Geopiracy

Oaxaca, Militant Empiricism, and Geographical Thought

Joel Wainwright

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781349453658, 9781137301734
• eBook ISBN: 9781137301758
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

Geopiracy is a study of the 'Bowman expeditions'—a project through which geographers, with funding from the US Army, are mapping the 'human terrain' of foreign lands. Wainwright offers a critique of human geography today that draws on contemporary social theory to raise unsettling questions about the nature of geography's disciplinary formation.

1

Letters from Oaxaca

Abstract: A letter from the Sierra Juárez ~ The México Indígena project ~ An accusation of “geopiracy” ~ The Tiltepec letter ~ On the etymology of ‘piracy’ ~ An ancient pirate’s reply to Alexander the Great.

Keywords: Bowman expeditions; geopiracy; geopiratería; Zapotec community of Oaxaca

Wainwright, Joel. Geopiracy: Oaxaca, Militant Empiricism, and Geographical Thought. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137301758. DOI: 10.1057/9781137301758

On January 14, 2009, the Union of Organizations of the Sierra Juárez of Oaxaca (UNOSJO) published an open letter to criticize a research project conducted by a team of geographers under the banner of the “Bowman expeditions.”¹ In their letter, UNOSJO alleges that the geography professors who ran the project—which involved mapping several rural Zapotec communities in the Rincón de Ixtlán of Oaxaca, Mexico—had failed to inform the communities that their research was funded by the US Army. Allow me to quote the UNOSJO letter at length:

Towards the end of 2008, the results of the research project México Indígena [the name of this Bowman expedition] were handed over to two Zapotec communities in the Sierra Juárez [ . . . ]. Research had been undertaken two years earlier by a team of geographers from University of Kansas. What initially seemed to be a beneficial project for the communities now leaves many of the participants feeling like victims of geopiracy. [ . . . ]

Project leader and geographer Peter Herlihy explained [that] the project [ . . . ] was to document the impacts of PROCEDE [a Mexican Government program that encourages the privatization of ejido and other community-managed lands]² [ . . . ] on indigenous communities. He failed to mention, however, that this research prototype was financed by the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO)³ of the United States Army and that reports on his work would be handed directly to this Office. Herlihy neglected to mention this despite being expressly asked to clarify the eventual use of the data [ . . . ].

Herlihy mentioned that his team would collaborate with the following organizations: the American Geographical Society (AGS), [the University of] Kansas, Kansas State University, Carleton University, the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí and the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources [of the Mexican state]. He failed, however, to acknowledge the participation of Radiance Technologies, a company that specializes in arms development and military intelligence. [ . . . ]

México Indígena forms part of the Bowman Expeditions, a more extensive geographic research project backed and financed by the FMSO, among other institutions. The FMSO inputs information into a global database that forms an integral part of the Human Terrain System (HTS), a United States Army counterinsurgency strategy designed by FMSO and applied within indigenous communities, among others. [ . . . ]

In November 2008, the México Indígena Project completed the maps corresponding to Zapotec communities San Miguel Tiltepec and San Juan Yagila. Contrary to the often-mentioned promise of transparency, México Indígena created an English-only web page, a language that the participating communities do not understand. Before the communities received the work, said maps had already been published on the Internet. Furthermore, the communities were never informed that reports detailing the project would be handed over to the FMSO.

In addition to publishing the maps, the México Indígena team created a database into which pertinent information was entered: community member names and the associated geographic location of their plot(s) of land, formal and informal use of the land and other data that cannot be accessed via the Internet.

According to statements made by those heading the México Indígena research team, this type of map can be used in multiple ways. They did not specify, however, whether they would be employed for commercial, military or other purposes. [ . . . ]

UNOSJO [ . . . ] is against this kind of project being carried out in the Sierra Juárez and distances itself completely from the work compiled by the México Indígena research team. We call upon indigenous peoples in this country and around the world not to be fooled by these types of research projects, which usurp traditional knowledge without prior consent. Although researchers may initially claim to be conducting the projects in “good faith,” said knowledge could be used against the indigenous peoples in the future.

We hereby demand that Peter Herlihy honor his promise of transparency and that the Mexican public be made aware all his sources of funding and the institutions that received information on findings obtained in the communities.

We further demand that, in light of these facts, the Mexican Government, firstly the Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources for having financed part of the research, as well as the Department of Internal Affairs, the Department of External Affairs, Deputies and Senators for possible violations of the Indigenous Peoples’ National Sovereignty and Autonomy, clarify its position on the matter. (UNOSJO 2009)

Two months later, the community of San Miguel Tiltepec, Oaxaca, released another statement condemning the project. This text, the “Tiltepec letter,” also deserves close reading:

The citizens of the community of San Miguel Tiltepec, through our Municipal Authority and the Authority of Communal Lands, wish to present to the public our position regarding the research project called México Indígena, begun in the year 2006 and ended in July 2008, which made a map that contains names of places and other cultural and geographical information provided by people from our community.

The researchers [ . . . ] presented themselves to the General Assembly of our community. They only informed us that the goal of their research was to find out the impacts of the government program Procede on indigenous communities. They never informed us that the data they collected in our community would be given to the Foreign Military Study Office (FMSO) of the Army of the United States, nor did they inform us that this institution was one of the sources of financing for the project. Because of this, we consider that our General Assembly was tricked by the researchers, in order to draw out the information the[y] wanted.

The community did not request the research[;] it was the researchers who convinced the community to carry it out. Thus, the research was not carried out due to the community’s need, it was the researchers of the project México Indígena who designed the research method in order to collect the type of information that truly interested them. [ . . . ]

[W]e wish to express to the public [ . . . ] our complete disagreement with the research carried out in our community, since we were not properly informed of the true goals of the research, the use of the information obtained, and the sources of financing.

Our demand is to those responsible to the project México Indígena, the American [Geographical] Society, the Foreign Military Study Office of the Army of the United States, the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí and University of Kansas, as well as all the other institutions involved, about whose participation we do not have information. We demand that:

they refrain from using in any way the information they collected in our community.

they return all the information they obtained from our community.

they immediately destroy all the information they have on our community, and that they provide proof of having done so.

they immediately eliminate from the internet all the information they published regarding the research carried out in our community.

they offer us a public apology for having violated our rights as indigenous peoples, and for having violated their own norms, set out in the ethics code of the American Geographic[al] Society which they claim to respect.

Finally, we call out to the communities and indigenous peoples of Mexico and the world, for them not to be taken unawares by researchers of the Bowman expeditions, or by other researchers who only follow their interests or those of the people they represent. It is the communities and peoples themselves who should decide what they want to have researched about themselves, and who should carry it out. (Hernández and Montaño Mendoza 2009)

Within the space of three months in early 2009, geographers were thus presented with two detailed criticisms of a particular geographical research project. Clearly these letters target the “researchers of the Bowman expeditions”; yet their purview is broader, their implications profound. I think they deserve careful re-reading as commentaries on geographical research. These letters constitute extremely rare statements concerning how research should and should not be conducted from the point of view of the research subjects. Moreover they situate their critique historically and geographically (not to mention politically) by placing their critique of this particular project within a multi-scalar analysis of the research. This explains a duality in the tone of these texts, which move between precise statements about events that occurred in their communities and open-ended comments on things far beyond Sierra Juárez.⁴ Consider for instance that the five demands made in the Tiltepec letter are made not only to four institutions, but also to “all the other institutions involved, about whose participation we do not have information.” (Who or what are these “other institutions”? Do we geographers “have information” about them? Was the Association of American Geographers (AAG), for instance, “involved”?) In a general sense the letters imply or diagnose a conflict between epistemic communities, one involving institutions, conceptions of the world, and political forces—not merely the actions of a few individuals. Emphasizing these institutional and political qualities implies a strategy of de-personalizing the critique, expanding it beyond the immediate target (the “researchers of the Bowman expeditions”). Likewise the Tiltepec letter’s conclusion—a “call” to “communities [around] the world [to avoid being] taken unaware by researchers who only follow their [own] interests”—would seem to implicate, or interpellate, many geographers. It should solicit a thoughtful response.

There is much more to say about these letters, which inspired the writing of this book, but for the moment I limit myself to one final point. The final line of the first paragraph of the UNOSJO letter elegantly summarizes the critique: “What initially seemed to be a beneficial pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgement
• 1  Letters from Oaxaca
• 2  Geographers Respond: I
• 3  Geographers Respond: II
• 4  Geography Counterinsurgent
• 5  From Geopiracy to Planetarity
• 6  Eight Theses on Geopiracy
• References
• Index