Mesoamérica Resiste

Abstract

The Mesoamérica Resiste poster by the Beehive Design Collective is an interactive, open access and user-friendly artwork that illustrates the complex interconnections between colonial and capitalist designs for Mesoamerica as envisioned by global financial and neoliberal governance systems on the one hand, and Indigenous grassroots resistance on the other. As an artwork created collaboratively with multiple Indigenous and peasant communities from Mesoamerica, it represents contemporary struggles and resistance through visual storytelling and Indigenous symbolism. Folded together, the poster illustrates a colonial-style map of Mesoamerica that details the global imperial designs, extractive fantasies and mega-developmentalist projects of the North American Free Trade Association, Central American Free Trade Association and the Bretton Woods institutions. Upon unfolding this colonial map, a perspective from ‘below’ – the perspective of the Ant in some Indigenous cosmologies – is revealed, highlighting the often-erased stories of Indigenous resistance against contemporary extractivist, exploitative and ecocidal mega-projects.