Participatory Mapping Project Research Articles

La Caldosa: Afro-Lesbian Space-Making and Transnational Politics in Havana

This essay tells the story of a caldosa (both a stew and the gathering where it is served) hosted in 2016 by a network of Black lesbian activists in Havana, Cuba, that took place on the morning after the Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida. The author explores the caldosa as both an example of and a metaphor for the transnational, coalitional, and space-making politics of Black lesbian activists in the island. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and a participatory mapping project, the author shows how the work of making caldosa connects the local practice of space-making to a hemispheric and anticipatory Black lesbian politic. The essay builds on previous work on Black lesbian feminism in Cuba and provides insight into the type of activism that was happening in the island in the mid-2010s, which laid the groundwork for the growth in Afro-feminist and Afro-queer activism in the following years.

A Review of the Role of Intermediate Partners in the Community Participatory Mapping Project at Slum Upgrading Settlement

Surakarta has put a lot of effort into promoting civic engagement. Numerous projects have been taken out since 2017 to help the local government with the upgrading of the slum community on the Kali Pepe and Bengawan Solo River riverbanks. The initiation comes from grass root programme. Clarifying the function of intermediary actors in the administration of participatory mapping on slum improvement projects is the goal of this study. The initiatives were based on the writers’ experiences while working on several community engagement programs for project upgrades between 2018 and 2022 at Surakarta City (Solo). The information is gathered through field research that is done concurrently with project execution. Selected participatory mapping projects included four case studies. The Kampung Layak Anak Project was run by Urban Rural Design and Conservation (URDC Labo) and ARKOM Solo in 2017, The Green Kampung Project was run by URDC Labo UNS and SIBAT Sewu in 2018, Bangkit Berbarengan was run by URDC Labo and ARKOM Solo in 2020, and Mojo’s participatory mapping of a children-friendly environment (2022) are just a few examples. Several participants were involved in the neighborhood data collection process, and participatory mapping technologies were applied. It will explore these conflicts to look at the role intermediate partners play in empowering communities. Since participatory mapping pertains to both top-down and bottom-up methodologies, the findings primarily focus on the ambiguity of participation in the context of Solo. Another conclusion highlights the role of intermediary actors, such as academics, ARKOM, KOTAKU, and Sibat Sewu, in efforts to restructure urban areas.

Using the Framework Method to support collaborative and cross-cultural qualitative data analysis

With Inuit organizations leading the way, there is a growing opportunity for meaningful partnerships between Inuit and visiting researchers to create impactful research programs and policy initiatives that reflect Inuit priorities. Collaborative research methods, where Inuit and visiting researchers work together to meet community needs, offer a potential avenue for braiding knowledge systems, and therefore have become an increasingly popular way to conduct research in the Arctic. In this paper, we outline our use of the data analysis method known as the “Framework Method” during the Imappivut Knowledge Study, a participatory mapping project led by the Nunatsiavut Government. We reflect on both the method's applicability and its usefulness for future research conducted in collaboration between Inuit and non-Inuit researchers. We find that the Framework Method allowed us to work in an iterative and adaptive manner, resulting in comprehensive findings for marine spatial planning. The method also supported data sovereignty for the Nunatsiavut Government. The Framework Method can be used to allow Nunatsiavut greater control over the data internally and self-determining access to external researchers.

Mapping home, memory and spatial recovery in forced displacement

ABSTRACT Escaping war and persecution during the twenty-tens, over two-million displacees made life-risking journeys into Europe. Trauma continued for those who managed to cross borders and reach new havens: grappling with migration systems, searching for decent housing, and striving for social integration. This article presents empirical findings of a multi-modal participatory mapping project conducted with refugees and asylum seekers in Southwest England, and highlights the impact of memory and deep creative mapping on the spatial practice of making-home in forced displacement. The resulting maps embody spaces of recovery; memoryscapes revealing synergies between the constructs of memory and the concept of home in exile. The project asks how a creative participatory method of mapping home through memory reconsolidation can ameliorate the trauma of displacement and aid the re-making of home.

