The attention given to indigenous peoples' use of maps to make claims to land and rights of self-government raises the question: what exactly it is that these maps do? This paper outlines an analytic for examining indigenous mapping projects, drawing upon two prominent instances -by the Maya of Belize and the Mayangna community of Awas Tingni in Nicaragua -where human rights lawsuits have been woven together with participatory mapping. In each case, map-making was intricately linked to the formulation of legal claims, resulting in a pair of muchcelebrated maps and legal precedents regarding the recognition of indigenous land rights. We argue that these strategies do not reverse colonial social relations so much as they rework them. Notwithstanding the creativity expressed through these projects, they remain oriented by the spatial configuration of modern politics: territory and property rights. This spatial configuration both accounts for and limits the power of indigenous cartography. This impasse is not a contradiction that can be resolved; rather, it constitutes an aporia for which there is no easy or clear solution. Nonetheless, it must be confronted.
The ''territorial turn'' in Latin America describes the trend towards state recognition of community property rights. This partial recognition of indigenous peoples' and Afro-descendants' demands for territory has become a focal point for expanding neoliberal approaches to governance through the extension of new property rights regimes. This partial recognition of social movements' demands has resulted in widespread efforts to rethink territory by social movements and scholars alike in order to better understand the conceptual work that the term does, its historical constitution, and its relevance to struggles for social justice. Those debates provide a grounded critique of territory, drawing attention to the calculative techniques used to bring it into being and their role in marginalizing other understandings of space and rights with far-reaching implications for processes of subject formation. This review uses those debates to argue for a reconsideration of territory as process, highlighting the ways in which governing works through the term and how it constrains approaches to social justice.
El mapeo participativo lo han usado comunidades indígenas y afrodescendientes en luchas de derecho a tierras y recursos. Sin embargo, nuevas presiones relacionadas con las políticas de cambio climático y prácticas extractivas han surgido en la reconceptualización del mapeo participativo. Este artículo presenta su historia en el contexto de las reformas territoriales y las leyes internacionales del siglo XX. Se discuten los avances del mapeo participativo, incluyendo usos innovadores de mapeo para representaciones espaciales, conservación cultural y manejo endógeno de recursos y gobernación comunitaria. Estas reflexiones surgen del Foro Internacional Cartografía Participativa y Derechos al Territorio y los Recursos, que tuvo lugar en la Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia) en el 2011.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.