Muddied Waters

Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia, 1846–1948

Auteur: Appelbaum, Nancy P.; Mignolo, Walter D.; Silverblatt, Irene; Saldívar-Hull, Sonia
Éditeur: Duke University Press
Collection: Latin america otherwise
ISBN: 9780822330806
eISBN Pdf: 9780822384335
Lieu de publication: Durham , United States
Année de publication électronique: 2003
Mois : Avril
Pages: 320
DDC: 986.1/05
Langue: Anglais

Légende

Colombia’s western Coffee Region is renowned for the whiteness of its inhabitants, who are often described as respectable pioneer families who domesticated a wild frontier and planted coffee on the forested slopes of the Andes. Some local inhabitants, however, tell a different tale—of white migrants rapaciously usurping the lands of indigenous and black communities. Muddied Waters examines both of these legends, showing how local communities, settlers, speculators, and politicians struggled over jurisdictional boundaries and the privatization of communal lands in the creation of the Coffee Region. Viewing the emergence of this region from the perspective of Riosucio, a multiracial town within it, Nancy P. Appelbaum reveals the contingent and contested nature of Colombia’s racialized regional identities.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Colombian elite intellectuals, Appelbaum contends, mapped race onto their mountainous topography by defining regions in racial terms. They privileged certain places and inhabitants as white and modern and denigrated others as racially inferior and backward. Inhabitants of Riosucio, however, elaborated local narratives about their mestizo and indigenous identities that contested the white mystique of the Coffee Region. Ongoing violent conflicts over land and politics, Appelbaum finds, continue to shape local debates over history and identity. Drawing on archival and published sources complemented by oral history, Muddied Waters vividly illustrates the relationship of mythmaking and racial inequality to regionalism and frontier colonization in postcolonial Latin America.

CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction Riosucio: Race, Colonization, Region, and Community
PART 1 COUNTRY OF REGIONS 1846-1886
- ONE Beauty and the Beast: Antioquia and Cauca
- TWO ‘‘Accompanied by Progress’’: Cauca Intermediaries and Antioqueño Migration
- THREE ‘‘By Consent of the Indígenas’’: Riosucio’s Indigenous Communities
PART 2 THE WHITE REPUBLIC ,1886-1930
- FOUR Regenerating Riosucio: Regeneration and the Transition to Conservative Rule
- FIVE Regenerating Conflict: Riosucio’s Indígenas in the White Republic
- SIX Riosucio on the Margins of the ‘‘Model Department’’
PART 3 REMEMBER IN GRACE, REGION, AND COMMUNITY
- SEVEN Remembering Riosucio: Imagining a Mestizo Community
- EIGHT Remembering San Lorenzo: Imagining an Indigenous Community
Conclusion Reimagining Region and Nation
Notes
Bibliography
Index