In this episode, I am talking with Ulises Moreno Tabarez. Ulises is an interdisciplinary geographer developing what he calls spectral geographies, spatial poetics and politics of presence and absence concerning ecological and cultural lifescapes. Ulises is also a postdoctoral associate with the department of Geography and Environment at the LSE.
Ulises is one of the main figures of the initiative Environmental Racism is Garbage (password: waste2021), an interactive virtual research-creation and art symposium looking at waste as a symptom of environmental racism.
He currently resides in Ometepec a city in the state of Guerrero, south of Acapulco, south-western Mexico. Ulises draws on his experience living in the Costa Chica region to explain its historical links with land reform and peasant resistance.
His work looks at the impact of state and colonial land use and planning (through plantations, and now mining) on the Costa Chica region, highlighting the importance of considering the racialised element of climate change.
Ulises’ work also explores the afterlives of colonialism and slavery during the Covid-19 pandemic, showing how deep inequalities and injustice from the past still impacts greatly the Afro-Indigenous community in the Costa Chica region today.
🎙Listen to our podcast
McKittrick, K. (2006) Demonic grounds: Black women and the cartographies of struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Mintz, S. (1986) Sweetness and Power. The place of sugar in modern history. Penguin Books.
Moreno-Tabarez, Ulises. (2020). Towards Afro-Indigenous ecopolitics: Addressing ecological devastation in Costa Chica. City. 24. 1-13. 10.1080/13604813.2020.1739912.
Moreno-Tabarez, Ulises. (2020). Rural pandemic: The afterlives of slavery and colonialism in Costa Chica, Mexico. Dialogues in Human Geography. 10. 204382062093568. 10.1177/2043820620935681.
Shin, H. B., Lees, L. and López-Morales, E. (2016) ‘Introduction: Locating gentrification in the Global East’, Urban Studies, 53(3), pp. 455–470. doi: 10.1177/0042098015620337.
Vaughn, B. (2013) ‘Mexico Negro: From the Shadows of Nationalist Mestizaje to New Possibilities in Afro-Mexican Identity’, Journal of Pan African Studies, 6(1), p. 227.
Wolford, W. (2021) ‘The Plantationocene: A Lusotropical Contribution to the Theory’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111(6), pp. 1622–1639. doi: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1850231.
Further reading section:
Aguirre Beltrán, A. (1958) ‘Cuijla. Esbozo etnografico de un pueblo negro’. Ciudad de Mexico: F. de C.E. Mexico-Buenos Aires.
Aguirre Beltrán, A. (1972) La población negra de méxico. Ciudad de Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica y el CIESAS.
Bledsoe, A. and Wright, W. J. (2019) ‘The anti-Blackness of global capital’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(1), pp. 8–26. doi: 10.1177/0263775818805102.
Gomez, R. (2020) Silver veins, dusty lungs: mining, water, and public health in Zacatecas, 1835-1946. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Navarrete Gorgón, H. et al. (2014) Informe final de actividades de la Comisión de la Verdad del Estado de Guerrero.
Wolfe, P. (2016) Traces of history: elementary structures of race. London : Verso.
