Settler colonialism in Mexico: Blake Gentry, Geoffrey Alan Boyce, Jose M. Garcia, Samuel N. Chambers, ‘Indigenous Survival and Settler Colonial Dispossession on the Mexican Frontier: The Case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous Communities’, Journal of Latin American Geography, 18, 1, 2019, pp. 65-93 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonialism in Mexico: Blake Gentry, Geoffrey Alan Boyce, Jose M. Garcia, Samuel N. Chambers, ‘Indigenous Survival and Settler Colonial Dispossession on the Mexican Frontier: The Case of Cedagĭ Wahia and Wo’oson O’odham Indigenous Communities’, Journal of Latin American Geography, 18, 1, 2019, pp. 65-93

29Mar19

Abstract: This paper applies the framework of settler colonialism to examine three generations of land struggle involving the Tohono O’odham communities of Wo’oson and Cedagĭ Wahia in Sonora, Mexico. It traces how post-Revolutionary land and water reforms allowed for the consolidation of an extractive ranching economy that relied upon the dispossession of customary land and water sources accessed seasonally by Tohono O’odham (“desert peoples”). In the contemporary period, ranching has been supplemented by organized smuggling and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, generating new pressures and threats to the survival of Tohono O’odham in Sonora. Reflecting on these developments, we contribute to settler colonial theory by arguing that for arid lands peoples like the Tohono O’odham, the dispossession of territory is also a dispossession of mobility–in this case, those customary forms of mobility that for the Tohono O’odham have defined their relationships with one another for millenia within their desert homeland. We conclude by examining how the Tohono O’odham in Sonora are resisting this logic of dispossession and working to renew their autonomy and way of life for present and future generations.

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