Abstract

MOSQUERA-VALLEJO, Ylver. Sense of Place, Plots, and Plantations in the Production of Black Space in Colombia. Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2025, n.60, pp.137-160.  Epub Aug 06, 2025. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda60.2025.06.

Black geographies focus on the relationship between race, imaginaries, representations, thought, and black spatial practices. Taken together, these themes reveal how black epistemologies of spatiality are tied to poetics-imaginaries and representations-and to radical practices of black life. By drawing attention to the commitments of black geographies to the interaction between the material and poetic processes of negritude, I foreground the plots and understandings of space in Black terrains. In this article, I analyze the construction of a black sense of place by examining rozas, vegas, and islas as socio-spatial forms and plots, and the ways they intersect race, space, and nature, shaping a black sense of place. I also argue that the cattle ranch is a geographic expression of the plantation that constructs and erases the black sense of place. The methodology guiding this paper is ethnographic, employing techniques such as interviews, field notes, counter-cartography, and spatial representation. Drawing on the conceptualization of the black sense of place and building theoretical bridges with fields such as black ecocriticism and other social science disciplines, I use empirical examples of black spatiality from the Patía Valley in southwestern Colombia to foster new geographic, socio-spatial, and anthropological conversations about the ways in which a black sense of place is constructed. This article takes spatial categories seriously, engages in dialogue with narratives, texts, and authors, and deepens the understanding of Black space production.

Keywords : Black sense of place; haciendas; islands; Patía Valley; rozas; vegas..

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