Testimonial narratives as an impulse for the revitalization of migratory and cultural history

Abstract

The inevitable incursion of modernity in different societies has meant the massive displacement of forms of thought organized from logics opposed to the western one; an example of this is the disappearance of cultural practices and forms of knowledge within the native peoples. This article seeks to reflect on the pedagogical and community practices developed through a participatory social project called "We the Kichwa", which sought to compensate for the lack of reciprocity of intergenerational knowledge, through the revaluation of the testimonial narratives of the members of the Kichwa community of Sesquilé, Colombia. The study was approached from 5 stages: 1) Stage of community immersion, 2) Stage of verification and revaluation of the problem, 3) Stage of community co-creation, 4) Stage of scaffolding and construction of the dialogic tool, and 5) Stage of socialization and evaluation of the dialogic tool; distributed through a participatory methodology over a period of two years. The intervention demonstrated that testimonial narratives are capable of re-signifying elements of a culture, as well as revaluing individual and collective feelings that live in memory. As a result, a dialogic and interactive tool was built for the generations of children and young people who today make up the Kichwa community, and who precisely have not had access to the historical development of their roots.