Walking, knowing, and the limits of the map: performing participatory cartographies in Indigenous landscapes

Post-representational cartography views maps as inherently unstable and unfinished, always in the making and thus singularly open for refolding and re-presentation. This perspective on maps calls for greater attention to the performances, negotiations, and contestations that occur during the ongoing production of maps, particularly in cases where maps are developed during collective, collaborative, and participatory processes in Indigenous landscapes riven by conflict and struggle. In the following, we examine the role of walking for the continual (re)making of participatory maps, specifically engaging with work in Indigenous methodologies to consider how an emphasis on performativity in map-makings may foster a post-representational perspective on Indigenous cartographies. We understand walking as map-making, a form of knowledge production generated by performative and situated storytelling along paths and in places filled with meaning. Drawing on a critical understanding of ‘invitation’ and ‘crossing’, we build on our experiences from participatory mapping projects in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil to explore the ways in which the material, performative crossings of bodies through Indigenous landscapes may inspire new forms of knowledge production and destabilize Cartesian cartographic colonialities.

Back to the Future: The Autonomous Indigenous Communities of Petén, Guatemala

James C. Scott’s (1976) classic work on the Chayanovian logics of peasant economy argued that less important than the amount taken was how little might be left. A similar awareness about the paucity of the “leftovers” (li xeel, in Q’eqchi’ Mayan) has inspired a peasant federation in northern Guatemala to embrace its indigenous identity through scores of village declarations of autonomy. Albeit born from a class-based organizing repertoire, the new political trajectory of this Q’eqchi’ organization still reflects Via Campesina’s broader conceptual umbrella of peasant rights, good living, indigenous spirituality, gender equity, agroecology, and the ancient right to save seed. Drawing from a participatory mapping project, fieldnotes, letters, proposals, social media, texts, and other elusive “grey literature” from seventeen years of allied camaraderie, I describe how they are resuscitating and adapting an oppressive political structure from 16th-century colonial rule into a creative political mechanism to defend their territory from 21st-century neoliberal land grabs.

Negative Research: Sonic Methods in Geography and Their Limits

Sound has received much attention from human geographers in recent years. This article opens a debate around the growing body of work on sound as a research method. Sonic methods have largely emerged as part of the so-called affective turn in geography, as efforts to attend to the performative, emotional, and prereflective aspects of experience. Drawing on the work of Adorno, I develop a critique of existing sonic methods, arguing that their focus on affect and immediate experience is unable to grasp “negative geographies”: what and who fails to appear and remains silent to the researcher. These claims are grounded in two autoethnographic accounts of my own experiments with sonic methods. The first is a geographic information systems study of noise-monitoring data in King County, Washington. The second is a participatory mapping project that sought to record and collect “sound diaries” from migrants and refugees across the greater Seattle area. In both cases, I show how silences and failures in the research process make sonic methods useful tools for social critique. Key Words: Adorno, method, negativity, Seattle, sound.

Racialized Space: Children Map the Post‐Apartheid Landscape

Can children's maps shed light on legacies of structural inequality? This article presents a participatory mapping project with rural youth in South Africa's Eastern Cape. The analysis of the maps demonstrates that intergenerational legacies of racial oppression are critical to children's conceptions of space and place. Through a visual analysis of recurring features in the maps, I argue that rural South African children experience a racialized environment that informs their mapmaking and is a product of apartheid's linking of race, space, and territory. Contributing a case study within the larger field of participatory mapping, I offer a visual methodology to access worldviews of youth.

Viewing Microcredit Lending through Participatory Mapping: A Case Study

Abstract Participatory mapping has been employed for just over two decades as a tool to seek greater social justice through spatial representations from the points of view of historically marginalized populations. Since its rise in the 1990s, applications of participatory mapping have increased dramatically throughout both the Global North and South. While most participatory mapping projects have engaged indigenous issues, such as those involving territorial disputes and access to natural resources, few studies have attempted to apply participatory mapping to enhance “bottom-up” microlending practices in the developing world. This study combines participatory mapping with interviews and geospatial technology to examine the limited participation of younger adults in the financial services offered by a credit union in Tilaco, Mexico. We examine the process, utilities, and limitations of employing participatory mapping to help answer this question.

