"Changes in the symbolic representations of landscapes in San Juan Quiahije, Oaxaca"

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Supervisors: Dr. Federico Fernández Christlieb (UNAM), Dr. Emiliana Cruz (UMASS)

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Main Objective

• Analyse the landscapes currently present in the jurisdiction of San Juan Quiahije, Oaxaca, through the memories brought by the act of walking the landscape.

Specific objectives

• Characterise the landscape produced by the spatial practises of the chatino community and the logic of spatial representation that sacred ethno-territoriality is based on.

• Characterise the landscape produced by the logic of spatial representation of Capitalism sustained through the State Apparatus which works within the community’s administrative and political structures.

• Analyse the interaction dynamics of these two landscapes produced by different spatial logics, which are currently struggling.

• Assess the impact of this struggle between spatial logics in the cultural and social changes happening in San Juan Quiahije.

I intend to study the spatial dimension of cultural change in the jurisdiction of San Juan Quiahije, Oaxaca, through the analysis of landscapes and the logic of spatial representation that they enclose. Until de 1970’s San Juan Quiahije was apparently a geographically isolated indigenous community. After the introduction of some basic means of communication a fast process of spatial transformations developed, accelerating cultural change.

The change, destruction and creation of places have accelerated in the last 40 years. They come together with schemes of development planned by the government and private sector, but put into practice and a lot of times financed by the community. The constant destruction and construction of places changes the way the community relates to its territory and the identity processes that develop through dwelling. As several geographers have noted, accelerated corogenetic processes are a characteristic of capitalism and globalization. David Harvey states that, modernization entails, the perpetual disruption of temporal and spatial rhythms; the production of new meanings for space and time in a world of ephemerality and fragmentation.(Harvey, 1989, p. 216) I think it’s necessary to study this spatial dimension of cultural change in order for a better understanding of the production of space in our global world.

This project is based on and inspired by the project Chatino Place Names and Local Knowledge: Language Description and Multimedia Documentary Corpus (National Science Foundation) directed by PhD. Emiliana Cruz.

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(2007) with Azuela, Luz Fernanda y Sabás, Ana Lilia “La Geografía y la Historia Natural en las revistas literarias de la primera mitad del siglo XIX”, in Lértora Mendoza, Celina A. (Coord.) Geonaturalia. Geografía e Historia Natural: hacia una historia comparada. Estudio a través de Argentida, México, Costa Rica y Paraguay. Buenos Aires, Ediciones F.E.P.A.I. 2007 pp. 55-88.

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