This week, guest Yoalli Rodriguez brings us to the Chacahua-Pastoría Lagoons in Oaxaca, Mexico, to investigate deep connections with land, ongoing colonial violence, and the grief that comes alongside loving a place. The Chacahua-Pastoría Lagoons have long been vital spaces for Black and Indigenous communities, but continued colonial strategies have altered and quartered off the landscape in favor of nationalist and capitalist interests. 

Following the thread lines of Yoalli’s research in and connection to Mexico, the conversation dives deep into an understanding of Mestizo geographies and the politics of refusal in the face of oppressive power. Understanding Mestizo geographies means understanding the land through a lens of community connection, rather than institutional dictation. Despite the institutional acts of violence that limit sensual and sensorial relationships with the land, people continue to make spaces of their own and lay claims to land that go against colonial rule. With this context, Yoalli and Ayana come to a heartening conversation about the importance of ecological grief, rage, and sadness.

Yoalli’s work pays deep attention to the everyday lives of those who live around the lagoons, and she notes the care, love, and community that make grief and resistance possible. Here, hope and grief go hand in hand as strategies of resistance and fugitivity. Perhaps slow life and slow feeling can be a counter to the slow violence that has so marred life on earth. 

Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez Aguilera is an educator, vinyl selector, and writer born and raised in Mexico but currently based in the U.S. They are currently an Assistant Professor in Anthropology & Sociology and Latin American and Latinx Studies at Lake Forest College, Illinois. They are interested in subjects of anti-colonial, anti-racist feminist struggles, political ecology, and State violence.

♫ The music in this episode is “Songs of the Forgotten” by Fabian Almazan Trio, “Time Away From Time” by Eliza Edens, and “Waterkeeper” by PALO-MAH.

Episode References

“Everyday Resistances to Environmental Racism, Mestizo Geographies, and Toxicity in Oaxaca” by Yoalli Rodriguez; The Funambulist Magazine

“We Need Histories of Radical Black Ecology Now” by Romy Opperman; AAIHS

“Grieving geographies, mourning waters : race, gender and environmental struggles on the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico” by Yoalli Rodriguez

Reading Recommendations

Pollution is Colonialism by Max Liboiron. 2021. Duke University Press.

Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-blackness by Tiffany Lethabo King, Jenell Navarro, Andrea Smith, Editors. 2020. Duke University Press.

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