Assessing the validity of crowdsourced wildlife observations for conservation using public participatory mapping methods

Public participatory mapping is a method of crowdsourcing where the lay public can contribute spatial information for a range of applications including conservation planning. When used to collect wildlife observation data, participatory mapping becomes a type of “geographic citizen science” that involves collaboration with members of the public. While the potential of crowdsourcing to assist in wildlife conservation appears to be large, the quality and validity of the observational data collected remain a key concern. In this study, we examined the quality and validity of spatial data collected in a public participatory mapping project implemented in northern New South Wales (Australia) in 2018 where the public was asked to identify and map the location and frequency of koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) sightings using an internet mapping application. The iconic koala is a nationally-listed threatened species and has wide public recognition, making it an ideal test of our approach to examining the value of citizen science for wildlife. We assessed the validity of koala observation data from two perspectives of validity-as-accuracy (positional accuracy and data completeness) and validity-as-credibility (characteristics of spatial data contributors). To assess validity-as-accuracy, we analysed the distribution of citizen observations of koala sightings compared to an expert-derived probability distribution of koalas (likelihood model). To assess validity-as-credibility, we analysed the survey data to determine which participant characteristics increased the credibility of observational data. We found significant spatial association between crowdsourced koala observations and the likelihood model to validate koala locations, but there was under-reporting in more rural, remote areas. Significant variables contributing to accuracy in koala observations included participant knowledge of koalas, age, length of residence, and formal education. We also compared the crowdsourced results to a field-based citizen science koala observation project implemented in the same region and found crowdsourced participatory mapping provided comparable, if not superior results. Crowdsourced koala observations can augment field-based koala research by covering large geographic areas while engaging a broader public in conservation efforts. However, effective geographic citizen science projects require a significant commitment of resources, including the creation of community partnerships, to obtain high quality spatial data.

Grassroots Innovation Using Drones for Indigenous Mapping and Monitoring

Indigenous territories are facing increasing pressures from numerous legal and illegal activities that are pushing commodity frontiers within their limits, frequently causing severe environmental degradation and threatening indigenous territorial rights and livelihoods. In Central and South America, after nearly three decades of participatory mapping projects, interest is mounting among indigenous peoples in the use of new technologies for community mapping and monitoring as a means of defense against such threats. Since 2014, several innovative projects have been developed and implemented in the region to demonstrate and train indigenous communities in the use of small drones for territorial mapping and monitoring. In this paper, we report on five projects carried out in Peru, Guyana, and Panama. For each one we describe the context, main objectives, positive outcomes, challenges faced, and opportunities ahead. Preliminary results are promising and have gained the interest of many indigenous societies who envision this technology as a powerful tool to protect their territories and strengthen their claims regarding specific environmental liabilities and justice issues. Based on the results presented here and a review of previous similar studies, we offer a critical discussion of some of the main opportunities and challenges that we foresee regarding the use of small drones for indigenous territorial mapping and monitoring. In addition, we elaborate on why a careful, well thought-out, and progressive adoption of drones by indigenous peoples may trigger grassroots innovations in ways conducive to greater environmental justice and sustainability.

The Importance of Context: Assessing the Benefits and Limitations of Participatory Mapping for Empowering Indigenous Communities in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé, Panama

Indigenous communities have been involved in participatory mapping projects to protect their territories and manage their resources for decades. However, while tremendous advances have been achieved in many settings, the use of maps by indigenous peoples is very uneven. Here we present the case of a team of university researchers, indigenous students, and local investigators who used a participatory approach to map cultural landscapes and mature forest cover in the Comarca Ngäbe-Buglé of Panama. This article examines the success and limitations of efforts to empower indigenous people in the region to use mapping tools for conservation and resource management. The project, while it provides a useful example of how to build a participatory research team to produce maps that better reflect indigenous points of view, fell short of empowering indigenous authorities to use geographic tools to manage their territories. This is due mainly to the lack of administrative capacity needed to make use of geospatial information. We argue that cartographers involved in participatory projects, while typically attentive to the problems of marginalization, need to pay more attention to the broader socioeconomic contexts of their work and to redouble their efforts to respond to the challenges of the digital divide, which is a symptom of broader socioeconomic and political inequalities stemming from the legacies of colonialism.

