Territorial resistance: A political–emotional dimension in hydroelectric projects in Colombia and Chile

Abstract The purpose of this article is to provide an understanding of territorial resistance from the perspective of social work, as an emotional political dimension. The research considers the experience of people affected by the planning or implementation of hydroelectric projects in Colombia and Chile, through experiential narrative inquiry. The consequences of hydroelectric projects have emerged in Latin America since the 1990s as a new social issue for the discipline, due to the deterioration of inequalities generated by the neoliberal development model. From the analysis of the two cases, it is possible to indicate that resistance in Latin America to hydropower projects has characteristics such as resistance is an ancestral heritage of organizational vision, is a collective action in defense of the permanence of peoples in their territories, and mobilizes efforts in defense of victims of development who demand global solidarity.