Territories in contestation: relational power in Latin America

Abstract

Situated in geography's recent territorial (re)turn, and drawing on Latin American theory and research, this paper examines the relational and contested nature of territories and territorial praxis. Engaging with contemporary literatures, we note the centrality of power to territory.However, as we explore in this paper, many analyses of power are too simplistic, with a latent attachment to sovereignty which can marginalise counter-hegemonic territorial politics. To combat this we explore two conceptions of power, as found in open and autonomist Marxism poder (understood as power over) and potencia (understood as power to)and how they function territorially. While such an understanding of power frames the complex production of territories, it is important to also reflect on how movements intervene in producing their own territories. Accordingly, the paper examines the territorial struggles of the Zapatistas, and, drawing from original research, explores how territorial ideas operate in everyday contexts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Across these examples the paper illustrates the potential of 'territories in resistance', but also engages in how these are also contested. Led by our cases we emphasise the relational and contested construction of territory, ultimately developing a more nuanced understanding of territory and territorial praxis

Questioning planetary illiberal geographies: territory, space and power

“…The papers in this issue explore diverse terrains of illiberal geographies: specifically, how illiberal regimes articulate territory and space at scales both global and local through lenses such as city planning, policy, surveillance, digital encounters or economic development. This issue thus engages with several current and recent debates in Territory, Politics, Governance and beyond in the wider discipline, including the recent (re)turn to the political within urban geography and the relationship between politics, space and territory (e.g., Eaton, 2015, on Peru;Obydenkova & Swenden, 2013, on Russia and Europe;Cartier, 2015, on China;Clare, Habermehl, & Mason-Deese, 2017, on Latin America). We situate within (but critically against) the planetary turn (e.g., Brenner, 2013) and with reference to the comparative gesture in urban studies (e.g., McFarlane & Robinson, 2012).…”

Producing territory: territorial organizing of movements in Buenos Aires

“…Yet, rather than stake claims to preexisting territories, these movements actively produce their own territories in an attempt to avoid reproducing the territorialities of the state and capital. That is not to say, however, that these territories are completely "outside" the state and market but that they are fundamentally linked to the creation of new forms of social relations and subjectivities while simultaneously being contested and relational (Clare et al, 2018). In this paper we explore the praxis of territorial organizing as developed by social movements in Buenos Aires.…”

“…In this framework, territory is not an object that movements seek to defend, but a site of struggle and the product of the struggles themselves (Blank, 2016;Oliveira, 1999;Sitrin, 2012;Stratta and Barrera, 2009). Territory, in this case, is always socioterritorial, intimately tied to the social relations that are enacted in it (Zibechi, 2012), and is immanently traversed by power relations (Clare et al, 2018). Thus, the territoriality of Black and Indigenous communities, as well as other anti-colonial and anticapitalist movements, is different from the territory of nation-states.…”

“…In one of the most telling examples, Reyes and Kaufman (2011), examining the Zapatista movement, argue that by occupying their own territories, the Zapatistas are able to produce an autonomous territoriality that, as a rupture emerging in, against, and beyond sovereign forms of territoriality, allows for the creation of new social relations and new forms of government. In other words, multiple territories are possible but these are always relational and contested (Clare et al, 2018). To focus on Latin American territorial analyses is not, therefore, to create a false dichotomy between them and those that are "Eurocentric", nor is it to homogenize bodies of literature.…”

“…It is from these movements' understandings of territory, therefore, that the idea of territorial organizing emerges, and urban territorial organizing in Latin America (see Blank, 2016) is explicitly connected to, and draws on, lessons from these rural movements (Clare et al, 2018). But urban territorial organizing faces particular challenges: cities are where capital is concentrated, is most densely policed, and, in many cases, their very architecture is a product of colonial power relations.…”