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Mapping Deception: The Politics of Mapping Miskito andGarifuna Space in HondurasSharlene Mollett aa Department of Geography , Dartmouth CollegePublished online: 25 Mar 2013.

To cite this article: Sharlene Mollett (2013) Mapping Deception: The Politics of Mapping Miskito and Garifuna Space inHonduras, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103:5, 1227-1241, DOI: 10.1080/00045608.2013.770366

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Mapping Deception: The Politics of MappingMiskito and Garifuna Space in Honduras

Sharlene Mollett

Department of Geography, Dartmouth College

In Latin America, indigenous and Afro-descendant land movements find traction in participatory mappingprojects. The success of these projects is measured in a variety of ways: from the abatement of land conflicts tothe employment of these maps in winning state-sanctioned ownership “rights.” Although worthy of celebration,such “countermapping” projects (Peluso 1995), often exemplified by the practice of binding a particular culture(or ethnicity) to a particular space, might arouse contradictory outcomes. Drawing from ethnographic interviewswith Miskito and Garifuna communities on the Honduran Atlantic coast, this article reflects on the ConsensusMapping of Shared Boundaries Project (CMSBP), an indigenous countermapping initiative inside the HonduranMosquitia. In this work I argue that racial power and racialized processes constrain the emancipatory possibilitiesof countermapping in multiple ways. Such power and processes legitimate the devaluation of subaltern landclaims and, in Honduras, contribute to the legitimacy of ladino incursions inside Miskito and Garifuna space.Key Words: countermapping, indigenous peoples, race.

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En America Latina, los movimientos de caracter indıgena o afro-descendiente que tienen que ver con la tierraencuentran soporte de traccion en los proyectos cartograficos participativos. El exito de estos proyectos se midede muchas maneras: desde la reduccion de conflictos por la tierra hasta en el uso que se da a estos mapas porsancion estatal en la definicion de “derechos” de propiedad. Aunque dignos de celebracion, tales proyectos de“contramapeo” (Peluso 1995), a menudo ejemplificados en la practica de ligar una cultura particular (o etnicidad)a un espacio particular, podrıan generar resultados contradictorios. A partir de entrevistas etnograficas concomunidades miskito y garifuna de la costa atlantica hondurena, este artıculo versa sobre el Proyecto ConsensualCartografico de Lımites Compartidos, una iniciativa indıgena de contramapeo dentro de la Mosquitia hondurena.En este trabajo arguyo que el poder racial y los procesos racializados afectan de muchas maneras las posibilidadesemancipadoras del contramapeo. Tales poderes y procesos legitiman la devaluacion de pleitos subalternos porla tierra y contribuyen en Honduras a excusar las incursiones de ladinos dentro del espacio miskito y garifuna.Palabras clave: contramapeo, pueblos indıgenas, raza.

The threat of losing our lands is so great now we want to mapeverywhere, [to protect] around the rivers, the lagoons, thestreams, our homes, gardens, [laughing] this pebble! That is

our hope for these maps.

—Moskitia Asla Takanka(MASTA) representative (personal communication,

27 July 2008)

I n March 2007, indigenous and Afro-descendantrepresentatives from Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua,Honduras, and Panama convened in Honduras as

participants of an international workshop titled “Con-sensus Mapping of Shared Boundaries for the Strength-ening of Garifuna and Miskito Peoples” (CMSBP).Central American representatives were joined byNorth American scholars writing on indigenous andAfro-descendant land struggles.1 This intercultural

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(5) 2013, pp. 1227–1241 C© 2013 by Association of American GeographersInitial submission, November 2010; revised submission, May 2012; final acceptance, July 2012

Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.

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workshop was financed by the Ford Foundation andcoordinated by the Central American and CaribbeanResearch Council (CACRC). Since 2002, the CACRChas actively worked in solidarity with HonduranGarifuna and Miskito peoples, Afro-indigenous and in-digenous communities, respectively, and their strugglesfor legal demarcation of ancestral territories on theHonduran north coast (CACRC 2002, 2002b). At themeeting, Honduran Garifuna and Miskito leaders fromMASTA (The Unity of Mosquitia Peoples) and Orga-nizacion Fraternal Negra de Honduras (OFRANEH),two prominent Miskito and Garifuna community orga-nizations, were also present. A main workshop objectivewas to coordinate and fund a future indigenous coun-termapping project that, when complete, would delimitthe overlapping lands between two coastal Mosquitiacommunities: Plaplaya, a Garifuna community, andPinales-Ibans, a Miskito community.

Pinales-Ibans and Plaplaya are located on the At-lantic coast of the Honduran Mosquitia region, an an-cestral homeland claimed by the Miskito, Garifuna,Pech, and Tawahka peoples. This overlapping spaceis referred to as Lasa Pulan. A Miskito phrase, Lasa Pu-lan means “where the devil plays.”2 This area measuresone square kilometer and, although small, this forestand overlapping farming area is a contested space. AsI discuss elsewhere (Mollett 2006), the Garifuna in-sist that Lasa Pulan is farmland where the presence ofcrops make Lasa Pulan an unsuitable space for the graz-ing of Miskito cattle. The Miskito counter that cattlegrazing is permitted inside communal spaces inside theMosquitia, a place they consider to be a Miskito, and nota Garifuna, homeland. This long-standing antagonismwas particularly visible in 2002 when a Garifuna farmerslaughtered multiple cows after he found them grazingin his yucca plantation. After the farmer kept the meat,Miskito demands for compensation went unaddressed(see Mollett 2006).3

The porous and contested boundaries betweenMiskito and Garifuna communities figure prominentlyamong meeting participants. Meeting representativesagree that the overlapping boundaries are used by thestate to deny territorial demarcation in the Mosquitia.In fact, state policy under the National Agrarian In-stitute (INA), a national state agency responsiblefor titling rural lands, and the National Institute forConservation, Forestry Development, Protected Ar-eas, and Wildlife (ICF) insist that before demar-cation, overlapping lands must be “clarified” (INArepresentative for Special Projects, interview, 20 July2008; see also State Forestry Administration and Hon-

duran Corporation of Forest Development, Depart-ment of Protected Areas and Wildlife Protection [AFE-COHDEFOR] 2002). Meeting participants challengethe state’s premise. For them, the problem is not Miskitoand Garifuna land arrangements but rather state im-punity granted to colonos (colonists), “who destroy theforests of indigenous peoples” (Palo, Teacher, Pinales-Ibans, personal communication, 2008). A growing pres-ence of ladino colonos has come to preoccupy Miskitoand Garifuna antagonisms. Participants highlight theongoing challenge to indigenous and Afro-descendantpeoples when forced to absorb colono land use practicesinside ancestral territories (Meeting notes, 17 March2007). Meeting discussions suggest that states oftenignore indigenous people’s territorial demands, partic-ularly when such land is useful to the market-basedproduction activities of the Central American ladinomajorities, namely, cattle ranching and cash crops(Meeting notes, 17 March 2007). Thus, mapping LasaPulan serves a dual strategy: to satisfy state desiresfor clarification and to counter colono and state in-cursions inside Miskito and Garifuna ancestral lands.Danilo Neli, a MASTA representative, explained that“OFRANEH as well as the Miskito and MASTA, havedecided to not dwell on past things, because if we donot work together the only winners [in this situation]will be colonos” (Meeting notes, 18 March 2007).

In Latin America, indigenous and Afro-descendantland movements have undoubtedly found traction incountermapping projects. Countermapping, often usedinterchangeably with participatory mapping and indige-nous mapping, describes an effort to counter “dominantrepresentations of property regimes and land use prac-tices” through the use of Western cartographic tech-niques (Hodgson and Schroeder 2002, 80). Such mapsare a tool of subaltern peoples to support their landrights negotiation with the state and the elite (Peluso1995; Walker and Peters 2001; Hodgson and Schroeder2002). Throughout the 1990s, indigenous countermap-ping projects expanded quickly and were combinedwith participatory techniques, geographic informationsystem (GIS) technologies, and remote sensing (Gor-don, Gurdian, and Hale 2003; Herlihy and Knapp2003; Offen 2003; Chapin, Lamb, and Threlkeld 2005;Stocks 2005). Indigenous countermapping also emergedwith the goals of biodiversity conservation and map-ping environmental degradation (Chapin, Lamb, andThrelkeld 2005).

Indeed, Latin Americanist geographers (and an-thropologists) are frequent participants in indigenouscountermapping projects. Often these geographers

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have devoted many years to working in solidarity withindigenous land struggles, with indigenous maps playinga central role (Chapin and Threlkeld 2001; Gordon,Gurdian, and Hale 2003; Wainwright 2008; Finley-Brook and Offen 2009). According to late geographerBarney Nietschmann (1995), in the context of Miskitoland and marine resource struggles in Nicaragua:

[I]f it [a map] is well-designed, that map will have transcen-dental power because it can be easily translated by everyoneeverywhere: . . . it can be a more powerful national symbolthan a flag or an anthem; its creation reinforces group co-hesion . . . and it provides strong credibility to its producers.(37, italics added)

The production of indigenous countermaps has ledto state demarcation of indigenous lands (Hale 2006;Wainwright and Bryan 2009). Still, even withoutsuch victories, indigenous countermaps are celebratedamong geographers for “[helping] disadvantaged com-munities reclaim their heritage and defend their lands”(Herlihy and Knapp 2003, 308). Such cartographic in-terventions bring to life “the cognitive spatial and en-vironmental knowledge of local peoples” in places thatremain unmapped or where these local knowledges arein need of “translation” to more conventional arrange-ments (Herlihy and Knapp 2003, 303; see also Gordon,Gurdian, and Hale 2003). According to Herlihy andKnapp (2003, 306) the aim of this approach is to “leaveeducation and empowerment in [the] wake” of indige-nous communities.

Notwithstanding these sincere ambitions, critical ge-ographers have questioned the politics of indigenouscountermapping. Less concerned with mapping tech-niques, inquiries target the political reasons for, and out-comes of, countermaps. These interrogations challengegeographers to examine the arena of struggle over nat-ural resources that shape the terrain from which coun-termapping initiatives occur (Peluso 1995; Rundstrom1995; Gordon, Gurdian, and Hale 2003; Rocheleau2005; Sletto 2009; Wainwright and Bryan 2009). Inresponse to this growing literature, I situate this articlebetween postcolonial political ecology and Latin Amer-ican racial studies. I draw from ethnographic research,semistructured interviews, and historical data compiledwhile I was a participant in the CMSBP conductedin the Miskito and Garifuna villages of Pinales-Ibansand Plaplaya, Honduras. Research was conducted overfour months between 2007 and 2008. This article alsobuilds on a larger ethnographic research project con-ducted over sixteen months between 2003 and 2005in the nearby Miskito villages of Belen, Cocobila,

Payabila, and Brus Laguna, an area where the strugglefor Lasa Pulan has figured prominently in village imag-inaries and Miskito and Garifuna relations (Mollett2006, 2010, 2011).

The Honduran Mosquitia is a place imbued withracialized histories and geographies. Racial power andracialized processes constrain the emancipatory possi-bilities of indigenous countermaps in multiple ways.4

To make my case, I briefly trace historical state con-structions of the Miskito and the Garifuna as inhab-itants of the Mosquitia, a region that even long afterindependence continues to be imagined outside the na-tion. Next, I tie such representations to contemporaryagrarian and environmental policies that reproduce apersistent othering of indigenous and Afro-indigenouspopulations and their land use practices. Building onthese insights, I critically interrogate how indigenouscountermapping relies on dual representations of leg-ibility. The first representation that I outline exam-ines the simplification of indigenous property systems.Scott (1998) argued that maps and various methodsof record-keeping and land registration are fundamen-tal to modern state projects of “legibility.” A secondrepresentation of legibility focuses on ethnic identityand categorization as tactics of “strategic essentialism”(Danius, Jonsson, and Spivak 1993). This legibility cou-pling occurs in a racialized politics of place where raceis employed as a way to naturalize people and placeand where racial ideologies and racialization processesprivilege some racial identities while devaluing others(Goldberg 1993; Dei 1996; Applebaum, Macpherson,and Rosemblatt 2004). In Latin America, these pro-cesses reproduce fixed regimes of power that idealizewhiteness as a racial cultural project of modernization(Tilley 2005; Escobar 2010). I conclude that coun-termaps fail to disrupt persistent racial ideologies thatpresuppose and naturalize Miskito and Garifuna infe-riority. These persistent and racialized discourses andpractices cast doubt on the ability of any future titlingeffort, an ambition of many countermapping projects,to protect Miskito and Garifuna lands against the legit-imacy and growing normalization granted to ladino landincursions inside indigenous space.

Postcolonial Political Ecology

My analysis of Miskito and Garifuna contests overland and territory builds on the subfield of politicalecology. Political ecology is a multiscalar researchframework open to the influences of a variety of social

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theories that critically analyze how politics informenvironmental change (Peet and Watts 1996, 2004;Bryant 1998; Zimmerer and Bassett 2003; Robbins2004; Neumann 2005; Elmhirst 2011). Politicalecologists provide robust critique of apolitical and de-politicizing explanations of mainstream environmentaland developmental policy and practice (Escobar 1998;Le Billon 2001; Peet and Watts 2004; Robbins 2004; Li2007) and pay close attention to how people and theiraccess to natural resources are connected to hierarchiesof power in certain locales (Blaikie and Brookfield1987; Bryant 1998; Agrawal 2005; Neumann 2005;Mollett 2006; Perrault 2008). Conflicts over naturalresources are a key focus of political ecological inquiriesinto shifting land and natural resource rights andstate environment-development policies (Vandergeest1996; Mackenzie 2003; Mollett 2011).

