Dilemmas and Diverse Meanings in the Collective Struggle of the People’s Tribunal in Siloé
Disponible en español:
victims’ rights, collective action, popular power, emotions, state
In the form of a dialogue, this piece explores the diverse and contested meanings of justice, and how these meanings shift when justice is understood as a collective and grassroots endeavour. It foregrounds the role of emotions in shaping concepts of justice, and frames people’s justice as a situated, relational practice that operates across multiple scales, drawing together different knowledges and ways of feeling.
Right: "If the wounding is systemic, the healing will be collective. Siloé resists."
The Tribunal Popular in Siloé is a collective effort for alternative and popular justice, formed by victims and survivors of police violence, their relatives, and allied human rights organisations and activists. It was born in response to state repression in the neighbourhoods of Cali’s Community 20, also known as Siloé, during the National Social Uprising of 2021 in Cali, Colombia. The tribunal responds to the need for clarification, truth and justice, comprehensive reparation and non-repetition for those who suffered police and state violence.
The Tribunal Popular in Siloé, along with 14 international judges, held three hearings—an inauguration, an indictment, and a judgment and sentencing. These hearings relied on testimonies as well as documentary and audiovisual evidence to establish that the events during the 2021 Social Uprising in Community 20 constituted “a continuing genocide against the youth.” While the verdict and sentence are symbolic, they have become powerful tools to demand justice from the state and judicial authorities.
Furthermore, the Tribunal Popular in Siloé allows people to meet and come together as a way to alleviate grief and generate social and territorial advocacy. As part of this effort, the tribunal holds monthly gatherings on the first Saturday of each month to conduct remembrance activities and promote advocacy for social and territorial justice.
IG @TribunalPopularEnSiloe
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Tribunal Popular en Siloé
Cali, Colombia
tribunalpopularsiloe@gmail.com
Universidad del Valle – Tribunal Popular en Siloé
Cali, Colombia
jose.b.garzon@correounivalle.edu.co
Universidad de Pittsburgh – Tribunal Popular en Siloé
Pittsburgh, Estados Unidos
anamarrugo@pitt.edu
Tribunal Popular en Siloé
Cali, Colombia
perezmaritalia@gmail.com
Tribunal Popular en Siloé
Cali, Colombia
sara.vasquez@correounivalle.edu.co
ABSTRACT
This entry is a five-voice conversation among members of the People’s Tribunal in Siloé (TPS) about the meanings of the right to truth, the pursuit of justice, and guarantees of non-repetition as part of this collective’s political struggle to build peace. The TPS is a group formed by victims and survivors of police violence, activists, and allied human rights defenders. It emerged in response to state repression in the neighbourhoods of Comuna 20 in Cali, also known as Siloé, during the 2021 National Social Uprising in Cali, Colombia.
The TPS adopted frameworks of alternative justice, drawing inspiration from the Permanent People’s Tribunals and going beyond the legal frameworks established in Colombia. Following the issuance of its final verdict,1The full ruling and further details on the work of the People’s Tribunal in Siloé can be found in Tribunal Popular en Siloé (2023). the families, survivors and allies decided to continue their fight against impunity. To this end, the TPS has used the final ruling of its magistrates, and the solidarity forged during the hearings, to broaden its strategies of advocacy and resistance.
The journey of the TPS has entailed, among other things, a critical reappraisal of prevailing assumptions about peacebuilding and what life in a community should be like after a conflict or a period of heightened violence marked by police repression. Some of the questions that have emerged in this process – and which we explore in this entry – concern the need to move beyond rationality as the sole foundation of a political project. In doing so, we make space for pain, loss, grief, solidarity and love as driving forces in the struggle for justice and against impunity.
Finally, as TPS members we have had to learn and unlearn what it means to build a grassroots social movement, where timelines, approaches and aspirations seldom align with the structures of the State, bureaucracy and legal systems in countries like Colombia.
