Juan Arias

Juan studied Literature in Bogotá, Colombia, and Screenwriting in Prague, Czech Republic. He worked in the Colombian theatrical sector for eight years as a producer, playwright and professor. Three of his original plays were published in 2018.

Title of Project

“Here We Are” / “Do Not Erase Us”: The Performance of Claiming Presence in the Colombian Civil War

Description of Project

My project is based on two messages written/painted by illegal armies on the walls of villages in Colombia. The first graffiti, “Erase it you will see you die,” was written by the leftist guerrilla group Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL), and the second, “Here we are you miserable communist,” by the right-wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).

I bring these graffiti together because they, unconsciously, complement each other: the “Erase it you will see you die” is another way of saying “Here we are,” and the big and red message of the AUC’s also threatens: “Do not erase us.” These are, in their own way, violent messages that, equally, illustrate the vulnerability of those who painted the texts: without the army, their uniform, and their rifle, the soldiers are nobody for the State and Colombian society in general.

This does not mean that their presence conveys the act of solidarity that being present implies for Diana Taylor in her book ¡Presente!, The Politics of Presence. On the contrary, these claims of presence are exclusionary but also charged with a suffering that is evident in the content of the messages and, also, in their use of grammar, their spray strokes, and the figures that the letters create. It is the effort of those who feel excluded to exclude others. It is killing when one feels dead; to eradicate in order to try to be somebody; to shout “Here we are” when they are nowhere to be seen.

Areas of Academic Interest

depersonalization, processes of nullification, absences and presences, "ninguneo" (the action of turning somebody into nobody)