Postcolonial theory informs political ecologicalcritiques of environment and development. The termpostcolonial signals the ways in which colonial powerremains woven within modern social hierarchies andrelations, particularly between the state and its citizens(Fanon 1967; McClintock 1995; Stoler 1995; Quijano2005). A postcolonial political ecology, in part, reflectson how land and territorial struggles are underpinned byparticular ideological formations and tenacious presup-positions that link colonialism to development’s present(Power 2003). In line with Said (1979), Peet and Watts(1996) highlighted how spaces are imbued with “re-gional discursive formations,” which occur as “modes ofthought, logics, themes and styles of expression, typi-cal metaphors [that] run through the discursive historyof a region” (230). Central to understanding naturalresource conflicts, discursive formations spatialize a ge-nealogy of ideas regarding resource rights and illumi-nate the contradictory terrain imbued in the narrativesand ideas that are constituted in present-day environ-mental and agrarian policy, the enclosure of protectedarea space, land titling programs, and territorial con-flicts (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001; Sparke 2007; Har-ris 2008).

Natural resources conflict makes visible the waysin which racial and cultural differences and their in-terpretations are continually shaped by a “colonialityof power” (Quijano 2005). In Latin America, racializedpower and enduring racism owe much to the legacy ofmestizaje, a nineteenth-century political discourse that,in part, posits the mixing of blood and cultural practicesas a way to “civilize,” “lighten,” or “improve” black andIndian societies, imagined as “backward,” “primitive,”and “barbaric” (Vasconcelos [1926] 1997; Radcliffe and

Westwood 1996; Gould 1998; Bonnett 2000; De laCadena 2000; Whitten 2007). Mestizaje posited bothphenotypical and cultural whitening, a process referredto as blanquiamiento (Martınez-Echazabal 1998; Tilley2005). Blanquiamiento or, in Quijano’s words, the “Euro-peanization” of Indians (and blacks) as a way to producemodern subjects is “based on the [presupposed] impossi-bility of even admitting, or even imagining, a decoloniz-ing of relations between the ‘Indian’ and the ‘European,’since by very definition the ‘Indian’ is not only inferior,but also ‘primitive’ . . . that is doubly inferior” behindthe “European” (Quijano 2005; http://sdonline.org).Colonial racial categories and meanings are not onlysalient in the present but are important foci for un-derstanding indigenous and Afro-descendant territorialstruggles (Sundberg 2008).

In Latin America, the last twenty years are distin-guished by the combination effects of multiculturalstate reforms and increased cultural and economicrights granted to indigenous and Afro-descendant pop-ulations (Hooker 2005; Jackson and Warren 2005;Escobar 2010). Notwithstanding impressive materialand symbolic gains, including unprecedented state landand territorial demarcation for subaltern communities,critics argue that such rights are awarded to only a fewindividual indigenous and Afro-descendant groups. Inthe context of increased regional cultural rights, “cer-tain rights are to be enjoyed on the implicit conditionthat others will not be raised” (Hale 2004, 18; Postero2007). The favorable recognition of cultural differenceis contingent on being remade to fit the imaginaries ofstate and international development officials so that in-digenous and Afro-descendant cultures can be deemed“appropriate” for development benefits (Andolina,Radcliffe, and Laurie 2005, 2009). Moreover, there islittle disruption to “the arbitrary (historical) charac-ter of the dominant Euro-modernity, that is, the factthat ‘modernity’ has one cultural model among many”(Escobar 2010, 10). Thus, contemporary indigenousand Afro-descendant land struggles are not just aboutland and territory; rather, such struggles seek to counterthe idealization of whiteness as a racial and culturalproject and the premise of mestizo citizenry (Yashar1999; Warren 2001; Postero 2007; Hooker 2008). Asindigenous and Afro-descendant mobilizations are si-multaneously part of a transnational indigenous move-ment (Brysk 2000), indigenous allies, namely, foreigngovernments, nongovernmental organizations, volun-teers, and academics, are thus implicated in such racialstruggles. This entanglement is relevant to my analysisof countermapping limitations.

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The Making of Imbrications: Miskito andGarifuna Space in the Mosquitia

The enclosure of Miskito and Garifuna space insidethe Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve further complicatesland debate in the Mosquitia. The Reserve, a UnitedNations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiza-tion (UNESCO) World Heritage Site since 1982, is akey region within the MesoAmerican Biological Cor-ridor. Inside the Reserve, Miskito and Garifuna landsare located inside the “cultural zone,” an area speciallydesignated and designed for the protection of “tradi-tional” peoples under the model of UNESCO’s Manand the Biosphere Program (AFE-COHDEFOR 2000;see Mollett 2010). Despite this important designation,land struggles are part of everyday life inside the cul-tural zone.5 Since the mid-1980s, Miskito, Tawahka,Pech, and Garifuna communities have demandedformal rights to their ancestral territories inside the Re-serve. These demands are provoked by the intensifica-tion of colono migration (Mosquitia Pawisa [MOPAWI],personal communication, 2008). Although migrationhas occurred since the 1980s, in the last fifteen yearsroughly 10,000 colonos occupy land inside the culturalzone (MOPAWI technician, personal communication,10 July 2007). Miskito villagers worry that “colonos areforcibly changing the way indigenous peoples live in theMosquitia” (Terina Raista, personal communication,15 July 2008). Miskito leaders maintain that “indige-nous peoples land struggles persist because we have beencontinuously subjugated and discriminated against bythe state and ladinos [the nation’s most dominant eth-nic group], not just because we are poor, because we arealso indians” (Mo, RAYAKA [Miskito word for life], in-terview, 12 July 2007).6 Such representations link thepast and the present spatially.

Contemporary desires to produce countermaps in de-fense of customary tenure arrangements are informedby a history of state representations of Miskito andGarifuna peoples and a problematization of their social-spatial arrangements. Scholars trace Miskito heritageto a mixed European, African, and Amerindian ances-try (Bell 1862; Floyd 1967; Helms 1971, 1977). TheGarifuna, formerly known as the Black Carib, claimAfrican and Amerindian ancestry. After being de-ported by the British in 1797, many Garifuna havelived in small communities in the Mosquitia since theearly 1800s (Gonzalez 1988; CACRC 2002a; Anderson2009).