Defining what is just or how justice is enacted has been at the core of modern state theorisation, particularly within liberal and Eurocentric perspectives concerned with the role of the state as the entity responsible for ensuring rational governance – that is, as an institution that administers power (Kant, ; Locke, ; Weber, ). From this viewpoint, the state acts as an arbiter that guarantees a just state of affairs partly by suppressing emotionality –and, consequently, what is deemed to be irrationality – which, according to this perspective, characterises the people’s demands for justice.
From another standpoint, this entry presents a five-voice conversation among members of the People’s Tribunal in Siloé (TPS)2The dialogue has been transcribed without filler words and specific features of spoken language that might hinder readability. Some contributions have been reorganised to ensure coherence in the discussion around key questions. about the meanings of justice as part of the collective’s political advocacy efforts. The TPS is a grassroots initiative made up of victims and survivors of state and paramilitary violence, along with allied activists and human rights defenders. This initiative emerged from the need for truth, justice, comprehensive reparation and guarantees of non-repetition for those who were victimised by the state during the 2021 National Social Uprising in Comuna 20 of Cali – a historically marginalised territory also known as Siloé.
Some of the questions that have arisen regarding what justice from the people entails throughout the journey of the TPS relate to the decentering of rationality as the sole foundation of a political project. Instead, the TPS seeks to make room for pain, loss, grief, solidarity and love as driving forces in the struggle for justice and against impunity. In this questioning, we also acknowledge that the state does not only exercise control; it also shapes identity and belonging through its discourses and policies. In turn this generates processes of resistance and transformations of power relations, which complicates the relationship between the state and justice, particularly when justice is conceived and enacted “from below” or from the margins (Das & Poole, ).
We believe that theorising justice from the people must also be a praxis of epistemic justice (Lugones, ; Maldonado-Torres, ; Smith, ). This requires engaging with the polysemy and contested nature of the concepts we use, while also recognising the value of knowledge production from a variety of locations. The methodology behind this entry aligns with these principles. Rather than offering a single, absolute and static definition of justice, the experiences we discuss suggest conceptualising justice from the people as a dynamic and contingent process,—which requires tensioning and navigating multiple contexts, scales, knowledges, and lived experiences of what is just and dignified. In this sense, justice from the people cannot be understood merely as a concept; rather, it must be seen as a productive practice of relationships, meanings, social bonds, and the imagining of dignified and liberatory futures.
José Benito Garzón Montenegro: Among ourselves, we have spoken a lot about justice and what should be done with [those who commit crimes]. How is justice achieved?
María Italia Pérez Rengifo: What happens to me is that I still hate the police. They come to the mechanic’s workshop [that Abelardo and I run at home], and I refuse to speak to them. It fills me with fury and indignation, having to put up with them being there in my own backyard.
Sometimes I think, if it were up to me, I would want that policeman who killed my son to be killed. But even if I made him suffer, it wouldn’t change anything for me. On the contrary, my pain would only grow, because I would be doing wrong myself. For me, there will never be justice, because even if they capture and kill that policeman, my pain will never go away.
What would be just is that this had never happened in the first place. And no matter what we do in the Tribunal, no one will ever bring my son back. No one. Nothing will ever bring him back.
Sara Vásquez Rodríguez: If we think according to that logic – of killing the perpetrator – what does that change? Ultimately, it doesn’t change the deep-rooted causes of the problem.
José Benito Garzón Montenegro: I think what we need to reflect on and clarify is, what led him to do such harm? From there, we can ask, what should the penalty be?
Right away, I can say that I don’t believe in prison. Prison is a permanent form of torture, and no one is truly rehabilitated there. I ask myself, are we just treating the symptom, and not the root cause? What led that person to do what they did? We could stay focused on personal motivations, but what if we, as a society, are also sick?
Sara Vásquez Rodríguez: I have always thought that justice means that the person who suffered violence finds peace. … Justice, for me, means holding those responsible to account, and making sure the truth comes out – what happened, who did it. But justice also means that those who experienced that act of violence can find peace.
