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Cuerpo-Territorio: A Decolonial Feminist

Geographical Method for the Study of
Embodiment

Sofia Zaragocin & Martina Angela Caretta

To cite this article: Sofia Zaragocin & Martina Angela Caretta (2020): Cuerpo-Territorio: A
Decolonial Feminist Geographical Method for the Study of Embodiment, Annals of the American
Association of Geographers, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2020.1812370

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1812370

Published online: 16 Oct 2020.

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 Cuerpo-Territorio: A Decolonial Feminist
Geographical Method for the Study of Embodiment

Sofia Zaragocin and Martina Angela Caretta†

Department of International Relations, Universidad San Francisco de Quito and Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador
†
Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University
In the context of current decolonial geographical debates calling for action-oriented approaches to changing
geographical knowledge construction, we propose cuerpo-territorio as a way to achieve this goal in
Anglophone feminist geography. In Anglophone geography, emotions and embodiment have been studied
through a range of ethnographic methods. There are intrinsic limitations of verbal and written data,
however, because sensitive emotions might be triggered by an interviewer’s questions and participants might
be reluctant to share those. Cuerpo-territorio is a distinct geographical, decolonial feminist method grounded
in the ontological unity between bodies and territories. We show how this visual, hands-on, and
participatory method can overcome these limits and bring about coproduced validated knowledge. By having
participants draw the territory on the body, knowledge is cocreated with the voices and experiences of
participants having primacy in the research process. This coconstructed knowledge is produced in an
accessible format for participants and the general public, facilitating a process of advocacy by participants
themselves. We make the case that research in Anglophone feminist geography concerning embodiment can
benefit from employing cuerpo-territorio. This article responds to the need for more practical and
methodological action toward decolonizing geography and strengthens existing literature in Anglophone
feminist, decolonial, and indigenous geographies that make the connection between embodiment and land
through the use of the cuerpo-territorio method from Latin America. Key Words: cuerpo-territorio,
decoloniality, embodiment, feminist geography, qualitative methodology.

ecoloniality is gaining momentum within reembody the relationship to land (Ramirez 2018).

D Anglophone feminist geography and feminist

geopolitics (Naylor et al. 2018; Zaragocin
2019b; G€ okarıksel et al. forthcoming). Anglophone
feminist geographers have long acknowledged ques-
tions of whiteness, eurocentrism, and imperialism
(Kobayashi and Peake 2000; Pulido 2002; Domosh
2015; Tolia and Divya 2016; G€okarıksel et al. forth-
coming). Although those debates are still pertinent,
decoloniality along with queer theory, indigenous
feminisms, and black geographies have recently been
acknowledged as the future frameworks for engage-
ment (Daigle and Sundberg 2017; Naylor et al.
2018; Zaragocin 2019b; G€okarıksel et al. forthcom-
ing). Feminist geographers working toward these
decolonial efforts ground most of their works in the
relationship between land and embodiment (Naylor
et al. 2018; Zaragocin 2019b; G€okarıksel et al. forth-
coming), making embodiment a central feature in the
discussions that propose decolonization for geography
(Hunt 2014; Naylor et al. 2018). It is proposed as a
praxis of radical accountability in settler colonial con-
texts (Daigle 2018) and a way to reconnect and
As part of this discussion, the first author of this arti-
cle has proposed a decolonized feminist geopolitics
that “opens a conversation between critical geopoli-
tics and the plurality of decolonized feminist proposals
that are introducing alternative body-land based epis-
temologies, ontologies and geopolitics” from different
parts of the globe and in particular from Latin
America (Zaragocin 2018, 203). To date, decolonial
discussions within Anglophone geography have
focused on theoretical or epistemological advance-
ments and structural developments in academia
(Esson et al. 2017; Jazeel 2017). In sum, these authors
assert that it is not enough for other epistemologies
to be included but rather that the structures that
uphold knowledge production shall be decolonized.
We are adding to this literature by proposing cuerpo-
territorio as a method that will address the need for
more practical and methodological action toward
decolonizing geography (Jazeel 2017).
Within this discussion in Anglophone feminist
geography, two elements remain undertheorized. First,
Anglophone feminist epistemology is rarely mentioned

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 0(0) 2020, pp. 1–16 # 2020 by American Association of Geographers
Initial submission, August 2019; revised submissions, December 2019, March and May 2020; final acceptance, June 2020
Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.
2 Zaragocin and Caretta
or engaged in its potential for decolonizing geographi-
cal research. Focusing on feminist epistemology facili-
tates the analysis of how knowledge construction can
be decolonized in practical terms and moves away
from turning decolonization into an empty signifier
(Tuck and Yang 2012). Second, these debates have
primarily focused on decolonial proposals within and
among actors in the Global North. Few Anglophone
geographers have engaged with Latin American decolo-
nial theory (Asher 2013; Jazeel 2017; Radcliffe 2017a;
Halvorsen 2019), and even fewer have attempted to
decolonize using Latin American critical geography
praxis by proposing a method from an existing decolo-
nial body–land epistemology in Latin America.
Accordingly, this article strives to build on the
existing decolonial debates in Anglophone feminist
geography by facilitating participatory and cocon-
structed understandings of embodiment and emo-
tions. Although our focus is on contemporary
decolonial debates, this article wishes to add to the
plethora of literature on Anglophone feminist geo-
graphical methods published since the 1970s ques-
tioning encompassing and all-knowing masculinist
universal viewpoints in traditional cartography (Rose
1993). Specifically, we focus on the relationship
between land and embodiment by proposing the
concept and method of cuerpo-territorio, which stems
from Latin American critical geography praxis.
Cuerpo-territorio can be conceptually defined as the
inseparable ontological relationship between body
and territory: What is experienced by the body is
simultaneously experienced by territory in a code-
pendent relationship. Territory is the preferred scale
of Latin American critical geography, particularly for
the Brazilian school (Halvorsen 2019). Based on the
intellectual work of Latin American critical geogra-
phers such as Milton Santos, Carlos Walter Porto
Goncalves, and Rogerio Haesbaert, Halvorsen
(2019) defined territory as the “appropriation of
space in pursuit of political projects” (794).
Halvorsen (2019) has undertaken the task of bring-
ing Latin American conceptions of territory to
Anglophone geography and in particular Western
notions of territory as a way to further decoloniality
in the field.
Territorial debates from the Latin American criti-
cal geography intellectual tradition originated from a
dominant masculinist perspective (Sundberg 2003),
with recent feminist debates on territory disrupting
this field (Ulloa 2016). Cuerpo-territorio is part of an
incipient feminist analysis of territory in Latin
America tied specifically to decolonial traditions
(Ulloa 2016). Stemming from communitarian femi-
nism, an indigenous feminist framework that super-
sedes the individual and restitutes it within a
communal subject agency, cuerpo-territorio (body ter-
ritory) is a data gathering and analytical method
consistently used in contemporary feminist circles in
the region (Paredes 2008; Cabnal 2010, 2018). In
particular, feminist collectives organized for the
defense of territory against the extractive industry
recognize the inseparable nature between the body
and the territory. This meaning has long been
asserted by indigenous ontologies of space and
decolonial understandings of the gendered body. As
a method, cuerpo-territorio prioritizes the body as the
unit of analysis of spatial dynamics, especially those
related to extractive activity and gender-based vio-
lence. Cuerpo-territorio as a concept and a method
has been used by women’s groups in Latin America
and more recently among social movements in the
Global North in three workshops within a climate
change camp in Leipzig, Germany, during the sum-
mer of 2019 (see the program at https://www.klima-
camp-leipzigerland.de/en/program/climate-camp/).
This article is the result of a two-year-long collab-
oration between two feminist geographers, one
located in Ecuador and the other located in the
United States. We met at a feminist geography con-
ference in 2017 and quickly realized that our
approaches and research interests were similar: the
gendered consequences of extractivism. The first
author was involved in collective and individual
research on women’s hydrosocial struggles against
mining in southern Ecuador, and the second author
investigated women’s water stewardship and organiz-
ing against the energy extractive industry in
Appalachia. Although we both focused on the
embodied dimensions of natural resource extraction
and misuse (Caretta et al. 2020), it quickly emerged
that we were using different methods to explore
comparable case studies. Although we both identi-
fied as feminist geographers and received our PhDs
in geography in Europe, we now belong to two dif-
ferent strands of our subdisciplines that clearly do
not overlap in scholarship. While getting acquainted
with each other’s scholarly, methodological canons,
which we could do as multilingual scholars, we real-
ized that dialogue within feminist geography was
lacking transnationally. Our discussion was also
 Cuerpo-Territorio
propelled by ongoing decolonial discussions within
our reciprocal feminist geographical circles in the
United States and Ecuador. Therefore, we recognized
that this transnational dialogue across research sites
and an uneven knowledge construction plain of
north–south was conducive to larger decolonial discus-
sions happening in contemporary critical geography.
We propose the method of cuerpo-territorio as an
opportunity to advance feminist geographers’ meth-
odological and conceptual understanding of the rela-
tions between bodies, emotions, space, and place
while also overcoming epistemological dissociation
between Anglophone and Latin American feminist
geography. By proposing this method, we aim to fur-
ther decolonize Anglophone feminist geography. In
this article, we first outline the tenets of
Anglophone feminist geography—embodiment and
the methods used to access it—followed by a review
of the concept and method of cuerpo-territorio and its
ongoing employment in Latin American geography.
Cuerpo-territorio has particular connotations at all
levels of geographical knowledge construction;
hence, we are detailing ontological, epistemological,
and methodological considerations in this article.
Through a discussion of the epistemological implica-
tions of Latin American decolonial and indigenous
communitarian feminisms, cuerpo-territorio emerges as
a decolonial feminist geographical method that can
contribute to embodiment research in feminist geog-
raphy. Decolonial praxis found in cuerpo-territorio
makes it necessarily a decolonial feminist method,
and its nuances for embodiment make it a decolonial
feminist method for Anglophone feminist geography.
Embodiment in Anglophone
Feminist Geography
Starting in the mid-1990s, several feminist geogra-
phers turned their attention to the dimension of the
body and emotions as elements that could be studied
to better understand women’s attachment and experi-
ence of space and place (Longhurst 1995; Moss 2005;
Thien 2005; Knoblauch 2012). This focus was the
result of a progression of the critique of feminist epis-
temology toward the keystone of Western positivistic
science grounded on the Cartesian dualist assumption
that rationality is distinct from and superior to emo-
tions. On the contrary, feminist geographers study
bodies and emotion to proactively disrupt a long his-
tory of research and knowledge produced as objective
3
and disembodied (Haraway 1988; Longhurst 1995;
Moss 2005; Thien 2005; Knoblauch 2012).
In Anglophone feminist geographical circles, the
concept of embodiment—that is, how lived experi-
ences are manifested in bodily sensations and emo-
tions—is used to explore emotions in research and
to incorporate individuals’ embodied experience of
emotions in the research process (Thien 2005; Lund
2012). These so-called turns in feminist geography
and geography as a whole, manifested in the refuta-
tion of the masculinist, rational, Western, Cartesian
ontology of the separation between mind and body
dualism, led to the incorporation of new terminology
into the geographer’s vocabulary: embodiment
and emotions.
Although there are several definitions, we under-
stand embodiment as lived experiences related to
identity, power, location, and materiality as person-
ally and individually known by the research partici-
pant and manifested in bodily sensations and
emotions (Moss and Dyck 2003; Lund 2012). In this
sense, the concept of embodiment builds on the ear-
lier feminist notion of situated knowledges (Haraway
1988) such as the entanglement of identity, experi-
ence, location, power, and physical bodies contribut-
ing to differently situated knowledges. Accordingly,
embodiment does have temporal, subjective, and
spatial individual variations (Longhurst, Ho, and
Johnstone 2008; Jokinen and Caretta 2016).
Embodiment in Anglophone geographical litera-
ture is often understood as the manifestation of emo-
tions in geography (Sultana 2011). In fact,
emotional geography does not explore emotions as
discrete objects (Sharp 2009; Pile 2010) but is cen-
tered around how people and places construct, articu-
late, and are affected by emotions (Ahmed 2004;
Sultana 2011; Perreault 2018). According to feminist
geographers, emotions are not “individualized human
subjectivities” but instead are embodied, relational,
and situated experiences that are intersubjective and
coproduced (Sultana 2011).
Embodiment has been used in multiple contexts
in geography. We present some examples from femi-
nist political ecology and feminist geopolitics.