Historical state representations of the Miskito andthe Garifuna commonly disparage the Mosquitia region

for the “blackness” of its inhabitants. The Garifuna andthe Miskito were categorized as inferior for having “in-herited some of the worst characteristics of the worstAfrican mind” (Edwards 1819, 210–11). By the twenti-eth century, the Miskito and Garifuna, ascribed indianand black racial categorizations, respectively, were con-tinually subjugated in the postcolonial periods (Helms1977). State representations documented in a collec-tion of texts known as the Civilization Program com-bined ascribed traits of “primitiveness,” “blackness,”“nomadism,” and “laziness” to Miskito and Garifunapeoples. These narratives granted cogent legitimationto a national project aimed at Mosquitia integrationbut that problematized black and indian racial and cul-tural differences as an obstacle to national development(Euraque 1996; Thompson 2004; Mollett 2006, 2011).In Honduras, similar narratives are actively reproducedin the present.

State desires for integration remain unfulfilled, andmany Miskito and Garifuna villagers enjoy a de factoautonomy and free access to natural resources insidethe Mosquitia. Both communities are subsistence pro-ducers who work kitchen gardens or cultivate on smallplots of land adjacent to their residences. Farming issupplemented by fishing, game hunting, the collectionof forest products, livestock grazing, and the sale of agri-cultural surplus. An ethic of village and familial reci-procity facilitates food and labor exchanges and otherforms of barter; however, a cash economy is widespread(Mollett 2006). In Pinales-Ibans, like many Miskitocoastal communities, cash is earned primarily throughmale participation in the Bay Island lobster industry,as men earn comparably large incomes as divers andcanoe men. In the case of Plaplaya, roughly a quarterof Garifuna households receive remittances from rel-atives working abroad (Ethnic Community Develop-ment Organization [ODECO] 2001; Mollett 2006). Inboth communities, men and women also occupy a num-ber of wage-earning positions.7 Despite cash economies,access to natural resources remain central to livelihoodsand cultural practices (Mollett, field notes, 2008).8

Communal land and collective territorial arrange-ments are part of the customary organization for bothGarifuna and Miskito families. The Plaplaya commu-nity holds a communal village land title for 233.75hectares in dominio pleno (full ownership), sanctionedby the INA (INA 2002). Within this space, fami-lies and communities farm communal lands, held col-lectively by the village patronato.9 Communal villagelands are inalienable where only community membershave use rights and where land sales are prohibited to

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outsiders. Similarly, Miskito lands are spatially arrangedas separate yet overlapping territorial family units andare used collectively for farming and housing. Landand plot boundaries are communicated by fruit trees,where access to water, wood, housing materials, fire-wood, and hunting areas are found in the collectivelyshared agricultural areas. Such overlaps are not simplyintra-Miskito but in many cases indigenous and Afro-indigenous peoples share lands with one another fromseason to season. Whereas most overlaps are peace-fully negotiated, Lasa Pulan represents a more contestedexample. Recent pressure to clarify these overlappingspaces raises anxiety over land throughout the culturalzone.

National agrarian and environmental policies leavelittle space for indigenous land overlaps. Inside theReserve, Miskito and Garifuna lands are managed un-der ICF jurisdiction where Reserve lands are officiallyowned by the state (INA 1997a, 1997b). An ICF of-ficial, in line with the policy, considers these overlapsas sources of present and future inter- and intraeth-nic conflict and insists that “interethnic conflicts areresolved before land can be demarcated and titled”(Reserve Project official, interview 13 February 2005).According to the state, land individuation is considereda key way to resolve land overlaps (AFE-COHDEFOR2002). For some indigenous leaders, land individuation,as a requirement of rights, favors colonos because indi-vidual land parcels are part of a dominant system ofproperty arrangements and land use practices amongcolonos: cleaning lands for pasture, building fences, andregistering lands with local municipalities (Republicade Honduras 1992; Boden, interview, 29 July 2008).

In addition, land titling in the country’s rural areasfalls under the jurisdiction of the INA. Like the ICF, theINA officials also site a “lack of clarity” in overlappinglands and often mark this arrangement as a “remnant ofthe past,” to be countered by more “modern” propertydesigns (INA representative, personal communication,2 August 2007). Although “ethnic” communal titlesare guaranteed under the Honduran Constitution (Re-publica de Honduras 1982, 1992), it is common refrainamong indigenous leaders that when INA designs theland titles,

This right almost always requires that the community givesup a large part of the communal area. Usually this meansour agricultural lands are not included within the titledboundaries . . . these titles [as they are applied in practice]always cost us something. (Garifuna fisherman, La Ceiba,personal communication, 29 July 2008)

Agrarian policy also reinforces Miskito and Garifunatenure insecurities. Under the Property Law, articles 96and 99 legalize mechanisms that allow colonos (terceros)who already hold land titles to remain within indige-nous territories. Colonos without titles are also legallypermitted to remain but encouraged to establish rentalagreements with indigenous land owners (Republica deHonduras 2004). Inside the Reserve, the ICF upholdssimilar legislation in the Reserve’s Management Plan(AFE-COHDEFOR 2000). Colonos present in the Re-serve since 1997 are legally permitted to remain despitethe fact that under the Law of Modernization in theAgriculture Sector, land invasions became illegal after1992 (Republica de Honduras 1992). Together these le-gal mechanisms, combined with state rhetoric that con-sistently calls for individuation, illustrate the inherentcontradictions in state critiques of indigenous peoplesoverlapping tenure arrangements. In fact, the state alsoparticipates in the making of overlaps. Such land imbri-cations are part of a long-standing genealogy that linkspostindependent state maneuvers of Mosquitia integra-tion with contemporary legal mechanisms that dele-gitimize indigenous territorial claims. Such legal andadministrative practices are joined by a cultural dis-course that normalizes indigenous land dispossession.

Boundary Making and the Mirageof Legibility

The cultural system of crop rotation and fallow is not re-spected. Neither is the fact that in many of our culturesinside the zone we don’t use fences and [for that] we suf-fer constant invasions by outsiders. (Memoria Walumagu1999, 6)

It is now time to collaborate in our defense against terceros[outsiders] and demonstrate that our “traslape” [overlap]is not un retraso [backward] but evidence of collaborationand mutual respect. (OFRANEH leader, CCARC meet-ing notes, 18 March 2007, Arenas Blancas)

The urgency to countermap Lasa Pulan is a mate-rial outcome of two decades of persistent colono landinvasions inside the cultural zone. For communities,countermapping and making legible their claims im-plies future rights and the hope of better collectivetenure security (Mollett, field notes, 2008).10 Underthe CMSBP, community representatives from bothPlaplaya and Pinales-Ibans committed one manzanaof land from each community in making the sharedspace (Meeting notes, 17 March 2007, Arenas Blan-cas).11 Although the idea of a “consensus map of

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shared space” could potentially satisfy state impera-tives for saneamiento, it became clear that the project’sadvancement, which hinged on boundary “consensus,”rested on fragile ground. The following fieldwork ex-cerpt helps illustrate the point.