And, in other dimensions, such as state violence and crimes committed by the state, I also think that justice is not only about punishment – though I do believe there must be a sanction. But, to me, justice means ensuring that what happened never happens again.
María Italia Pérez Rengifo: I once heard some mothers of the disappeared in Bogotá saying that they forgave [those who made their children disappear]. Right now, I wouldn’t be able to forgive them. But [I also know] that, with time, things start to take on a different meaning. I have begun to accept that Andrés is not coming back. Before, I waited for him. Now, I know he will never return.
Maybe for you, forgiveness and justice are different things, but to me they are deeply connected. For me, they are not separate.
I say that justice is intangible. Justice is a word with so many layers – so immense, yet at the same time so small. It encompasses so much, yet it cannot be touched.
Abelardo Aranda Velasco: To me, justice is not about capturing someone and killing them or locking them up in prison – that is not justice. We often speak from a place of anger.
To me, justice is when the person who’s taken a life comes forward and admits it, and says, “I did it, I killed them. Forgive me.” That, to me, is justice. In some way, that helps us heal.
Justice, in my view, is a vast concept with many dimensions. It is something that needs to be talked about, something that needs to be worked on.
Ana Marrugo Gómez: And when we talk about justice from the people, how do we understand it?
Abelardo Aranda Velasco: As a form of political action, to reveal the truth so that people know what happened. I hope that one day someone will tell me:, “Yes, I killed Michael”, and they will tell the truth. That, to me, would be justice.
What we do as a grassroots movement, through the Tribunal, is to ensure that the truth is known. All of this is part of justice for us [as parents, as victims]. Also, [the work we do in the Tribunal] helps us carry the grief that mothers and fathers bear inside.
Justice is complicated because sometimes we ourselves feel unjust. For example, the young men working in my workshop – sometimes they work ten or twelve hours a day. That is too much work. Injustice can also be inequality within society. One can see that young people lack opportunities; they end up using [psychoactive substances]. I think that too is a form of the injustice we live with in this country. [In justice from the people], social justice also has a place.
Sara Vásquez Rodríguez: For me, grassroots justice does not mean absolving the state of its responsibilities. It is not as if community efforts alone will resolve everything. For example, through the Tribunal, we learned about the work of the Red de Organizaciones Comunitarias Angelelli in Buenos Aires, and I felt that justice was present there – because many families had housing, education, safe spaces for listening and care.
But that kind of justice must always remain linked to the demand for state accountability. Because in this system, the perpetrators will not answer for their crimes on their own. That is why, as people, we must come together, organise, and denounce these injustices. That is why we seek ways to be just within our own communities, to claim dignity, without ceasing to demand accountability from the state. And that is also what we do as a Tribunal – we demand truth, expose what happened, and continually insist that those responsible must be held to account.
José Benito Garzón Montenegro: Unfortunately, our society is not built on a principle of justice, because we have delegated that to an external authority. I think we still believe the state should be like a referee in a children’s game – one who punishes, when necessary, but also protects when something happens. I dream of a day when there is no referee. But for that, society must be conceived around a different value, rather than delegating that to someone else.
For me, the Tribunal and justice from the people go against the grain of the formal justice system offered by this state. This state focuses on individual cases, on tangible evidence, on isolated incidents – but not on context, not on collective experiences, not on systemic patterns. And I think that this form of justice that we have been learning about through the Tribunal has shown us that context and systematic patterns matter.
Ana Marrugo Gómez: I think that is what makes this so complex. How does the deeply personal pain that Italia and Abelardo describe relate to the systemic injustice that Sara and José speak about? The work we have done together, and the relationships we have built, give me hope that there is a way to understand and navigate pain across multiple levels at once.
José Benito Garzón Montenegro: Yes, like moving across different scales. It’s not one level or the other, nor is it all of them at the same time. It is dynamic.
