consulted with the communities, rather than planting plants, has created discontent among neighbors. For example, it prohibits the use of recycled tires – which for the people of the neighborhood are valuable reusable resources, either as pots or to create bleachers in the garden – and requires that all gardens be completely fenced in.
In the face of this institutional rigidity and verticality, Aula Libre La Chigüazá turns a blind eye. For the members of the collective, the Aula Libre is not simply a community garden, but a space for meeting, creation and community life, where the garden is only one component of a colorful mosaic of activities, uses and initiatives.
Precisely because it does not consider itself a conventional garden, the Aula Libre has avoided being subject to the regulations of the Botanical Garden or the district administration for the management of urban gardens. Although this decision means not being able to access public resources -such as the funds that citizens usually prioritize for gardens within the framework of the participatory budget-, for Sebastián and other members of the collective, this does not represent a disadvantage.Sebastián explains it clearly: “This way we do not run the risk of losing the autonomy and independence of the process in the face of political interests; we have seen this happen frequently in other collectives”.
Even so, within the group, dialogue and the search for consensus are permanent. Although they prefer to avoid conflict, they also recognize that confrontation with institutional norms is sometimes inevitable. Stefanía and Sebastián, at the end of the podcast recording, share a reflection full of honesty: “Sometimes you think that what you are doing is not important. But the invitations to talk about the process, and now the Almanac’s visit, show us that it is”.Undoubtedly, this is a process that is striking for its authenticity, although it is not always easy to understand in all its profound significance for those who do not live the day-to-day life of this territory.
La Chigüazá: territory that re-exists and renames itself from the community
There are several collectives in the territory that today self-identify themselves as inhabitants of the corridor of the middle basin of the La Chigüazá stream. Among them, the Epsilon collective, together with Felipe Gamboa and others, has promoted an identity campaign that seeks to overcome the segmentation by neighborhoods, UPZ (Zonal Planning Units) and even localities, to recognize themselves as part of the same territory. Today, people no longer speak of their neighborhood or sector but of the Chigüazá Basin.
Thanks to this process, today we no longer speak only of the neighborhood or the sector, but of the basin as a common territory. Since 2017, this popular initiative, born from multiple spaces and grassroots organizations, promotes the La Chigüazá Basin Socioecological and Cultural Corridor, understood not as a sum of places like pearls on a necklace, but as an integrated whole: the mountains, the ravine and the surrounding neighborhoods.
The Chigüazá stream originates in the Zuque mountain range, near the Camanaos moor (wrongly called Cruz Verde), and crosses several localities and neighborhoods in southern Bogotá, until it flows, after passing by the La Picota prison and crossing the Caracas Avenue, into the Tunjo river (wrongly called Tunjuelito).
Memories of water: between oblivion and resistance
The older people of the territory still remember that, a few decades ago, the creek and its riparian forests were the ideal place for Sunday strolls, where they even bathed. But those who have been born and raised in an increasingly urbanized city have only known a degraded creek, with high levels of pollution and converted into invisible territory.
Because of this deterioration, many areas near the ravine are little frequented, a focus of street dwellers, drug consumption and drug sales. Sebastián describes it this way: “The forest and the surroundings of the ravine are synonymous with danger and contamination. This stigmatization opens a spiral of abandonment and deterioration of this space and an almost absolute withdrawal from the life and daily life of the people”. This scenario explains the profound relevance of the struggles for the re-existence of the territory, based on a process of resignification and community recovery.
Recovered spaces
Think about your surroundings: Can you identify forgotten, abandoned, stigmatized spaces that could be reclaimed through community action? What would you do there?
A territory that is rediscovering and organizing itself
The transformation of the territorial identity has led to a collective rediscovery of the socio-ecological and cultural corridor of La Chigüazá as an articulating element. La Chigüazá has become a symbol of the reencounter of people with water, nature and public space as an identity subject.
In many conversations and stories, the sense of belonging to the corridor, named after this integrating geographic element, emerges strongly. Some people even recognize themselves as “Chigüazians”, inhabitants of this area, although other ways of naming and feeling the territory also emerge. Meanwhile, the defense of the rights of the ravine continues to be a central part of the community agenda. Thanks to collective efforts, many of the political-administrative divisions and rivalries between neighborhoods have been overcome, giving way to more horizontal and collaborative organizational forms.
From deterioration to common space
Although the creek is still heavily polluted and its channel is used as a clandestine garbage dump, in many areas of the middle basin there has been a remarkable recovery of the environment, with the creation of parks, sports fields and plazas, such as Jaime Garzón Park, whose murals and graffiti are a living expression of the re-existence of the basin La Chigüazá corridor. This struggle also includes pressuring the Bogotá Aqueduct, as the responsible public entity, to undertake the total rehabilitation of the water body and guarantee the rights of the creek.
A new form of territorial organization and autonomy
One battle that has been won is that a large part of the socio-organizational fabric has managed to overcome the segmented and limited vision of the neighborhoods themselves, abandoning dependence on political favors or immediate benefits. Hierarchical structures have been replaced by interconnected and horizontal networks, based on reciprocity and collaboration. A clear example of this transformation is the Red de Mingueros de La Chigüazá, in which about ten community gardens – such as Huerta del Barrio, Newen Maipú, Aula Libre La Chigüazá, among others – support each other in monthly mingas (free collective farmers) , strengthening the community fabric.
Active cooperation
And you, what forms or practices do you know that help to cooperate instead of competing, to share instead of dominating?
Wavy moon and Notiloma: a territory that reinvents itself
Chigüazá is a Muisca name that means “wavy moon”. The moon that moves, that breathes, is reflected in the water of the creek. But today, La Chigüazá is much more than a waterway: it is territory, identity, memory and resistance. It is a symbol of community reconstruction and of a history that refuses to disappear. In this spirit, several collectives in the area have promoted initiatives that go beyond environmental issues, interweaving culture, art and community organization. For example, the Épsilon collective, in addition to the community garden Huerto del Barrio, has given life to the batucada group (percussion instruments) La ChigüaTuque, the popular and artistic novenas (prayers) of La Chigüazá, and participates in the local graffiti table, which works on murals with deep roots in identity. Likewise, the Aula Libre La Chigüazá promotes the network of mingas for collective work, encourages the instrumental group Sicuris Chigüasur – with its flutes of sweet cane, heirs of the Andean panpipes – and creates the theatrical news with puppets Notiloma, where environmental and community issues are addressed through play and reflection.
Diversity with a common pulse
Each group has its own way of doing, feeling and thinking. There are similarities, but also differences, as is natural in a living and autonomous fabric. What they all have in common, however, is a clear and firm thread, although it moves, like the wavy moon, to the rhythm of the territory: the vindication of the territory as a subject, as an authentic identity, in full recovery. This process, although different, has the same goal: to rebuild the relationship of the people with the water, with the land, with the culture, and with a history that continues to beat in the heart of La Chigüazá.
Leave us a message on our social networks: share your thoughts, your experience or your dream for the territory. We want to hear your voice and add to this collective conversation.
Messages to the Future
1
The reconfiguration of the territory as a carrier of cultural identity allows us to break the anonymity of the urban jungle and leave behind stereotypes of verticality, hierarchy, instrumentalization and rivalry. It is the dawn of a desired future, where the neighborhood and the community recognize and care for each other.
2
The recovery of stigmatized or closed spaces through collective and community initiative is possible. Sometimes a small action – a planting, a meeting, a minga – can be the seed of a profound movement of re-existence. This urban acupuncture can be the beginning of the reconstruction of the social fabric and the territory.
3
Changing routines and ways of relating to each other reconfigures power. The practice of the minga and the network of mingueros, with its caravan of reciprocity, is not only a way of working together, but a tool for breaking logics of domination and weaving horizontal relations.
4
Perhaps you are already living them without realizing it: from mutual support networks, community pots, artistic collectives, to barter spaces or neighborhood meetings. The Chigüazá, wavy moon, reminds us that change begins with small movements that amplify.
The text was elaborated based on visits and walks through the socio-cultural corridor of the La Chigüazá watershed, and conversations with Sebastián Ayala, Stefania Bustos, Sonia Londoño, Leidy Hernández, Laura Moyano, Christian Zuluaga, Felipe Gamboa and other people from different groups and collectives in the La Chigüazá corridor (Aula Libre La Chigüazá, Épsilon, Huerta del Barrio, Newen Mapu) , in the south of Bogotá (Rafael Uribe Uribe neighborhood and UPZ Diana Turbay). The visit in February 2025, previously agreed with Sebastián Ayala, who is thanked for having received and accompanied the visit of the Almanac of the Future, has been carried out by Jorge Krekeler (coordinator of the Almanac of the Future and facilitator of Misereor on behalf of Agiamondo). We would like to thank the people and communities for their openness and welcome to the curiosity of the Almanac of the Future.
Authors:
- Jorge Krekeler | jorge.krekeler@posteo.de
Design:
- Gabriela Avendaño
Photos:
- Sebastián Ayala
- Jorge Krekeler
Contact information regarding the documented experience:
- Aula Libre La Chigüaza
- Instagram: aula.libre.la.chiguaza
- Facebook: Aula Libre la Chiguaza
Edition:
september 2025
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