Jennifer Casolo

As burgeoning new forms of authoritarianism and fascism expand their reach, Geographies of Hope-in-Praxis stem from the locus of the present moment. Constellations of peoples re-rooted into place refuse Western ideals of democracy and development and engage with one another in new arrangements based on ancestral ways of knowing. In this Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space issue on Geographies of Hope-in-Praxis (GgsHope-in-Praxis), we step into ongoing conversations about hope, push back on business as usual, and amplify understandings of initiatives to (re)assemble different kinds of wor(l)ds. Our collection "geographizes" hope by digging into hope's praxes-theories with action. Resurgent versions of hope can be better understood within the contexts of six dimensions-place, alliance, the unthinkable, perseverance, resilience, and the (im)possible-that provide diverse lenses for delving deeper into hope's complex topographies. Together, the articles reach across regional differences and bridge on-the-ground approaches. We activate hope through long-term, reciprocal, and accountable community-based methodologies in Brazil, Ecuador, the Philippines, and Southeast Alaska, California, and Kentucky in the USA. GgsHope-in-Praxis come to life in the process of collaboratively decolonizing relations and regenerating relational spaces. Vines of hope creep into crevices to interrupt

This article gives an account of the efforts, challenges and achievements of the Mayan Ch’orti’ people in defending and promoting their autonomy, identity and territory. The project arises from the need of the Ch’orti’ communities, located in four departments in Guatemala and Honduras, to overcome the boundaries imposed to defend against the effects of climate change, extractive projects, racism and exclusion. In decolonial terms, the Ch’orti’ people are building their autonomy to regain an institutionality from which to systemize and promote their traditional ecological knowledge. A reunion of their own organizational, productive, spiritual and justice practices, upset for centuries by the colonial and extractive project.

This dissertation examines the production of rural struggle in Guatemala' indigenous eastern highlands, a place where after decades of silence, 36 years of civil war and two centuries of marginalization, the seemingly unthinkable--organized resistance and alternative proposals--became palpable. In the face of crisis, attempts to turn rural producers, into neoliberal subjects of credit resurrected the historical specter of dispossession and catalyzed an unlikely alliance to oppose unjust agrarian debt that transformed into a vibrant movement for defense of Maya-Ch'orti' territory. Yet, the contours of that alliance, its limits, and possibilities, its concrete splits and expansion are deeply linked to both place-based histories and memories of racialized dispossession, specific reworkings of 1990s discourses and practices of development and peace -making, and the concrete practice of starting from common sense . I sieve a total of 26 months of participant-action research t...

De la contraportado del libro:

Si Abelino fue declarado inocente de los cinco delitos que le fueron imputados y se encuentra libre, ¿para qué publicar un año más tarde estos estudios y argumentaciones? La respuesta es sencilla: justamente, porque los peritajes ofrecidos por los cientistas sociales y expertos a los tribunales constituyen cuerpos de conocimiento que deben permanecer y trascender el objetivo inmediato del juicio para el cual fueron realizados.
Los cuatro peritajes ofrecidos por la defensa al Tribunal “A” de Mayor Riesgo en el caso de Abelino Chub Caal, constituyen estudios serios y rigurosos –cada uno en su respectiva disciplina y desde su perspectiva particular—, que deben ponerse a la disposición de estudiantes y estudiosos, de profesionales y académicos, de juristas y operadores de justicia, sobre los cuales se seguirá construyendo conocimiento. La ciudadanía, igualmente, necesita conocer las temáticas de fondo que subyacen en las raíces de conflictos aún muy vivos o latentes en la sociedad guatemalteca, pero que debemos contribuir a desmontar y superar.

El peritaje aquí adjuntado es uno de estos.

Elaborado participativamente por el Consejo Nacional Ind gena Maya Ch’orti’ de Honduras (CONIMCHH), la Coordinadora Nacional Ancestral de Derechos Ind genas Maya Ch’orti’ de Honduras (CONADIMCHH) y la Central Campesina Ch’orti’ Nuevo D a de Guatemala.  Sistematizado por Ana Grigera, MSc y Jennifer Casolo, PhD (consultoras).
Con el apoyo del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo.

Nota: la información que se encuentra en este documento expone el conocimiento tradicional del pueblo Maya Ch’orti’ y se encuentra protegida por instrumentos internacionales sobre propiedad intelectual, particularmente el Convenio de Diversidad Biol gica. El documento no puede ser difundido sin previa consulta y acuerdo del Consejo Consultivo Maya Ch ́orti ́. Solo el Consejo Consultivo Maya Ch’orti’ puede autorizar y orientar la ampliaci n y/o profundizaci n del documento.

El documento ya se encuentra disponible en la Plataforma Interactiva de Aprendizaje Ch'orti',  Ve: https://chinamchorti.org/y/2019/09/11/llegan-copias-impresas-de-la-sistematizacion-del-conocimiento-tradicional-ecologico-maya-chorti-al-territorio/

El peritaje histórico-geográfico del caso aquí expuesto, incluyó pruebas de archivos históricos con distintos peritajes, como fue el peritaje antropológico sobre la continuidad histórica de las prácticas culturales Ch’orti’. El caso sobre el Común de los Ch’orti’ de Jocotán obtuvo el dictamen favorable a las comunidades Ch”orti” y la administración de sus territorios: la recuperación más grande de tierras comunales hasta la fecha, que también logró parar el desarrollo del proyecto hidroeléctrico Las Tres Niñas S.A. La revista Territorios presenta esta parte para exponer el proceso histórico Ch’orti’ de luchar por la seguridad jurídica sobre sus tierras ancestrales.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, one woman’s impassioned speech linking women’s exclusion from land rights with the failings of Honduras’ state-led agrarian reform and counter-reform gathered gale force, simultaneously weakening particular levees of gender-bias while constructing others. Post-Hurricane Mitch organizational practices and reconstruction policies in Northeastern Honduras afforded women access to joint property titles and participation. Yet the practices and processes through which women gained new rights reproduced certain exclusionary gender structures and created new barriers to women’s participation. These contradictory consequences speak to recent feminist assessments of women’s land rights under neo-liberal land titling programmes and a resurgence of policies addressing agrarian reform, and reveal the broader stakes of struggles for women’s land rights. In so doing, they underline the importance of attending to spatial connections and historical articulations between the present and the past, and thus the past and the future.

This dissertation examines the analytical and political stakes of conflicts over land, water, and rural livelihoods in the New Millenium through attention to the production of rural struggle in a place where after decades of silence, 36 years of civil war, and two centuries of marginalization, the seemingly unthinkable—organized resistance and alternative proposals—became palpable.

In Guatemala’s indigenous eastern highlands, in the face of crisis, attempts to turn rural producers into neoliberal subjects of credit resurrected the historical specter of dispossession and catalyzed an unlikely alliance to oppose unjust agrarian debt that transformed into a vibrant movement for defense of Maya-Ch’orti’ territory. Yet, the contours of that alliance, its limits, and possibilities, its splits and expansion are deeply linked to place-based histories and memories of racialized dispossession, specific reworkings of 1990s discourses and practices of development and “peace”-making, and the concrete practice of starting from common sense.

I sieve 26 months of participant action research and critical ethnography that spanned over four years with this nascent organization through a Lefebvrian method of re-reading the past through the light of the present. Through this spatially and historically relational analysis, I present an analysis where the present speaks powerfully to the past making three fundamental contributions.

First, I produce an analytic that challenges narratives of spontaneous rebellion and/or seamless neoliberal development, demonstrating concretely how neither adequately address the relationship between racialized dispossession and ongoing rural efforts of repossession and/ or maintaining possession. Instead I draw attention to how the limits of neoliberal projects shape the contours of rebellion and how “spontaneous rebellions” are far from spontaneous.  Rather, I show that how these processes of entailment emerge and unfold hinges on particular articulations of past processes of dis/possession, development and difference.

Second, I offer a rereading of the Guatemalan Civil War that reveals the connections between the so-called ladino military East and indigenous militant West. In so doing I break down divisive binaries that pervade Guatemalan common sense and offer a new understanding of Guatemala’s 1980-83 racial genocide.  This move creates openings for future alliances based not necessarily on an abstract sense of defense of territory or pan-Mayan identity, but in recognition of shared experiences and analyses of indigenous repression and resistance.

Third, I show how particular articulations of race, class, gender and space are worked and reworked in and through the concrete practices of struggle and acquiescence, reaccommodation, and flight that are shaped by the historical production of place. Rebellion past or present is neither unthinkable nor inevitable, nor is its unfolding scripted in David and Goliath dualisms. Rather, I show how the possibilities and limits of struggles over land and water are bound to historical geographies of development and dispossession and ongoing praxis.