Tonight, Marvin, Tuni and Besal (Miskito participants inthe CMSBP) arrived excitedly to Raista with word fromthe meeting. After I found seats for them on the balconyand I grabbed my notebook, Besal blurted out that “losmorenos (Garifuna) do not want to map, they want to movethe boundary and refuse to map unless we yield and giveup land.” Marvin expressed that this notion of “movingthe boundary line” was “crazy” and that Abel, the com-munity representative who voiced disagreement regardingthe boundary line, was “acting possessed . . . no one couldcontrol Abel, he was “with the devil.” According to Tuni,“this [the project] was a trick, los morenos are looking tosteal more of our lands.” I interrupted to ask Marvin, “howdid they try to trick you”? Marvin explained that “every-one knows that the el Pino [the pine tree] is the divisionline between Plapaya and Pinales-Ibans and when theyfarm they do it on their side, when we look for wood, wecut on our side.” Tuni, a member of RAYAKA, interjectsto say, “El pino defines the boundary.” Marvin continues,“Yes but Abel wants to move the boundary and start atthe water tank in Pinales (roughly 500 m to the east).Besal adds that “los morenos have a different agenda here,which is clear; they told us to forget the map.” (Field noteexcerpt, 2 July 2007)

Plaplaya’s decision to “forget the map” provokeda litany of Miskito reactions. Miskito commentariestended to reproduce past racial tensions over exclu-sive control of Lasa Pulan. Many Miskito villagersechoed a common refrain that posited the Garifunaas “dishonest” and “mischievous” in their attemptsto “steal” Miskito land (Mollett, field notes, 2007).Other Miskito, like Marvin, draw from well-wornnarratives that posit the Garifuna as “non-Christian”and “closer with the devil.” His words build onprevailing hemispheric stereotypes of black witchcraftand sorcery often associated with Afro-descendantsin Latin America (Whitten and Torres 1998; Mollett2006). In addition to these complaints, however, manyMiskito were disappointed. A Miskito farmer noted,“We were ready to work with them to make a map”(Mollett, field notes, 2007).

Nevertheless, OFRANEH’s enthusiasm at the initialplanning meeting was short-lived. For Plaplaya repre-sentatives the prospects of a map offered very little. Inthe days after the mapping was supposed to begin, Abel,a long-standing member of OFRANEH, explained that

“the mapping project was coming at the wrong time forPlaplaya” because of an offer from the Spanish Agencyfor International Development (AECID) to fund ayucca exportation project (Abel, interview, July 2007).In fact, Abel suggested that cancelling the map wasbetter than continuing because “Sometimes, there is atime when a map helps you and your community andthere are also times when it does nothing . . . too often,with more hope [over mapping] comes more deception(Interview, 4 July 2007, italics added).

Abel’s comment about “hope” and “deception”gained new meaning after discussions with state officialsat the ICF and INA about mapping a consensus spacesought by leaders of both groups. In summarizing the ob-jectives of the consensus mapping project for Salanas,an official at the ICF, I noted “that the Miskito sincethe 1980s have collaborated with U.S. geographers inmaking maps to illustrate land uses and territorial rightsin hopes of demarcation.” Salanas countered, “Yes losindigena now believe they can invent their own [land]system and ignore national laws” (Salanas, ICF inter-view, Tegucigalpa, 3 August 2007). This notion thatindigenous people systems are “invented” is not sim-ply an inversion of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983)notion of “invented traditions.” Rather, state rhetoricpresupposes indigenous land systems as “extralegal” andimagines these systems to lie outside the nation andnational law (Republica de Honduras 2004). In a sim-ilar way, Rafael, an INA agronomist, challenged myassumption that Mosquitia lands belong to indigenouspeoples. During our discussion, I asked whether “indige-nous peoples have constitutional rights to map commu-nally then intraethnic overlaps are presumably part ofthe law?” Rafael replied, “The lands of the Mosquitiaare national [pause], national lands, indigenous peopleshave no [legal] rights to own these lands; they haveno rights to determine who enters since they have noland titles . . . that is the law” (Rafael, INA state offi-cial, interview, 2007). A subsequent conversation withSalanas echoed Rafael:

Yes, yes, los morenos y los Zambos [the Garifuna and theMiskito], they want collective titles to territories not justlands. They say it’s their culture. They want to title landsthat overlap with their neighbors. . . . That is not howto title land. You have to decide what is yours and whatland belongs to your neighbor. Collective titling is toodifficult; almost impossible really, it doesn’t make sense.It’s unclear to us how they divide the land. . . . The bestway to understand the Mosquitia is “national land” . . .

INA wants lands “organized.” (Salanas, Reserve ProjectTeam, personal communication, 2007)

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Contemporary state rhetoric in the narratives of Salanasand Rafael echoes postcolonial rhetoric embedded inthe Civilization Program, as well as Western concep-tions of property whereby each parcel of land has onlyone owner. Both the owner and their interests are dis-tinguished from other citizens and their claims to sucha parcel (Blomley 2008). The presumption that youmust decide what is yours and what land belongs toyour neighbor is codified in Honduran law, which per-mits one (private) property title per parcel of land (Re-publica de Honduras 1992). As a strategy to control,the state dilutes intricate customary property arrange-ments and practices (Scott 1998; AFE-COHDEFOR2002). Any space that lies between is rendered illegi-ble or unclaimed. As Blomley (2008) argued, Westernlaw draws from a “form of classification that relies upona ‘binary logic’ wherein the integrity and categoricalstability of one category is predicated on its separa-tion of another” (1826). This logic of classification em-bedded in Honduran state law and practice makes the“merely different into the absolutely other” compelling“difference into dichotomous hierarchical oppositions”(Young 1990, 99; Blomley 2008). Such logics ignore therespect given to collective tenure arrangements insidethe International Labor Organization’s (1989) Conven-tion 169 and the United Nations (2007) Declaration ofRights of Indigenous Peoples, of which Honduras is asignatory. Still, only two forms of ownership are subjectto state sanction (Republica de Honduras 1992, 2004).This combination of private individual and restrictivecommunal rights rests on the assumption that lands andterritories are legible. Scott (1998) and Blomley (2008)agree; the relationship between legibility and law isintimate.

Binary logics of legible and illegible propertyregimes are not simply coded in the differencesbetween individual and collective tenure arrangementsbut in the conflation of racialized bodies withinthis binary. Collective versus individual propertyarrangements are simultaneously constituted in the di-chotomies of primitive–civilized, traditional–modern,indigenous–ladino, and so on. When state policy sim-plifies indigenous property arrangements by declaringlands as “national” or by requiring saneamiento andindividuation, it acts within, not outside, the makingand remaking of racialized sociospatial formations(Sundberg 2008). In Honduras, the requirement tomake “legible” (Scott 1998) lands and territories isa key component of a land rights narrative wherebycommunities delimit territories with the expecta-tion that accompanying legibility are formal rights.

Although such a narrative motivates Miskito andGarifuna struggles, a closer reflection on the ongoingrelations between Plaplaya and Pinales-Ibans suggeststhat legibility is illusory, a state idealization designedto dissolve overlaps without guarantees for rights.

Legibility: Territorial Boundaries

In Lasa Pulan, Miskito and Garifuna relations op-erate around flexible boundaries and overlapping fluidspaces. De facto Miskito control, as originarios (first peo-ples), is porous yet maintained through ongoing reci-procity. Although el Pino (the Pine Tree) divides LasaPulan, Miskito and Garifuna villagers agree that theydraw wood, fish, plant crops, and graze cattle on eitherside of the path (Field notes, 2007). Thus, Lasa Pu-lan is already a commonly managed resource. For someMiskito, mapping shared space more formally raises fearsthat the lines drawn over time will change current re-lations. Arti, a Miskito church elder, explained howboundary meanings are historically and spatially con-tingent:

I have three or four parcels in Banaka [up river]. I havealways let los morenos plant their pineapples and yams onmy family lands. They have always at the end of the seasongiven us product, for years, for years and every year theycome back. But, but they know the land belongs to myfamily, they know the land that gives them pineapple isMiskito land . . . but if we called this “shared lands,” myfamily lands, wouldn’t this give them the same rights as us,the Miskito. . . . They may not bring any more pineapple[laughing] . . . they may not. (Interview, 31 July 2007)

Overlapping interethnic arrangements are a sociospa-tial practice in the Mosquitia. Arti’s fear of fixed bound-aries reflects more about what these boundaries willmean for long-standing Miskito natural resource con-trol. Shared possession of Lasa Pulan, de facto or de jure,might diminish extant control for Miskito farmers. Infact, despite planned collaboration, for many Miskito,mapping Lasa Pulan solidifies the exclusive defense ofMiskito land claims. Carla, a Miskita from Betania, in-sists that she wants the map “so that they can live inpeace” without being “bothered by los morenos” (Inter-view, 13 July 2007).

As Miskito and Garifuna leaders ponder each other’sland agendas, I reflect on Abel’s sentiments about map-ping and deception. I question whether we scholars arealso deceptive in Abel’s eyes. Is our concept of leg-ibility a deception, a vital mirage needed to translatecustomary forms of property arrangements in a language

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states understand? In practice, our intervention comeswith no guarantees, compels compromise and loss, andrisks further antagonisms. Indeed, as Naacko, a promi-nent Garifuna farmer, added:

We in Plaplaya, we want to make money, we need moneyto improve our community and improve agriculture . . .

we can still farm AND have a modern life. We are tiredof killing ourselves every day to make 40–50 lempiras theway the old people in the village do. Farming for exportpromises more than mapping . . . I don’t need anotherdebate with the state over our rights.

Naacko’s pleas suggest that countermaps reproduce andreflect a less-than-modern way of life. His commentarybuilds on dichotomies that conflate subsistence farm-ing with indigenous primitivism rendering “mapping”as part of an unsuccessful development strategy of thepast. In tandem with long-standing modernization nar-ratives, Naacko, with commercial ambitions, imaginesGarifuna claims superior to the Miskito claims as origi-narios as he implies that through farming for profit Gar-ifuna land claims are more convincing.

Legibility: Ethnic Identities

Mapping deceptions for the purpose of legibility isnot limited to making physical boundaries. The bound-aries of ethnic identification are also branded in coun-termaps. Typically, a key component of indigenouscountermapping delimits lands along ethnic lines andrecognizes that ethnicity is a cogent language and toolfor territorial claims (Gordon, Gurdian, and Hale 2003;Offen 2003). Community and land linkages reveal thematerial conditions required to maintain a particularcultural identity. Although there is indeed currency inclaiming ethnic status as a basis of indigenous mapping,ethnocartography not only assumes static property ar-rangements but also binds meanings of ethnic identity(Chapin and Threlkeld 2001). Since 2003, I have con-tinually asked Miskito villagers what it means to beMiskito. Responses center on racial phenotype, ethni-cally informed land use, language, religion, and humil-ity. Indeed, a key descriptor of Miskitoness is the refusalto sell lands to outsiders. These factors, together withoriginario claims, construct an ethic of rights to landamong the Miskito. In practice, however, the bound-aries of ethnic identity are elusive and constantly influx. To illustrate my point, I turn again to ethnographicdata.

Over the last ten years, Pinales-Ibans has ex-perienced the arrival of almost 100 people who

identify as Miskito into its 500-person hamlet. Manyclaim that they were forced to move by violent landencroachments perpetrated by ladino farmers in thedepartment of Colon (Tato, interview, 13 July 2008).Those who dared to stay “inevitably sell lands becausetheir new neighbors make life unlivable” (Miskitoteacher, Pinales-Ibans, personal communication,24 July 2007). After their arrival in Pinales-Ibans,however, Miskito newcomers complain that they havenot been received well by the community (Field notes,2008). Such circumstances are perplexing because, as aMiskito fisherman noted, “We are Miskito [pointing tothe skin on his arm], this is our homeland and we havea place here” (personal communication, 28 July 2007).

Another Miskito woman and newcomer, Arecenia,suggests “they say we live like ‘indios,’ that we are notgood for the forests” (Pinales-Ibans, personal commu-nication, 30 July 2008). The phrase “to live like indios”implies clear-cutting forests for cattle production—anactivity that mainly colonos and wealthy Miskito per-form in the Mosquitia. Village rhetoric about Arecenia,particularly in reference to her “living like an indio,” isa blatant critique of what is thought to be her ladinoiza-tion, adopted while living outside the Mosquitia. Indiois a pejorative term for ladino, drawing on racial hierar-chies as a way to dress down ladino claims to superiorityby emphasizing their indian ancestry as a componentof their mixed heritage. But it also draws on villagememory, as “[Arecenia] grew up in the Mosquitia butleft to marry an indio” (Carlos, Pinales-Ibans villager,interview, 25 July 2008). These tensions suggest thatthe boundaries of “Miskitoness” are consistently wed-ded to the right to land. At the same time, this couplingis constantly repositioning, even to the extent that itcontradicts our Miskito fisherman’s notion that withbrown skin “we [the Miskito] have a place here.”

