Armed conflicts usually hit those who are most vulnerable the hardest, placing them in an even more difficult and extreme situation than the one they were in prior to the conflict. Studies, both in psychology and social sciences, have mostly focused on the devastating socioemotional consequences that collective violence has in the population (Bustamante, Rivera, & Matos, 2013; Pedersen 2006, Theidon, 2004). Among these documented consequences are fragmented social ties, fear and mistrust among community members and families, deep emotional pain, difficulty in organising, among others (Kleinman, Das, & Lock, 1997). However, fewer studies have explored people’s resources and capacities. This symposium seeks to contribute to filling this gap by presenting, from a community psychology perspective, the findings of three empirical research projects. These projects explore not only the hindering effects of collective violence, but also how families and communities deploy internal resources, both at the individual and social level, to re-configure and re-build personal projects and community life.

Velazquez’s work analyses through life stories, rural women’s agency development in how they seek to overcome day to day difficulties as they search for social wellbeing. She finds that women deploy agency through education, migration, commerce, and political participation. Rivera’s project is concerned with family dynamics in cases where there has been ambiguous loss after the disappearance of a family member. She explores how families have created strategies to stay together and how they have mobilised members to organise collective actions to support each other and to claim for truth, justice and reparations. Finally, Távara’s study analyses how a group of rural women, who are part of a newly formed women’s organisation, make meaning of organising processes. She explores their motivations for organising as well as the challenges they face, also looking at how a women’s organising processes have an effect on the gendered social dynamics in indigenous communities.

In Latin America, indigenous groups have historically struggled for their voices to be heard. In doing so they have tended to have an interesting effect on society as a whole by pushing its members to broaden their perspectives on diverse issues, such as human rights, democratic processes, and development and wellbeing.

This symposium seeks to work along this line, by fostering research with indigenous groups that questions our assumptions and broadens our perspectives as community psychologists. In this way, we seek to contribute with identifying the gaps that still need to be filled vis-a-vis the challenges collective violence poses for researchers and practitioners in Community Psychology.