Contesting Temporalities in a Runaway Slave Town

Mexico, 1769 to the Present

Authors

  • Adela Amaral William & Mary

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.33824

Keywords:

civility, governmentality, maroons, Mexico, progress, ruins

Abstract

This article follows various forms of colonial governmentality in Mexico and their legacies in the present. Beginning in the late eighteenth century and through reconstruction following the Mexican Revolution, state officials have attempted to construct the futures of residents of Amapa, a town founded by black runaway slaves. The article discusses how past and present townspeople have created and practiced distinct temporalities, incorporating the often-failed material and political potentials that were imagined for them.

Author Biography

  • Adela Amaral, William & Mary

    Adela Amaral is an Assistant Professor in the anthropology department at the College of William & Mary. Her research interests include historical anthropology and archaeology, colonialism and the colonial present, race, material ethnography, and social geography and spatial practice in Mexico. Her research attempts to characterize black experiences in Mexico using a multi-method approach to reconstruct how social worlds, including "natural" environments, were/are constructed for African descended populations as well as how these worlds are created and experienced by them.

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Published

2019-06-26

How to Cite

Amaral, A. (2019). Contesting Temporalities in a Runaway Slave Town: Mexico, 1769 to the Present. Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 6(1), 47-63. https://doi.org/10.1558/jca.33824