Grounding Miskito rights to land along racial andethnic identities might prove illusory, as identities arecomplicated by time and place. I illustrate with an ex-tended excerpt from my field notes.

Fifty-year-old William, a Miskito farmer, was born inIbans. For over fifteen years, he and his family have livedand farmed on a manzana of land in the neighboring ham-let of Pinales. Highly valued for its various fruit trees,this land plot was given to William by his nephew Delbo.In 1999, the Ordenos, a Miskito family, returned to theReserve after ten years of living in Tocomacho-Claura(outside the western border of the Reserve north coast).Since Belen is Maria Ordeno’s village of birth, the fam-ily would have returned to Belen. Yet, with no availableland in Belen, the Ordenos sought land in Pinales. While

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William and his family were farming up river, the Ordenosbuilt a house on the western side of William’s family plot.When William returned after weeks away, Almer Ordeno,the family head, ordered William and his family to leave.Almer told William that the manzana now belonged to hisfamily since he purchased the land from Delbo for 8000L.

Through their involvement in this debate, RAYAKA,while sympathetic to the Ordenos, ruled that the Delbo’ssale was illegal. Drawing upon national law, RAYAKAreaffirmed that Reserve lands are inalienable. In addition,RAYAKA organized meetings with the Miskito commu-nities along the coast. Consensus was reached that thoseMiskito who have continually resided in coastal villagestake precedence over those who have left to live else-where. This consensus was based on a common notionthat those returning from Tocomacho-Claura are tak-ing advantage of their ancestors’ legacy by selling landsin Tocomacho-Claura where prices are almost five timeshigher, in order to “enriquecerse” (to make oneself rich)from the cheaper land prices in the Reserve. Since theirsearch of material progress came with threats to settledMiskito like William, RAYAKA and the communitiesagreed that the Ordenos could keep their house and plot,“because they are Miskito,” but the right to use the landrested with William, “because he is from Ibans.”

The Ordeno–William debate illustrates multipleways that being Miskito grants rights to natural re-sources in the Mosquitia. Miskito property logics drawadvantages from the way formal laws and customs in-terweave. For William, land in Pinales-Ibans representseconomic livelihood and symbolic ties to a place wherehis history resides. For Delbo (the seller), the land inPinales-Ibans represents improvement of his economicposition through the purchase of a pulperıa. For theOrdenos family, in addition to economic advantage,moving to the coast was symbolic of a return to a tra-ditional and safer place than Colon. But many Miskitothink too much wealth defies Moravian teaching, em-phasizing humility. Using one’s wealth to protect “col-lective” interests is considered admirable, but individualadvancement is considered to mimic another, outsideway of life; that is, “living like an indio.” Racialized cat-egorizations are an intricate form of power that com-plicates ethnocartography so that drawing boundariesis simultaneously meaningful and meaningless.

Mapping Deception

The racialized terrain of indigenous countermap-ping projects is not simply located in faraway places.In fact, recent debates about the ethical conduct ofLatin Americanist geographers in the mapping of in-

digenous space are also racialized terrain. It might beobvious that the proverbial elephant in this discussionis the 2009 controversy over the conduct of a U.S.-based mapping team hired to undertake participatorymapping in Mexico under the auspices of the MexicoIndigena/Bowman Expeditions research project. Briefly,local indigenous communities in Mexico accused ge-ographers of a lack of transparency and questionableconduct because the Mexico Indigena project is spon-sored by the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office(Bryan 2010). This critique set off a litany of debate.Critical geographers maintain that “professional ethicsand common sense dictate that a geographer who ac-cepts funding from the United States military to col-lect sensitive information from indigenous communi-ties in Latin America must share the information aboutthe source of funding with the community at the timeof requesting consent” (Bryan and Wainwright 2009).Based on this ongoing and productive debate, criticalgeographers insist there is no “neutrality” in mappingprojects.

There are silences, however. A noted silence amongboth proponents and critics of countermapping projectshas been the specific ways race and racial thinking areembroiled in countermapping processes. In all our “talk”about the Bowman expeditions, no one seemed (notpublicly anyway) appalled by the fact that an “expedi-tion for mapping” used by predominantly white malegeographers from the United States was working in thename of another white male geographer well known forthe most racist kind of environmental determinism inthe shaping and “mapping” of Latin America. Not onlydid Isaiah Bowman repeatedly resort to force, throughbeatings, kidnapping, and exploiting indians as a wayto subsume their labor for the purposes of expeditionsthroughout the twentieth century, but as Smith (2003)reminded us, the assumptions made by Bowman arealive today; namely, “the different geographies, socialconditions, work and prospects for landownership thatare appropriate for whites or for Indians continue undis-turbed [from] the ‘scientific’ racism of his fieldwork inthe Andes three decades earlier” (308). The geographiclegacy, produced through imperialism and racism, re-mains as the privilege to map the world. Any discussionof ethics, Bowman expeditions, and geography mustacknowledge that our insistence on mapping “foreignlands” rises from a heritage of whiteness and Bowman’sfoundational path, which reproduces and congeals ide-ologies and concomitant processes of blanquiamiento,the rise of the United States as a global power (Smith2003), and the power of geographers to continue to map

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“foreign places” even in the face of hemispheric critique(Bryan 2010; Cruz 2010).

I support critical geographers in highlighting theethics of research and the militarism of geographic con-duct in Latin America. Indigenous–state relations arealso shaped by both the past and the present power ofwhiteness, “a set of cultural practices and politics basedupon ideological norms that are lived but unacknowl-edged” (Kobayashi and Peake 2000, 394), a racializedform of power that geographers enjoy and employ in ourwork in the Global South. In fact, it is our whiteness(among other things) that grants “us” access.12 Thesesilences around whiteness are embedded in indigenouscountermaps. As Radcliffe (2010) explained in rela-tion to the mapping of national territory in Ecuador,ladinos “are assumed to be present throughout nationalterritory, [ladinos] need not be mapped, as their powerto be everywhere is already taken as read” (314). In asimilar way, countermapping in Latin America suffersfrom a silence about the “geopolitical relations” of racethat are central to the production of indigenous–LatinAmericanist geographer solidarities (Sundberg 2007).Such silences are embedded in geography, “where we[consistently] focus upon the marginal subject-groupsconstituted within the western and imperial imagina-tion, [but where] the white center of that imaginationis [rarely] discussed” (Bonnett 1997, 196). Acknowl-edging these silences in the context of countermappingcritique might lead us closer to sincere ambitions oftranscendental and empowering outcomes for indige-nous and Afro-descendant peoples’ tenure security.

