The voicing spaces of the Atrato guardians: Choreographies, choralities, and testimonial strategies weaving territorivers

Within the framework of the rights of nature, particularly regarding rivers as legal subjects, arises the question of how rivers are defined, represented, and listened to. The Atrato River in Chocó, Colombia, has long faced socio-environmental challenges, including gold mining, deforestation, and the violent presence of armed groups. In 2016, the Constitutional Court granted the Atrato legal rights through Sentence T-622, establishing the Collegiate Body of Guardians to represent Black, Indigenous, and Mestizo communities as its spokespersons. Drawing on my February 2020 fieldwork diary, I examine the dynamics of spaces where the Atrato's voice emerges through its guardians. Focusing on the Environmental Public Hearing on the El Roble mining project—Colombia's only legal copper mine—I delve in the processes before, during, and after the hearing to understand how the river is represented. Voicing spaces bring together diverse stakeholders: state representatives, mining officials, social leaders, NGOs, researchers, and civil society, all woven together through the Atrato's waters. These waters, conceptualized as territorivers, reveal the river as a living entity that interweaves ecological, social, temporal, historical, and political processes, through choreographies, choralities and testimonal strategies. This analysis highlights the voicing rivers as a chorus beyond the (t)here.