Black women’s geographies of resistance and the Afro-Ecuadorian Ancestral Territory of Imbabura and Carchi

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the political project of the Afro-Ecuadorian Ancestral Territory of Imbabura and Carchi, advanced by the members of the Coordinadora Nacional de Mujeres Negras del Ecuador (CONAMUNE; National Coordination of Black Women of Ecuador) in the northern Ecuadorian highlands. I show how Black women resignify their past and assert their sense of place in an Andean region widely considered Indigenous. That region is marked by racial exploitation and land dispossession, and the political project of nation-building based on the ideology of mestizaje. Black women of CONAMUNE create a space for dialogue between Afrodescendant social organizations and the state, while engaging with Indigenous territorial projects. These Black women strengthen and mobilize diasporic identities by emphasizing the African blood spilled on the soil by their ancestors and the participation of Black enslaved women in the struggle for freedom. I argue that the Ancestral Territory project entails an ongoing geographic struggle in which Afrodescendant women create a particular sense of place as they live and imagine a geography of resistance.