Conclusion

The map will not keep out colonos, legalizing our landsand kicking out colonos and making it illegal for them toreturn to the cultural zone is the only way. (Mo, RAYAKArepresentative, Pinales-Ibans, interview, 20 July 2007)

Indigenous countermapping requires hefty compro-mise for indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples.Such accommodations reproduce rather than resist theracial ideologies and hierarchies underpinning domi-nant property regimes and land uses. For countermaps toactually “counter” dominant thinking in land and prop-erty, they need to be imagined differently. For Sparke(2007), “mapping the global South without a mandatefor conquest” (120) requires a “double consciousness,”to imagine these places in a “critical relationship tocartographies of colonial control” (120). In Honduras,this imagination would not require that the Miskito

and the Garifuna “clarify” the overlapping space ofLasa Pulan. Rather, indigenous space would simply beoff-limits to nonindigenous consumption, institution-alized in state law, and enforced through state practice.As it is now, however, Miskito and Garifuna collec-tive territories and their rights claims are being madeto “fit within broader efforts to regularize land tenureand to establish clear rules by which actors, whether in-dividual or communities, can turn these resources intocommodities” (Hale 2011, 195).

My interrogation of countermapping might be trou-bling for some. Indeed, indigenous and Afro-descendantcommunities seek expiation employing the language,namely, racial categorizations and hierarchies, and ap-propriate the legal and political tools (and sometimesthe funding) of the dominant and dominating pow-ers (see Gordon, Gurdian, and Hale 2003; Hale 2006,2011; Mollett 2006). From a postcolonial perspective,their strategy is not all that surprising because displaced,landless, and racially marginalized peoples are not “in-nocent,” nor are the struggles over resources in the faceof Western forms of cultural domination “romantic”(Abu-Lughod 1990; Sidaway 2002, 18–19). Still, it isthese very regional and place-specific forms of powerthat lead me to question the emancipatory ambitionsof countermaps. How do countermaps, drawn for thepurpose of satisfying state spatial imaginaries, actuallycounter dominant property regimes endorsed by thestate? At the same time, if property is defined, as it oftenis, as a set of social relations (Macpherson 1978; Rose1994), then how is mapping the fluidity of Miskito andGarifuna tenure arrangements (i.e., borrowing land) asa fixed relation on a map a form of resistance? Intendedor not, boundary making for the purpose of securingpeople in place (i.e., the cultural zone), wherein peopleand their cultures are presumed as primordial and static,risks the reentrenchment of racialized tropes and the re-production of the “spatial incarceration of the native”(Appadurai 1988, 36). Tradition–modern dichotomies(with some exceptions; see Hale 2006; Andolina,Radcliffe, and Laurie 2009) tend to leave indigenouspeoples on the far side of modernity and reflect a“racial dualism” where their rights are rooted to theirstatus as “tradition-bound wards of the modern state”(Gordon, Gurdian, and Hale 2003; Sletto 2009, 256).Such prevailing racial ideologies (and versions of them)are “common sense” in much of Central America(Gordon 1998; Hale 2005; Tilley 2005; Mollett 2006)and thus make it likely that, as Lorde (1984) so aptly putit, “[t]he Master’s tools will never dismantle the Mas-ter’s house” (112). As Wainwright (2008) so cogently

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noted in the making of the Maya Atlas in Belize, “acounter-map that turns the tables on colonialism mayproduce a worlding that still turns within a colonialform of power” (272).

In Honduras, the persistence of racial power meansthat the Miskito and the Garifuna do not simplymap their traditions and cosmologies on their ownterms. These maps are conditioned by their ability toacquiesce with state desires for legibility, a requirementunderpinned by a colonial preoccupation with “order”complicit in the reproductions of ethnic territorialdifference and legally sanctioned racialized fixes (Mc-Clintock 1995; Scott 1998; Moore 2005; Wainwrightand Bryan 2009). To be clear, however, I do not suggestthat Miskito and Garifuna land struggles abandon coun-termapping. Rather, I encourage Latin Americanistgeographers to challenge racial power, one of the salientforces making indigenous countermaps a necessary yetinsufficient tool for achieving tenure security for racial-ized subalterns. Resistance, as a method of redrawingsocial relations and reallocating resources, demandsthat people challenge hegemonic social relations (Katz2004). Without naming and thereby challenging theracial terrain bound within countermaps, what doesindigenous countermapping actually counter and, evenmore curiously, what might it reproduce?

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Garifuna and Miskito com-munities inside the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve forparticipating in my ongoing research. Thanks go to ICFand INA officials for their participation in this work.Enormous thanks are due to the CCARC for their col-laboration and funding support. I would also like tothank the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College fortheir generous funding of subsequent ethnographic datacollection. I am indebted to Charles Hale, Ted Gordon,Joe Bera, and Joe Bryan for numerous discussions, de-bates, and ongoing support of this work. I would also liketo acknowledge Charles Hale, Audrey Kobayashi, andthe anonymous reviewers for their constructive feed-back on earlier iterations of this article.

Notes1. Indigenous peoples refers to those people present in the

Americas before the European arrival marked by thepresence of Columbus in 1492 and 1502 (in CentralAmerica). Afro-descendants refers to people of Africandescent in Latin America brought by force to the re-gion as a part of the Atlantic slave trade also before theconsolidation of Latin American nation-states.

2. Author’s translation.3. I originally published a more detailed version of this con-

flict in Latin American Research Review (Mollett 2006).During research in 2007 and 2008, narratives of mutualdistrust between the Miskito and Garifuna were repeatedand resembled those of earlier participants.

4. In this case, the use of indigenous countermapping includesthe Garifuna. The Garifuna rely on an “indigenous” plat-form with regard to land rights in Honduras (Anderson2009).

5. The use of struggles here refers not only to violent conflictbut threats, verbal confrontations, rumors, and debate.

6. I take my cue here from Anderson (2009), who arguedthat a small “i” is more appropriate. In Latin America,“indian” is a racial category, like “black.”

7. To see how these occupations are gendered, see Mollett(2010).

8. In 2008, 100 percent of the villagers reported farming (atleast two Pinales-Ibans reported manzanas of land) ei-ther on the coast or up river (Mollett, interviews, 2008).

9. The Patronato is the village council with memberselected every four years.

10. This “consensus map” is not the first time that MASTAhas mapped indigenous lands in the Mosquitia. Mappinghas been a key product of collaboration with Latin Amer-icanist geographers and anthropologists (MOPAWI1992—First Congress of Indigenous Lands [Chapin andThrelkeld 2001]); CCARC maps in 2002; Subzonifi-cation in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve in 1996[Herlihy 1997; Wood n.d.])

11. A manzana is equivalent to 0.67 hectares.12. As I explain earlier, whiteness is not simply defined by

phenotype but by ideology and cultural practice, as well.Thus, non-white geographers may too benefit from thelegacy of whiteness in geography.

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