Abstract

SOLIS AGUILAR, David A.. Socio-spatial ethnography of Maleku historical territorialities in Costa Rica. Relac. Estud. hist. soc. [online]. 2022, vol.43, n.171, pp.45-70.  Epub June 09, 2023. ISSN 2448-7554.  https://doi.org/10.24901/rehs.v43i171.935.

This paper presents the socio-spatial ethnography as a method for the study of the historical territorialities of native people study, a method developed between 2018 and 2021 as a part of the master’s degree program in Human Geography at El Colegio de Michoacán. It was qualitative research (1860-2020) on the Territorialities of the Maleku native people in Costa Rica. The Maleku inhabit a territory demarcated by the government in 1976, with only 2934Ha in the middle basin of the Frio River, which defines the core of their ancestral territory. The lands, lagoons, and rivers in this territory are sacred places, but they have been almost totally dispossessed since the beginning of colonization in 1860.

The socio-spatial ethnography on maleku territorialities follows critical methods of the Social Sciences. It was established a dialogue of knowledge with the community based on ethical commitments. For this purpose, those qualitative research techniques were implemented as participant observation and ethnographic dialogues. Documentary-historical reviews, coordinated with maleku contributors, were implemented, as well as semi-structured interviews with non-indigenous collaborators with key knowledge. Also, quantitative methods were implemented to analyze demographic, cadastre registry, and agrarian data with geographic information on maleku territorialities. Diverse cartographic products were obtained because of the analysis of unpublished territorial data, which allowed us to reach conclusions on the socio-spatial incidence of violations of the territorial rights of the Maleku people by the Costa Rican governments.

Keywords : Sacred natural sites; socio-spatial ethnography; indigenous people; indigenous geographies; historical territorialities.