Social geographies, the practice of marronage and the archaeology of absence in colonial Mexico

Abstract

Drawing from colonial documents and archaeological evidence, this article challenges our conceptions of the Maroon colonial social category. The article focuses on Maroon testimonies recorded by colonial officials and the archaeological record of a Maroon group that settled Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de los Morenos de Amapa, from 18th-century Spanish colonial Mexico. By reconstructing how Maroons practised and altered Spanish colonial social and geographic landscapes, this article demonstrates that Maroons were not constrained to the ‘inaccessible’ areas that colonial officials attached them to and that present-day studies of Maroons have habituated. Amapa's absent archaeological record and the complaints waged against the Maroons concerning the absence of civility in the newly established town also challenge straightforward notions of Maroons and space.

Job Accessibility as a Lens for Understanding the Urban Structure of Colonial Cities: A Digital Humanities Study of the Colonial Seoul in the 1930s Using GIS

“…Examining the urban structure of colonial cities provides insightful clues to understanding socio-spatial inequality (such as racial segregation, and disparity in economic opportunities) that might be historically rooted [1][2][3][4]. These studies have largely focused on colonial cities established by Europeans in South Asia [5][6][7], South America [8,9], and Africa [10][11][12]. Apart from a few exceptions [13,14], studies investigating the urban structure of colonial cities in East Asia, which were created and managed by the Japanese empire from the early 1900s to the 1940s, are less common.…”

Huida, cimarronaje y santuario: genealogías críticas para deseurocentrar la historia del refugio en el Atlántico Negro

“…En tercer lugar, cabe señalar que, como las categorías de nativo y migrante (Sharma 2020), la de cimarrón es, de por sí, una categoría colonial (Amaral 2017). Las prácticas de deserción de los esclavos de las plantaciones y minas de las Américas coloniales se dieron a conocer como cimarronaje, siguiendo la etimología de la hispanización de la palabra arawak/taíno simaran, empleada para designar a plantas y animales no domesticados, junto a la española "cima", que hacía referencia a las montañas donde muchos fugitivos solían establecerse (Arrom 1983).…”