Ana Marrugo Gómez: Justice from the people is not just about acknowledging systemic patterns. It is also a practice that makes space for all these different ways of understanding justice – justice that includes pain, resentment, forgiveness, truth, and social well-being – and recognising that these meanings change over time. Because grassroots justice is made by people, by friends, by those of us who know each other. I believe that many of us engage in this social process not only to strengthen the collective, but also to build our own lives – to heal our personal wounds and to seek our own well-being. And grassroots justice makes room for that, too.
Sara Vásquez Rodríguez: That justice is tied to resisting resignation. The powerful, the system – they want us to resign ourselves. They want us to accept exactly what José described: a focus on individual cases, on personal justice alone. I think that when we talk about justice from the people, we are also talking about confronting resignation. At least once a week, I ask myself: where is this going? Because injustice and inequality continue, violence keeps repeating itself across the world – so why keep fighting?
And I think that if we talk about justice from the people, it is about refusing to resign ourselves to that reality. It is about finding other ways to think, to be in community, and to imagine new possibilities.
Although this conversation left us with more questions than answers about the meaning of justice, it also provided guiding insights into how we might collectively shape and pursue justice from the people. As Italia and Abelardo emphasise, this form of justice cannot be conceived as an abstract notion, because if it becomes detached from reality, it loses its meaning and relevance. As Abelardo rightly points out, justice from the people is justice that is actively worked for; it is a continuous endeavour, deeply rooted in the territory and in people’s lived experiences. We hope that these reflections may serve as a guide for others interested in walking this path.
There is a long tradition of popular demands for justice, which took a significant turn following the contributions of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). However, the experience of the People’s Tribunal in Siloé (TPS) placed grassroots perspectives at the forefront. This means recognising the legitimacy of community knowledge – knowledge that emerges from shared histories, class ties, and neighbourhood solidarity, all forged in the struggle against difficult and unjust material conditions. In this context justice appears as yet another scarce resource, which must be self-managed by the people through collective ways of knowing and doing.
As seen in the dialogue above, the journey of the TPS has brought together diverse and heterogeneous forms of knowledge, including grassroots knowledge, academic research, and technical expertise. Each person has contributed from their own positionality and expectations, bringing forward what they choose and are able to offer. These differences, along with the diverse political and social commitments within the movement, often generate tensions and disagreements, which we seek to navigate through a commitment to respectful listening. For this reason, we insist on understanding justice from the people as an ethical choice for dignity in diversity.
One of the most complex issues revealed by this dialogue is how to navigate the multiple scales and forms in which injustice – and therefore justice – manifest when they are approached from a grassroots perspective.
The multifaceted nature of justice from the people compels us to reflect on its constant interaction with and beyond the state and its legal framework, on how to bridge the gap between individual and collective wounds, including systemic violence, and on how to make space for both anger and joy, for both fear and hope.
On this first point, Sara argues that we cannot abandon the demand for state accountability, while José envisions a future in which justice from the people makes state arbitration unnecessary. Perhaps the practice of justice from the people means acknowledging the paradoxical situation in which the state is both the perpetrator of violence and, at the same time, the provider of legal mechanisms that many still view as legitimate avenues for justice.
This also requires us to imagine the possibility of a future where society itself is built upon principles of justice without the need for state mediation.
The movement of the TPS between the “inside and outside” of state institutions is part of a broader practice that rejects the privileging of so-called expert knowledge. Fundamentally, we believe that the pursuit of justice is not exclusive to the state, to judges, or to lawyers, and neither is it confined to courtrooms. Justice is a collective endeavour, realised in the streets, in neighbourhoods and in everyday life.
In fact, as illustrated in the preceding dialogue, state and institutional spaces often cause more pain, anger, disappointment, and a reaffirmation of injustice. In contrast, protests and sit-ins, the planting of community gardens, or the act of sharing a communal meal are opportunities to honour the memory of victims and resist the social impunity that justifies brutality and the physical and symbolic extermination of those who demand their rights.
