Towards Afro-Indigenous ecopolitics

Abstract

Costa Chica is home to the largest Afromexican population in Mexico most of whom are of Afro-Indigenous descent. In 2019, Afromexicans gained official state recognition as collective ethnic minority subjects which opens up new political potentialities for organising strategies. This article examines the development of Afro-Indigenous politics in response to the ecological devastation that Costa Chica of Guerrero is experiencing as a consequence of climate change. I contextualise this research project in my personal experiences researching family histories and coming into a sense of Afro-Indigenous subjectivity. A brief overview of the historical human-nature relations influenced by slavery and colonialism helps to contextualise the socio-political and ecological situation in the region. Finally, I draw from my ethnographic work to suggest various ways in which Afro-Indigenous organisers can mobilise the new political category to address environmental concerns. In the conclusion, I return to my own personal experiences with trying to understand Afro-Indigenous politics arguing that while connections need to be made with other geographic experiences of Blackness, Indigeneity, and Afro-Indigeneity, one must stay attuned to the geographic particularities that shape subjectivity.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.