Bringing emotional geography to political ecology,
Sultana (2011) examined the way in which water
contamination is lived as everyday emotional strug-
gles, and how narratives of gendered emotional suf-
fering are used to increase water access. Both
Sultana (2011) and Harris (2015) showed the
4 Zaragocin and Caretta
emotions and struggles produced in women by the
use of contaminated water and how this, in turn,
triggers emotional worries about health and physical
long-term health impacts. Finally, water contamina-
tion is known and embodied physically and emotion-
ally by the women in terms of power and suffering.
Along the same lines, Perreault (2018) studied
embodiment in the context of mining and water
contamination in Bolivia. He brought forward the
notion that pollution is manifested in both bodies
and in geographic memories, which creates embod-
ied and emotional suffering. In a previous work,
Perreault (2013) analyzed the role that toxic accu-
mulation in water played, through embodiment, in
dispossessing the local population of water and land.
Drawing on Harvey’s theory of accumulation by dis-
possession, Perreault claimed that the accumulation
of pollution in water triggers individuals to leave
previously usable land and to migrate toward urban
centers and “proletarianization” (Perreault 2013). In
line with the feminist imperative that the “personal
is political” (Nelson and Seager 2005, 2), attention
to embodiment is a deliberate political act to explore
private, or intimate, bodily and homely dimensions
of everyday life (Moss and Dyck 2003). By connect-
ing the body and home, often considered private
and small scale to the issues of the nation and geo-
politics, feminist geographers consistently and delib-
erately subvert engrained understandings of what is
politically important in geography and bring to the
forefront the scale of the body (Smith 2012; Massaro
and Williams 2013). For instance, Pain and Smith
(2008) explored how fear and risk are experienced
and manifested through emotional geographies at
the individual level, and Koopman (2011) studied
embodied and enacted alter-geopolitics in response
to states’ domination. The methodological approach
of feminist geopolitics and feminist political ecology,
however, is grounded on a fundamental Western
ontological understanding of the body and the envi-
ronment as two (Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter, and
Wangari 1996; Mollett and Faria 2013; Dixon 2016;
Sundberg 2017). Several populations, often studied
by geographers, conceptualize the two as one.
Accordingly, such methodological approaches are
not apt to gather data effectively aligned with these
populations’ understandings and lived experiences.
Moreover, feminist political ecology and feminist
geopolitics are not necessarily, or always, guided by
participatory intents. In sum, these two conceptual
frameworks and their methodological approaches are
derived from a Western vision and understanding of
research that current decolonial feminist geogra-
phy challenges.
An emerging field within Anglophone feminist
geography is a decolonial feminist geography that
emphasizes the embodiment of land in settler colo-
nial contexts (Hunt 2014; Daigle 2018; Naylor et al.
2018; Ramirez 2018; Zaragocin 2018). Embodiment
in this nascent literature calls for geographers to not
only reflect but embody the relational accountability
that their presence creates on stolen or occupied
indigenous land (Daigle 2018; Ramirez 2018).
Decolonization depends on embodiment because it
requires that geographers consider their everyday
spaces as part of a transformational and radical poli-
tics (Daigle 2018). Likewise, embodiment also allows
for a deeper comprehension of decolonization
beyond the inclusion of epistemologies or ontologies
that could easily fall onto the inclusion of the other
in geography (Hunt 2014).
This topical focus on the scale of the body and
emotions in geography has been enacted through dif-
ferent methods. Anglophone feminist geographers
rely on ethnographic methods such as observation,
autoethnography, photo and visual elicitations, inter-
views, walk-along interviews, and focus groups to
gather data on the relations between bodies, emo-
tions, space, and place (e.g., Rose, Degen, and
Basdas 2010; Sultana 2011; Billo and Hiemstra
2013; Fitzpatrick and Longley 2014). When analyz-
ing the embodied dimensions of the researcher’s
positionality and how that affected the process of
knowledge construction, feminist geographers have
relied on autoethnography (Billo and Hiemstra
2013; Fitzpatrick and Longley 2014; Jokinen and
Caretta 2016).
