Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia by Claudia Leal (review)

Claudia Leal addresses the Afro-descendant population and its communities in western Colombia, a forested area on the Pacific Ocean, the rainiest area in the Western Hemisphere and with the highest black population in Latin America. She studies its “extractivist economy” and social history based on the “racialization of the landscape,” for which she offers an environmentalist approach that deals with economic, social, cultural, and geographical aspects, making landscape and ethnicity central categories.

Part of the extractivist experience—slave and free—of gold and platinum during the viceroyalty considers the transition from a slave population to a rural and free one. Indeed, starting in 1851, the year of the last official act concerning slaves’ liberties, a gradual process toward freedom began. It is the benchmark for constructing a racial identity that allows us to consider other groups of independent miners (mazamorreros) and merchants, who are racially black and mestizos (whites).

Besides exploitation for precious woods, the landscape underwent forest exploitation for a variety of black rubber (Castilla ulei) and vegetable ivory (palm seed), a condition similar to Central America, Mexico, and the Amazon. In this scenario, the merchants were important. Leal also points out the expectations and the platinum exploitation boom, failed attempts to diversify, cycles of exploitation, and the role of American and French companies in introducing capital and technology for mining exploitation. The Colombian state eventually introduced legislation on the exploitation of resources and land ownership.

The economic and social aspects of commercial exploitation enable obtaining historical representations of human nature and the territory up to the 1930s. However, there are historiographical gaps around the struggle for land and in the defense of natural resources by Chocó inhabitants. Indigenous ethnic groups are not addressed sufficiently in this book (Wounaan, Emberá-Chamí and Katíos or eyabera); although, it evokes contributions from Sven-Erik Isacsson and Caroline Williams. Additionally, due to limited information sources and socio-historical tendencies in the area, it is impossible to understand the proletarianization and peasantization processes of its inhabitants, who are also known as “rainforest peasants.”

The second part of the book is based on the “racialized landscapes.” Here, the term refers to the social and ideological context in which the landscape, physically transformed by the Pacific coast, is understood. Migrations of “free blacks” and their confluence with the native population occupying areas of Chocó and the role of Augustinian and Claretian missionaries in riverbank settlements, as well as aspects of education, migration, and other factors that ideologize the landscape from the Hispanic and Catholic view are addressed. This is done in a process of constructing the nation-state led by a “white” elite with racial prejudices.

The book considers the urban landscape, the cities of Quibdó and Tumaco, and how their development was restricted by extractive exploitation, which came to be the cause of their limited social mobility. In addition, it refers to the racial tension in these urban centers, characterized by their low population density and a structure based on the racial division of labor. It also addresses marimba music, which along with the traditional songs of the Pacific, is designated by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Finally, the text is supported by primary and secondary sources written in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French. It is a contribution that goes beyond what is presented by Robert West, Jacques Aprile-Gniset, Oscar Almario García, Mario Romero, Kiran Asher, German Colmenares, Luis Fernando, Odile Hoffmann, Orian Jiménez, and Eduardo Restrepo, among others. In conclusion, it is a contribution to the regional historiography of the Colombian Pacific coast and its black population, about which there is little clarity and knowledge.