JLAG Perspectives: Videography for Participatory Cartography in a Site of Wind Power Conflict in Coastal Ceará State, Brazil

JLAG Perspectives: Videography for Participatory Cartography in a Site of Wind Power Conflict in Coastal Ceará State, Brazil Adryane Gorayeb, Christian Brannstrom, Jociclea de Sousa Mendes, Antonio Jeovah de Andrade Meireles, Leilane Oliveira Chaves, and Edson Vicente da Silva Installed wind power capacity in Brazil expanded rapidly from 28.6 megawatts (MW) in 2005 to 10.6 gigawatts (GW) installed electrical capacity in 2016—roughly a 37,000 percent increase in just over a decade. Highly favorable wind climatology (Silva et al. 2016), emergency electricity rationing, and state incentives motivated wind farm construction in coastal areas of Ceará (1.6 GW) and Rio Grande do Norte (3.2 GW). Reports describe Brazilian wind power as a win-win situation (Juárez et al. 2014: 833). However, recent work describes social conflict and environmental impacts from wind farms located in coastal environments. Impacts include leveling dunes, burying interdune lakes, impeded access through the wind farm, heavy truck traffic, and unfulfilled promises of employment generation (Brown 2011; Meireles et al. 2013; Gorayeb et al. 2016; Brannstrom et al. 2017). [End Page 159] Here, we discuss the process of creating a 20-minute video, “We Made Our Map: Territory, Participatory Cartography, and Wind Power in the West Coast of Ceará, Brazil” (LabocartUFC 2016), which shows results of a participatory mapping project that helped a traditional community secure land rights when threatened by a wind farm. The participatory mapping process (2011–2015) included continual critical reflection regarding the community, its territory, its engagement with cartography, and the impacts of large infrastructure projects. Community leaders requested a map from the Department of Geography, Universidade Federal do Ceará, in the course of seeking technical assistance to show traditional livelihoods in Xavier. The mapping project was to include sea, beach, dune (including interdunal lakes), river, and mangrove environments used for livelihoods (fishing, mollusks, and agriculture) and leisure. The specific motivation for resource mapping was the 2009 construction of a wind farm, licensed by Ceará state authorities without obtaining community consent. The wind farm has caused social tensions between the community and the wind farm owner, and within the community (Meireles et al. 2013; Gorayeb et al. 2016; Brannstrom et al. 2017). Xavier community is a traditional settlement of twenty-two families (sixty-six residents) who rely on fishing with nonmotorized boats, collect shellfish and shrimp, and practice small-scale agriculture. Common property, rather than definitive land title, prevails. In 2005, Xavier residents noted the presence of outsiders taking measurements and installing equipment. Construction of the wind farm started in 2007, and in 2009 the wind farm began producing power from fifty turbines capable of generating 104.4 MW. This wind farm was Brazil’s largest until December 2016. Houses in Xavier were 200 meters away from the nearest turbine. After many complaints by Xavier residents, in 2013 the wind power firm donated R$540,000 (approximately US$130,000) to the Xavier community association for the construction of twenty-two brick houses, one per family, to mitigate the negative impacts of the wind farm. We received an extension grant in 2014 from Brazil’s Ministry of Education to conduct participatory cartography workshops among traditional fishing communities in western Ceará. Our application of participatory cartography follows the concept of new social cartography developed by Henri Acselrad and Alfredo Wagner Berno de Almeida (Acselrad and Coli 2008; Almeida et al. 2010), which has broad parallels to trends in critical cartography that Crampton (2009) reported. Our group has used new social cartography techniques to produce seventy-two maps of traditional communities (indigenous groups, quilombolas, ribeirinhos, and small farmers) in northern and northeastern Brazil (Meireles and Gorayeb 2014; Gorayeb et al. 2015; Mendes et al. 2015; Costa et al. 2016; Evangelista et al. 2016; Galdino et al. 2016; Leite et al. 2016). We aimed to facilitate participatory mapping by transferring technologies and knowledge to residents. The workshops resulted in thematic maps that showed conflicts over resources. During the workshops we also interviewed community leaders and participated in community activities, creating synergies between research and extension. In 2014, project leaders Gorayeb and Meireles decided to make a documentary film about the problems caused by the wind farm in the Xavier community, and...

Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas by Joe Bryan and Denis Wood

Reviewed by: Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas by Joe Bryan and Denis Wood Sarah Montoya Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counterinsurgency in the Americas. By Joe Bryan and Denis Wood. New York: Guilford Press, 2015. vii + 260 pp. Figures, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00 paper. Joe Bryan and Denis Wood explore the limitations of participatory mapping projects in the Americas and their impact on indigenous communities. The authors critique the Bowman Expedition's México Indígena project (2005–2008), led by Peter Herlihy (University of Kansas) and funded by institutions such as the Foreign Military Studies Office of the US Department of Defense, the American Geographical Society (AGS), the University of Kansas's Center of Latin American Studies, and Mexico's Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales. Eventually, the project was accused of geopiracy by indigenous communities who were not informed that the data supplied would be made available to the government. The communities involved issued public statements indicting all associated parties, including Herlihy and the AGS. The México Indígena project serves as a valuable case study in the exploitation of indigenous communities by academic and governmental agencies who gain access to vulnerable populations under the guise of "participatory mapping." Bryan and Wood also discuss the difficulties faced by indigenous communities utilizing maps to make legally legible land claims. Their work in this area largely focuses on the Miskito communities in Nicaragua. In order for indigenous maps to successfully negotiate land claims, the maps must reflect a (neo)colonial geographic and cartographic regime. This socio-spatial organization fails to recognize a communal relationship to territory and instead favors state-sanctioned individual ownership of property. In lieu of the recognition of indigenous sovereignty, the state offers incorporation into its dominant political project and provides recognition of indigenous relationships to land only as it relates to conservation efforts. Weaponizing Maps: Indigenous Peoples and Counter-insurgency in the Americas is bookended by an account of the World Human Geographic Conference held at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, in September 2011. The authors recall the horror and history of colonial violence within a space that then functions as a backdrop to a government-funded geography conference on ethics. At the start of the text, it seems like a strange juxtaposition. By the end of the text, it registers as a desperate attempt to address the outcry caused the Bowman Expedition without meaningfully challenging the politics, ethics, or methodologies of those involved. At times refreshingly polemical and unapologetically critical, Bryan and Wood provide valuable historical sketches that link the ideological and material ramifications of maps on indigenous communities and trace the development of property-based cartographic and geographic logics during wartime. Though the México Indígena project serves as a focal point, the authors deftly weave together the development of the American Geographical Society, the rise of indigenous mapping projects in the 1990s and their subsequent limitations, and the relationship between dominant geographic practices and the academic-military-industrial complex. Sarah Montoya Gender Studies University of California, Los Angeles Copyright © 2017 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The ontological politics of marine spatial planning: Assembling the ocean and shaping the capacities of ‘Community’ and ‘Environment’

Governance projects to measure and organize socio-natural spaces have often resulted in the marginalization of human communities (e.g., national parks) or in the destruction of environmental resources (e.g., mining). In the United States, new marine spatial planning (MSP) policies seek to categorize and represent ocean spaces and activities in an effort to provide a solution to long-standing controversies stemming from individual sector-based management (e.g., fisheries, energy, transportation, marine mammal conservation). In this paper we examine how the ontological politics of MSP are being shaped through the narratives and practices of emerging MSP projects. We employ the ideas of ontological politics and assemblage to explore how communities and environments are being constituted through their association with MSP and its key conceptual framework (ecosystem-based management) and operational tools (geospatial databases). We trace how the ontological formations of MSP—people, places, technologies, and organisms—are being actively assembled in concurrent processes of stabilization and disruption through narratives and processes of inscription that create new political-spatial imaginaries and relationships. We show that while some emerging MSP ontologies restrict the capacities of ‘environment’ and ‘community’—for instance in the language of ‘salvation’ and in the organization of certain geospatial databases—other practices offer space to expand the capacities of community and environmental actors (for example in participatory mapping projects and in the aspirations of many practitioners themselves).

Inclusions, erasures and emergences in an indigenous landscape: Participatory cartographies and the makings of affective place in the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela

The post-representational critique in critical cartography has conceptualized maps as ontologically unstable, subject to re-makings through performative engagements between the map artifact, map makers, and map consumers. This insight has important implications for participatory cartographies, that is, the sorts of mapping projects which, through strategies of inclusion of indigenous spatialities erased from official maps, aim to produce counter-representations of indigenous landscapes which may serve political and emancipatory goals. Such participatory mapping practices have been critiqued for their own erasures, as meaningful, affective places are subsumed within Cartesian grids. However, an ethnographic study of a participatory mapping project in Yukpa indigenous territory in the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela, suggests that such maps are not secure representations despite erasures of affective space. Instead, they are emergent mappings subject to the agency of performance.