These methods pose questions around corporeal
sensations and feelings. Yet bodily experiences and
emotions might be uncomfortable to share for
respondents in a verbal exchange, and written text
might not help the reader fully grasp the nature of
the data as well. Using a boundary object such as a
picture or having respondents share data by drawing
during a workshop can thus help overcome the limi-
tations of these traditional ethnographic methodolo-
gies. Visual methodologies within feminist geography
have relied on a plurality of visual methods devel-
oped and interpreted at an individual level (Rose
2001). Nevertheless, as Rose (2001) pointed out,
 Cuerpo-Territorio
visual knowledge is key for critically interpreting
images. Recent Anglophone literature in feminist
geography also points to critically engaging with
visual representations, specifically with regard to rep-
resenting places affected by extractivist industry
(Spiegel 2020). In particular, Spiegel (2020) criti-
cally signaled that the majority of visual methodolo-
gies, knowledges, and practices have focused on
photographs and visual storytelling, with persistent
challenges on how to interpret images.
Body mapping, use of which is emerging in
Anglophone geography, is a method used to incorpo-
rate the dimension of the body and emotions into
data gathering (Sweet and Ortiz Escalante 2015,
2017). This method is extensively used in social
work and health research (e.g., Huss et al. 2015;
Rivas-Quarneti, Movilla-Fernandez, and Magalh~aes
2018; Klein and Milner 2019) and is a visual
method whereby the body is drawn and partici-
pants—following moderator prompts in a workshop
setting—add onto it their emotions and experiences.
This method has been used therapeutically to avoid
having participants relive sensitive or traumatic
instances by recalling them through an interview.
Using the drawing as a boundary object helps gener-
ate visual data while also having the participant
directly explain the representation of the body in
space. Through body mapping, data are coconstructed
in a participatory fashion by participants and facilita-
tors (de Jager et al. 2016). Accordingly, social justice
and ethical principles underpin this methodology, the
goal of which is to propel participants’ firsthand nar-
ratives and bodies who are often disenfranchised,
oppressed, and hence invisible (Rice et al. 2015).
Additionally, because data are created through a joint,
lengthy, and reflexive process and are produced in a
format that can more easily be disseminated and shared
back to the originating community, body mapping
reflects its feminist, postcolonial, epistemological foun-
dations (de Jager et al. 2016). Importantly, body map-
ping can facilitate advocacy. For instance, it has been
used to illuminate the disproportionate way in which
poor Africans are affected by HIV as a means to trigger
social and political change (Horne 2011). In fact, cop-
roducing knowledge with participants in a format that
is more easily disseminated and understood by the
wider public created pressure for politicians to enact
affordable medication programs (MacGregor 2009).
Sweet and Ortiz Escalante (2015, 2017) brought
body mapping into geography by looking at women’s
5
bodies in both public and private spaces in the
United States and Mexico to inform better city
planning geared toward the reduction of gender-
based violence in cities. Body mapping is presented
as a creative methodological tool that can encourage
participation in research of marginalized and immi-
grant populations by overcoming language barriers
and hierarchical relationships. Their work, which
explicitly refers to the indigenous concept of terri-
torio cuerpo-tierra, focused on the urban space and
the notion of safety, which they argued is aimed at
developing further visceral geography by integrating
participants’ bodily engagement with space in
research to deepen “analysis and understandings of
social issues” (Sweet and Ortiz Escalante 2017, 597).
This seminal work is meaningful because it
presents the first attempt to introduce the body
through a visual, hands-on, and participatory method
in geography while incorporating a Latin American
understanding of body and space as a continuum.
Nevertheless, enacting the decolonial practice of
feminist politics of translocation in feminist geog-
raphy makes the application of cuerpo-territorio a
more complex endeavor. When the method and
the concept of cuerpo-territorio travel from south to
north and vice versa through the bodies of femi-
nist geographers situated in these spaces, a differ-
ent appreciation and analysis of the term occurs.
Distinct forms of accountability arise, particularly
as one of us is part of the collective putting into
practice this method in Latin America, and we are
both engaging in constant flows of transnational dia-
logue and practice. These dynamics influence how we
interpret the importance and relevance of this
method. As the following section suggests, there are
important questions related to space derived from
indigenous communitarian feminism that remains to
be engaged with.
