Pertenencia Mutua: Indigenous Oaxacans Contesting Settler Colonial Grammars

Abstract:Drawing on settler colonial grammar of place, the colonial practice of naming and renaming Native land through mapmaking processes that historically deny, erase, and homogenize Indigenous communities, this essay argues that Indigenous Oaxacans disrupt settler colonial renaming of land by engaging in their community’s collective understanding of pertenencia mutua (mutual belonging)—an Indigenous Oaxacan relational consciousness of belonging across Abya Yala (“the Americas”) that allows them to recognize their role as Indigenous visitors on Native land and as Native to Abya Yala. Theorizing through pertenencia mutua offers a deep understanding of Indigenous efforts to (re)build communities in their struggle against settler colonial violence, including through naming practices and grammar of place. Using semistructured interviews, oral histories, and social media content, I analyze how Indigenous Oaxacan young adults engage on the ground and on social media to unsettle colonially named places by placing their identity and their own communities in relational existence. Such unsettlings call for the retheorization of place.