Cartographier le paysage « invisible » – Une démarche participative pour révéler les paysages aborigènes du Sud de l'Australie

The Aboriginal people of the South East region of South Australia, together with local and state government and universities, have recently embarked on a series of cultural revival projects to strengthen their community and to celebrate the rich heritage and connections that they maintain with the land. This paper charts the process and development of a participatory mapping project, spanning various Aboriginal homelands (but with a focus on the Boandik homeland) that was undertaken by landscape architecture lecturers and students with the collaboration and participation of the South East Aboriginal Focus Group, and non-Aboriginal groups and organisations. The paper highlights how mapping the “unseen” or intangible qualities of Aboriginal homelands in creative ways can help to communicate and educate the non-Aboriginal community about Aboriginal connections to and knowledge of the land. Through an exhibition of the maps, the project has helped to advance discussions towards the creation of an Aboriginal cultural centre in the region.

ARQUEOLOGIA ENGAJADA: MAPEAMENTO PARTICIPATÓ- RIO COM OS POVOS INDÍGENAS DA BACIA DO ALTO RIO MARONI, NORTE DA AMAZÔNIA

Novas perspectivas sobre as paisagens sociopolíticas de culturas de florestas tropicais do passado têm surgido nos últimos vinte anos na arqueologia amazônica. A evolução das relações entre arqueólogos e povos indígenas da Amazônia, bem como a integração da prática arqueológica com o conhecimento dos povos indígenas da região, levou recentemente a descobertas científicas surpreendentes na Amazônia. O presente artigo é um relato de pesquisa sobre um projeto de mapeamento participativo em curso, destacando a tradição emergente de arqueólogos que se envolvem com os povos indígenas. Especificamente, este projeto de mapeamento participativo é parte de um processo recente de compartilhamento das agendas de pesquisa de antropólogo/arqueólogo e os povos indígenas amazônicos das terras altas das Guianas (Suriname, Guiana Francesa e Brasil). Ao longo deste artigo, o desafiador potencial de pesquisa interdisciplinar e de multi-escala em processos sociopolíticos historicamente situados está em primeiro plano. No entanto, esta relação emergente entre povos indígenas amazônicos e um crescente número de arqueólogos envolvidos está em estágios iniciais. Palavras-chave: Arqueologias indígenas, arqueologia histórica, mapeamento participativo.

Cartographies of remembrance and becoming in the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela

This article examines the role of memory performance in participatory mapping in indigenous communities, in particular in terms of driving radical action for territorial rights. By examining the links between memory performance, processes of identity formation and the social constructions of landscape, the article suggests that greater critical consideration should be given to participatory mapping as process, as opposed to participatory maps as products. This is particularly important in the current push for land, resource and territorial rights among indigenous peoples in Venezuela and beyond. The article is based on a participatory mapping project conducted with indigenous residents of the Yukpa community of Toromo in the Sierra de Perijá, Venezuela, in the years 2007–2011. The mapping process inspired the speaking of memory, which in turn articulated with autochthonous debates regarding land rights and development strategies. By drawing on Ricoeur's conceptualisation of memory and narrative identity, the article presents and critically analyses memory performances of violence, exile and deceit, which reflect memory themes constitutive of a ‘duty to remember’ and ‘a duty to map’ so often expressed by Yukpa.

Mapping Deception: The Politics of Mapping Miskito and Garifuna Space in Honduras

In Latin America, indigenous and Afro-descendant land movements find traction in participatory mapping projects. The success of these projects is measured in a variety of ways: from the abatement of land conflicts to the employment of these maps in winning state-sanctioned ownership “rights.” Although worthy of celebration, such “countermapping” projects (Peluso 1995), often exemplified by the practice of binding a particular culture (or ethnicity) to a particular space, might arouse contradictory outcomes. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with Miskito and Garifuna communities on the Honduran Atlantic coast, this article reflects on the Consensus Mapping of Shared Boundaries Project (CMSBP), an indigenous countermapping initiative inside the Honduran Mosquitia. In this work I argue that racial power and racialized processes constrain the emancipatory possibilities of countermapping in multiple ways. Such power and processes legitimate the devaluation of subaltern land claims and, in Honduras, contribute to the legitimacy of ladino incursions inside Miskito and Garifuna space.