Cuerpo-Territorio in Latin American
Feminist Geography
What is distinctive of cuerpo-territorio is that it
derives from other feminisms occurring in Latin
America, such as communitarian feminisms (Paredes
2008; Cabnal 2010, 2018), indigenous feminisms
(Cruz 2017), and Latin American decolonial femi-
nisms (Espinosa, Gomez, and Mun ~ oz 2014). These
are feminist conceptual frameworks that decolonize
Latin American feminisms and, when contextualized
6 Zaragocin and Caretta
within Latin American geography, also disrupt domi-
nant masculinist frameworks. Prominent indigenous
feminist intellectuals Cabnal and Paredes have
developed communitarian feminisms within feminist
collective processes such as Mujeres Creando
(Bolivia) and TZKAT Red de Sanadoras Ancestrales del
Feminismo Comunitario (Guatemala). Communitarian
feminisms place the community central to feminist
political agency, replacing the primacy of the individ-
ual female body. In fact, communitarian feminisms
reject gender equality as a Western feminist construct
based on the individual female subject by promoting
the idea of communitarian feminisms whereby the
community creates gender equity from ancestral gen-
der systems (Paredes 2008; Cabnal 2010, 2018). It is
within this feminist framework that cuerpo-territorio
evolves with the central claim that there is no onto-
logical difference between territory and the body.
Hence, what is done to the body is done to the terri-
tory and vice versa.
Communitarian feminism frameworks have been
used to exemplify this in relation to the extractive
industry, monocultures, and agrobusiness (Paredes
2008; Cabnal 2010, 2018; Ojeda et al. 2015; Ulloa
2016). When territory—including water—is contam-
inated, so is the body, creating an inseparable con-
nection between space and body. For instance,
Cabnal (2018) linked the intensification of physical
violence against indigenous women to the extractive
industry’s contamination of ancestral land, which
also had negative consequences in terms of the
health of indigenous women’s bodies. Cuerpo-terri-
torio as a concept and a method hence becomes a
feminist means to diagnose territorial conflicts and
to initiate healing of bodies and territory. An exam-
ple of healing is Cabnal’s visit to Ecuador in 2017.
She, along with other women leaders in defense of
territory from all over the country, carried out what
is locally known as a toxi-tour. This toxi-tour was a
circuit of oil spillage and contamination sites orga-
nized by the leading environmental nongovernmen-
tal organization Accion Ecologica in the province of
Sucumbios, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. At each oil
spillage site, the healing ceremony consisted of
Cabnal and a dozen Ecuadorian women leaders—
mainly indigenous, black, or farmers—lighting a
small fire and burning incense while talking to the
territory. Throughout the toxi-tour, Cabnal often
repeated this central idea: If our bodies are contami-
nated, so is territory, and so the solution is healing
one to heal the other (Cabnal 2018). Likewise, the
first author and the other women present partook in
healing their bodies as a means to healing the terri-
tory by giving massages to one another at a nearby
nongovernmental organization, whose territory repre-
sents the last parcels of protected Amazon
cloud forests.
Conceptually, communitarian feminisms and
cuerpo-territorio have been paramount in contempo-
rary feminist epistemological debates in Latin
America for two reasons: (1) the importance of femi-
nist collective praxis and spaces and (2) the episte-
mological turn implicit in Latin American
decolonial feminism. This implicit turn refers to the
formation of a framework that has questioned the
epistemological foundations of liberal, white
Western feminisms upheld within Latin American
feminism (Curiel 2007; Mendoza 2010; Millan 2014;
Espinosa, Gomez, and Mun ~oz 2014). Instead, Latin
American decolonial feminism proposes prioritizing
indigenous, Afro-descendent, diasporic, and other
subaltern epistemologies from the geopolitical place
of the Abya Yala (Cabezas 2012; Espinosa, Gomez,
and Mun ~oz 2014; Ulloa 2016; Cruz 2017; Zaragocin
2017), which is the preconquest territory of present-
day South America.
The conceptual discussion aforementioned on
cuerpo-territorio is crucial for understanding its
decolonial potential as a method. Cuerpo-territorio is
a feminist body mapping exercise that can be done
on an individual or collective basis in a workshop
setting (talleres). This method is aimed at spurring
collective knowledge grounded in the participants’
lived experiences of contamination and oppression
with the political purpose of denouncing state-spon-
sored extractive activities and has been primarily
used as a form of feminist cartography in the context
of gendered resistance to extractivism (Cruz 2017).
