ResearchOngoing
Geographies and political memory of the Black lives of the Zona Bananera in Magdalena
Studies how Afro-descendant communities of the Zona Bananera have produced, inhabited, and defended their spaces against extractivism, environmental racism, dispossession, and structural violence.
Approach
The Zona Bananera in Magdalena has historically been a territory shaped by agroindustrial extractivism, paramilitary violence, and the racialization of the labor force. This project investigates how the Afro-descendant communities who inhabit these territories have produced, defended, and inhabited space as a form of political, affective, and territorial resistance.
Conceptual framework
We link the notions of Black geographies (Katherine McKittrick), the geography of dispossession, environmental racism, and political memory as axes for analyzing how Caribbean territory is produced from below, from bodies, everyday practices, and community struggles.
Territory is not only a stage on which violence occurs: it is also the place where the memories, the care, and the political imaginations of the Black lives of the Caribbean are inscribed.
Methodology
- Ethnographic fieldwork in the townships of the Zona Bananera
- Participatory social cartography with communities
- Recovery of oral and testimonial archives
- Systematization of neighborhood and rural memories
Co-funding
Project co-funded by Universidad del Magdalena and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH) under the regional research call.