Para todos, todo; for everyone, everything. This adapted Zapatista slogan was one of many that ended social media posts recording the Raizal Spring’s activism. The social movement emerged in the Archipelago of San Andres and Providencia, Colombia, after the State failed its population in the aftermath of a 2020 hurricane. The movement has since campaigned for the archipelago’s autonomy and the consolidation of the raizal ethnic identity.

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The raizal diaspora is composed of the descendants of a colonial population of English settlers, African slaves, and Afro-Caribbean freedmen. The warring British and Spanish empires traded jurisdiction over the archipelago after its founding in the 17th century. As a result, raizals developed in relative autonomy and now possess an ethnic identity distinct from the Colombian mainland. Raizals speak Creole English and are Protestant, while Colombians are Spanish-speaking and Catholic. But, following Panama’s 1903 secession from Colombia, the mainland tightened its hold over the territory, ending its era of autonomy.

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A process of Colombianisation followed, consisting of State policymaking and private sector investment that developed the archipelago’s tourism industry, resulting in capital inflow and mass immigration of Colombians. The raizal population, previously landowning and self-sufficient through artisanal fishing, are relegated to the service class of this new tourist economy. In effect, the State adopted gentrification processes to legitimise its jurisdiction over the archipelago by changing its socioeconomic topography.

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In November 2020, the Category 4 Hurricane Iota destroyed 98% of Providencia Island’s infrastructure and built fabric. Rather than assist the reconstruction efforts, the Colombian National Navy opportunistically began constructing an illegal dock in Bowden Creek fishing cove in February 2021. It was sited in the traditional landing place of the cove’s artisanal fishermen, contravened the outcome of a 2015 public consultation, and breached laws protecting the cove’s mangrove forest.

Bowden Creek’s local organisation of artisanal fishers, the Federation of Artisanal Fishermen, sprang into action by working with CORALINA, the island’s environmental protection agency, which ordered the navy to suspend all construction activity on the site. Concurrently, the FFC blocked the site’s access road by establishing the Raizal Dignity Camp, seeding the Raizal Spring movement.

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In my 2023 article Mythologies of Resistance, I demonstrated that semiotic mythmaking and collective memory practices played a crucial role in the movement’s online discourse production. The movement represented the raizal ethnic group as a distinct political entity, challenging the State’s hegemonic conception of the group forming part of a unified multicultural nation-state. By adapting significations such as the Zapatista slogan “for everyone, everything,” the movement imbued its historical intention with a natural justification, lending it greater legitimacy than the State’s opposing narratives and contextualising it within the history of indigenous autonomy.

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In prior years, the State’s authorised discourse alienated raizals by taking place in administrative environments and in State languages. Refusing these official avenues, the movement mediated their alternative discourse through Afro-Caribbean practices of communicative memory, such as the social act of cooking rondón stew on the beach. Through this, the movement produced discourse that was more accessible to the islanders, leveraging their negotiations with the State. Beyond the Navy’s complete withdrawal from Bowden Creek, their successes include promised reintroductions of traditional architectural carpentry practices to improve their capacity for autonomy.

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These grassroots perspectives were foundational for developing my proposals for the archipelago, ensuring that they represented the interests of the People rather than the State. These events serve as precedent for future struggles that will arise from increasingly extreme weather caused by anthropogenic climate change. Designers must immerse themselves within these contexts to ensure that their work remains both socially and environmentally sustainable amidst these challenges.