Because the first author is part of the Critical
Geography Collective of Ecuador, we build on
already existing decolonial feminist praxis in Latin
America such as collective, political feminist spaces
focused on issues of territory and critical geography
perspectives as Miradas Criticas Feministas Sobre el
Territorio (Critical Feminist Viewpoints on Territory;
Uruguay, Mexico, Ecuador), Colectivo Geografıa
Crıtica del Ecuador (Critical Geography Collective
of Ecuador; Ecuador), Geobrujas (Geowitches;
Mexico), and Cartografia del Sur (Cartography of
the South; Colombia). The gendered consequences
 Cuerpo-Territorio
of extractivism are an important element of these
collectives’ agendas, in part because of the need to
move beyond this extractive economic model in
the region.
Feminist collective praxis and spaces where com-
munitarian feminisms evolved through the praxis of
cuerpo-territorio have been taken up by other feminist
collectives in the region. The first author recently
attended a Latin American feminist geography semi-
nar in November 2019 in Tandil, Argentina. As
part of a roundtable on feminist geography collec-
tives during the seminar, she noticed how all of the
feminist geography collectives present were using the
cuerpo-territorio method. All of these collectives use
and advance the conceptual and methodological
applications of cuerpo-territorio and promote ideas of
communitarian feminisms via collective praxis and
authorship. For example, the Critical Geography
Collective of Ecuador, an autonomous interdisciplin-
ary group that pursues territorial resistance through a
wide range of sociospatial geographical methodolo-
gies, has used cuerpo-territorio in several instances to
further understand the gendered consequences of
extractivism and its relationship to different forms of
gender-based violence (Bayon and Torres 2019).
Likewise, Cruz’s (2017) work on cuerpo-territorio,
inspired by her belonging to the Miradas Crıticas
Feministas Sobre el Territorio collective, highlights
the lack of a single definition of cuerpo-territorio and
summarizes it as a Latin American and Caribbean
epistemology developed by indigenous women and
based on communitarian feminisms that prioritize
the political agency of the collective over the indi-
vidual. Accordingly, cuerpo-territorio is also used by
organized indigenous women in defense of their ter-
ritories and other diverse women in their territorial
struggles (Cruz 2017).
Workshops grounded in popular education per-
spectives prioritize knowledge from the body and the
experience of the body. Cuerpo-territorio workshops
are carried out after a warmup exercise from the the-
ater of the oppressed (Colectiva Miradas Crıticas del
Territorio desde el Feminismo 2017). Cuerpo-terri-
torio is not a set toolbox imposed on others but
rather is generated through flexible, place-specific,
and popular education techniques (Colectiva
Miradas Criticas del Territorio desde el Feminismo
2017). Because this method is employed by feminist
collectives whose work focuses on relating gender-
based violence and gendered resistance to the
7
extractive industry, it questions and triggers concern
where gender-based violence has occurred in the ter-
ritory and then locates where this violence is felt on
the body. In the workshop, participants draw a body
that can represent themselves individually or as a
collective. Then, contrary to traditional participatory
body mapping methods, whereby bodies are drawn
on territory, territory is drawn on the body as a ves-
sel to understand and highlight what is going on
inside the body. The core idea of the cuerpo-territorio
method is to map out territory made up of different
places onto the body map. In response to questions
asked by the facilitator or a group of facilitators, par-
ticipants depict different places on the body map
and relate them to their lived emotions. At the end
of the mapping exercise, each participant or groups
of participants is asked to share their embodied
experiences and emotions with the entire group as a
means to generate collective knowledge and result-
ing praxis.
In southern Ecuador, where women’s collectives
are fighting large-scale mining, they were asked by
the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador to
draw on the body maps where they felt mining
activity was affecting their bodies and consequently
what their emotional and physical reactions were to
that activity. The embodied experience to extractive
industry and its relationship to different forms of
gender-based violence are in turn drawn and repre-
sented on the body map. The result was a body map
that showed the extractive industry being felt on the
body and the emotions that this activity triggered.
Following this, the body maps were printed into lam-
inated signs, used in a protest march, and presented
in front of the municipality and courthouse where a
provincial decision was to be made on mining activ-
ity in their territories (Figure 1).
Recently, the Federacion de Mujeres de
Sucumbios, a leading women’s organization on the
Ecuador–Colombia border, approached the Critical
Geography collective for an analysis that could
demonstrate how mining activity intersected with
women’s health problems. It was through the
employment of cuerpo-territorio that, when asked
where they felt oil drilling activity on their bodies,
women shared issues of urinary tract infections.