These acts of resistance also create spaces for care, solidarity and healing, allowing us to embrace one another, exchange experiences, and find the strength to continue insisting that a just world is possible.
Another fundamental challenge is how justice from the people can account for systemic and collective wounds without neglecting individual experiences of injustice. The specific lived experiences of those in marginalised territories – such as Comuna 20 in Cali – shape both the content and form of the TPS’s demands for justice.
As Abelardo’s reflections on the working conditions of young people in Comuna 20 illustrate, the TPS’s work is not limited to the investigation of specific crimes. It also seeks to recover the memory of those who took to the streets in 2021 to demand dignity in all aspects of life.
Justice from the people, then, is also about ensuring that future generations do not continue to suffer the exclusion and marginalisation that still prevails in impoverished rural and urban areas. The process of justice from the people seeks to weave together the material conditions affecting communities and the individual ways in which people experience injustice—and therefore the ways in which they conceive of justice.
This conversation began with José asking what justice means when confronted with the perpetrator of a crime. María Italia, speaking as a mother, responded that she is only just beginning to accept that her son will not return. She acknowledges that equating justice with punishment would neither heal her nor resolve her case, but she also highlights the importance of emotions such as anger, and even the desire for vengeance, in our understanding of justice.
Unlike legal justice, justice from the people does not impose fixed emotional mandates either. These emotions are not dismissed. Instead, they are acknowledged as legitimate motivations for mobilising in the pursuit of justice and dignity – as an invitation to make space for the feelings that arise in the face of horror and violence.
This is why Abelardo tells us that justice from the people also means coming together with others to carry out a collective mourning, and why Sara reminds us that popular justice is ultimately about ensuring peace and well-being for all.
In a world where injustice is widespread and increasingly normalised, justice from the people represents a continuous effort to confront indifference. It challenges each of us to acknowledge horror and pain, so that justice may be understood as a fundamental social necessity. As one of our Tribunal members puts it, justice from the people is productive. It creates bonds and connections, helping us to combat despair and resignation by offering us a glimpse – in the here and now –of the just world we believe is possible.
References
Das, V., & Poole, D. (2004). State and its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies. In Anthropology in the Margins of the State, edited by V. Das & D. Poole, 3–33. School of American Research Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=uceBAAAAMAAJ
Kant, I. (1999). Metaphysical Elements of Justice: Part I of The metaphysics of morals (J. Ladd, Trans.; 2nd ed). Hackett Pub. Co.
Locke, J. (1884). Two Treatises on Civil Government: Preceded by Sir Robert Filmer. George Routledge and Sons. https://books.google.com/books?id=zEIqAAAAYAAJ
Lugones, M. (2003). Pilgrimages = Peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). Sobre la colonialidad del ser: Cotribuciones al desarrollo de un concepto. In El giro decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global, edited by S. Castro-Gómez & R. Grosfoguel, 127–167. Siglo del Hombre Editores. https://archive.org/details/SobreLaColonialidadDelSerNelsonMaldonado
Smith, L. T. (1998). Decolonising Methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books. https://archive.org/details/decolonizingmeth0000smit
Tribunal Popular en Siloé (2023). Tribunal Popular en Siloé: Conmemorar, dignificar y resistir. Heinrich Böll Stiftung. https://co.boell.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/hb-tribunal-popular-en-siloe-web_1.pdf
Weber, M. (2019). Economy and Society: A new translation (K. Tribe, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
How to cite this entry:
Aranda Velasco, A., Garzón Montenegro, J.B., Marrugo Gómez, A., Pérez Rengifo, M.I., Vásquez Rodríguez, S. (2025, May 2) : Justice from Below: Dilemmas and Diverse Meanings in the Collective Struggle of the People’s Tribunal in Siloé. Virtual Encyclopaedia – Rewriting Peace and Conflict. https://rewritingpeaceandconflict.net/justice-from-below/.
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