Fugitive Networks: Black Women’s Everyday Politics on Venezuela’s Central Coast

By introducing the concept of fugitive networks, this talk re-thinks Black women’s geographies of mobilization around former plantations on Venezuela’s Caribbean central coast. I show how these mobilizations both engage with and resist the state, as they are shaped by long-standing historical legacies of racialized exclusion and denial of claims to land. Under the Bolivarian Revolution, Afro-Venezuelan movements were recognized, but their claims to secure ownership of former plantation lands remained disregarded, reproducing conditions that make Black life vulnerable to land dispossession. Amidst the ongoing catastrophe in Venezuela, I theorize Black women’s political mobilizations as “fugitive networks,” an unrecognized geography of resilience. These networks simultaneously make claims on governing authorities while evading recognition by state power. In a reality of shifting and violent governance, these networks have the power to appear and withdraw, affirming Black life with or without recognition. This talk contributes to Black geographies, social movement theory, and feminist geographies by repositioning Afro-Latin American women’s political life beyond formal organizations and state institutions.

Speaker: Nadia Mosquera Muriel, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill