"Esta carretera nos atraviesa” : indigenous girls’ body-territory mapping in the emergence of Chinese capital in the Bolivian Amazon

The geopolitical dynamics now disputed by China have been widely analyzed in a macro-structural context, rather than in the lives and bodies of those who experience their effects in an intimate way. Although the rapid expansion of Chinese finance in Latin America has attracted the attention of some academics and policy-makers, few have approached the territories themselves in which Chinese capital has settled. My research charts the experiences of indigenous women and girls from the Santa Ana de Museruna community in the Bolivian Amazon traversed by the construction of a highway financed and built by a Chinese company. Drawing from ethnographic work and feminist participatory mapping, I analyze three “body-territory” maps made by indigenous girls and their mothers about the transformations experienced with the Chinese presence in their territory. This community-based approach allows me to explore the intersections of gender, age, and race that are the subject of interest of feminist geography. Drawing on indigenous feminist theory, I analyze the situated, emotional, and embodied geographies engendered in global dynamics of power. This case informs the everyday violence, resilience, and dreams experienced by indigenous girls with Chinese capital, the emotional respatialization of their community around the company and its workers, and the fears and opportunities inscribed in and as their body-territory. I argue that these maps destabilize Bolivia’s anti-imperialist discourses complicating the “revolutionary” narratives around Chinese presence in the Amazon. Furthermore, the maps contribute nuances to understand the complexity of the Chinese presence in Latin America, and demonstrate the importance of decolonizing methodologies for the production of knowledges that contest Cartesian approaches of spatiality, corporeity, and intimate affects.