In order to develop a holistic understanding of the political ecology of landscape, it is imperative to examine not just landscapes of denigration and exploitation, but also landscapes of resistance. The coursework I’ve done on the plantation economy so far has entirely focused on plantations and their importance as sites of anti-Blackness. While this focus is important, I feel that this focus leaves out important details of the plantation economy, notably Black resistance movements. By only seeing and centering sites of Black subjugation, and in centering European narratives of emancipation, we continue to center anti-Blackness. In order to move forward with a nuanced understanding of anti-Blackness and the plantation economy on the landscapes, we must see Black resistance as well, and its relationalities to landscape.
Landscapes of marronage is a framework created by Black geographer Willie Jamaal Wright to analyze the linkages between landscape and marronage, a process by which enslaved Africans freed themselves and made their own communities in resistance to the plantation economy. Through examining these landscapes we come to a more accurate understanding of the political-economy of plantation, resistance to the plantation economy, and the linkages between landscape and resistance.
In his 2019 article on this subject, Wright writes primarily about swamps and wetlands as landscapes of marronage in the southeastern United States as well as throughout the caribbean. Swampland was, and remains, hard to develop and cultivate because of its physical geography. This makes it an excellent site of resistance, as there is little incentive for the colonizer or capitalist to bother you. These areas are also particularly difficult for colonizers and capitalists to traverse, and were doubly so during the height of the plantation economy.
Wright then expands his analysis by applying it to other landscapes of resistance beyond those which came about as a result of chattel slavery and the plantation economy. Specifically, he writes about two other landscapes: the mountainous landscape controlled by the libertarian socialist Zapatista Army in southern Mexico and the tunnels that, as a result of soil morphology, were easily made in the Vietnamese landscape during the Vietnam war. In this sense, landscapes of marronage can be interpreted as any anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, or anti-state movement that exists within a landscape that in itself is on the margins of or outside of capitalism as a result of its physical geography (particularly geomorphology).
I want to expand this work by Wright by looking at another landscape of marronage (specifically marronage in this example) he didn’t mention in his piece. This landscape is Viñales Valley, located in western Cuba. This valley is an example of a karst landscape, not a swampland landscape. Karst landscapes form as a result of limestone deposits. Lime is easily eroded by carbonic acid (water and carbon dioxide), which means landscapes which include it in the bedrock possess a variety of unique features. Karst landscapes can include hoodoos, pillars, sinkholes, and, in the case of the Viñales Valley, caves.
The Viñales Valley was settled by Europeans primarily in the 16th and 17th century. It had a plantation economy that was based on the exploitation of slave labor in the production of tobacco. This mode of agriculture was less intense than the sugar plantations found in much of the rest of the Caribbean, so the region luckily has maintained much of its endemic species and biodiversity. Despite that difference, the economic was still based around chattel slavery. Many African slaves fled this system, finding refuge specific to this region’s geomorphology (UNESCO; Farías et al., 2021).?
African slaves were able to create maroons within the caves and hills of this landscape. Because these hills and caves were less accessible to capitalists and colonizers, they served as sites of resistance (UNESCO; Farías et al., 2021). Some of these communities and their traditions still exist today (Farías et al., 2021). I also have seen sources which suggest that other karst landscapes served as landscapes of marronage from chattel slavery and the plantation economy in other parts of the Carribean, specifically Jamaica (Kueny and Day, 1998). This evidence of karst landscapes of marronage gives further credence to Wright’s claim that many different landscape types can and should be analyzed using his analytic.
With all this said, I feel like it would be irresponsible for me not to state my utter disappointment with the Farías et al. (2021) article I cited above. This article directly romanticizes settler colonial relationships and appropriation of indigenous knowledge as well as the anti-Black plantation economy of the Viñales Valley. It then extends this romanticization to the Cuban nation state, without unpacking the lineages of continuing anti-Blackness and settler colonialism that exists on the island today. Given this, more efforts should be made to understand the relationship between the former maroon communities of Viñales Valley and the contemporary Cuban state. These communities and their caves have lasting impacts unseen.
References Kueny, Jeffery, and Michael Day. “An Assessment of Protected Karst Landscapes in the Caribbean.” Caribbean Geography, vol. 9, no. 2, Sept. 1998, pp. 87–100. Farías, Liane Portuondo, et al. “Traditional Cultural Landscape in Viñales, Cuba.” Biodiversity and Conservation, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02300-w. UNESCO. “Valle De Viñales.” Places of Memory of the Slave Route in the Latin Carribean, UNESCO, http://www.lacult.unesco.org/sitios_memoria/Sitios.php?nav=idpais&value=2&lan=en. Wright, Willie Jamaal. “The Morphology of Marronage.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, vol. 110, no. 4, 22 Oct. 2019, pp. 1134–1149., https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2019.1664890.
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