Accordingly, when asked what they felt when they
saw an oil extraction site, they pointed to pain in
their hearts and confusion in their minds. To facili-
tate this exercise, the women were asked to point
8 Zaragocin and Caretta

Figure 1. Body maps shown in front of the courthouse. Photo by the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador (2018).

out with sticky notes where on their body they felt positioned on the body map and then both emotions
the results of a certain extractivist activity and the and territory were placed on their drawings. In this
emotions that correspond to these particular places example, both territorial activity and emotions were
on their bodies. The sticky notes were then drawn out on the bodies (Figure 2).
 Cuerpo-Territorio
Figure 2. Body map developed in Sucumbios, Ecuador. Photo by
the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador (2018).
Figure 3. Assembled individual body maps. Photo by the Critical Geography Collective of Ecuador (2018).
9
Often women participants will stress the impor-
tance of the cuerpo-territorio methodology because it
creates a collective narrative from their embodied
experiences. For example, at the end of the cuerpo-ter-
ritorio workshops all of the body maps were put
together and participants circled around them, noting
similarities and differences concerning their bodily
experiences of the extractive industry (Figure 3).
Collective reflections are important and, depend-
ing on the group, might build on individual draw-
ings on the body, or the bodies might reflect
communities. In some versions of the cuerpo-terri-
torio method, the body symbolizes larger groups of
people and not necessarily individuals. Given that
the theoretical base of this method is communitar-
ian feminisms, reflections at the collective scale are
prioritized. Women who partook in these work-
shops often note how extractive industry breaks
down the social fabric, particularly among women
themselves. Hence, sharing how their bodies expe-
rience the effects of extractive industry creates a
common narrative that might have otherwise
been obscured. Focusing on indigenous women
experiencing extractive industry through multisca-
lar violence and patriarchy, cuerpo-territorio allows
for the decolonization of feminist geography by
enacting data collection that is aligned with local
ontologies instead of grounding it on foreign schol-
arly concepts.
10 Zaragocin and Caretta
Discussion
In this article, we engage with Latin American
feminist and critical geography collectives and dis-
cussions to propose a Latin American feminist
method (cuerpo-territorio) onto Anglophone, femi-
nist, decolonial discussions of embodiment. Similar
to what decolonial feminist and indigenous scholars
are proposing for Anglophone geography with regard
to the role of embodiment for further decolonization,
Latin American communitarian feminists ground
their methodological and analytical approach on the
ontological and dialectal relationship between body
and territory. Cuerpo-territorio proposes the ontologi-
cal unity between bodies and territories, whereas
Anglophone feminist, decolonial, and indigenous
geographers are promoting an embodied relationship
to land (Hunt 2014; Daigle 2018; Naylor et al.
2018; Ramirez 2018). Both proposals are decolonial
and feminist and are developed from indigenous
frameworks to argue for an embodiment of territory
in the Latin American context and land in settler
colonial contexts in the Global North. Despite these
advances, Anglophone feminist geography still vastly
understands space and body as ontologically separate.
This article strengthens existing literature in
Anglophone feminist, decolonial, and indigenous
geographies that are making the connection between
embodiment and land through the use of the cuerpo-
territorio method from Latin America. It also
responds to the need for more practical and method-
ological action toward decolonizing geography
(Jazeel 2017).
Contemporary discussions on the decolonial turn
in geographical knowledge construction in
Anglophone critical geography point to a delinking
from Western epistemologies in favor of indigenous,
black, and subaltern worldviews (Jazeel 2017;
Radcliffe 2017a; Oslender 2019). Recent discussions,
however, have also pointed to the need to not only
include other epistemologies but to promote struc-
tural changes within academia, such as funding,
access to journals, and other practical ways of mate-
rializing decoloniality (Esson et al. 2017). Along
these lines, this article proposes further engagement
with feminist concepts and methods outside of
Anglophone feminist geography. By proposing
cuerpo-territorio, we return to a central question
posed by feminist geographers concerning the rela-
tionship between context and methodology. Cuerpo-
territorio presents an opportunity for Anglophone
feminist geography to explicitly address the scale of
the body methodologically through data collection
and validation via a participatory, hands-on, and
visual method. We argue that prioritizing this scale
is something that both Latin American feminist
geography and feminist debates on the territory have
in common. Our conceptual and field experiences
speak to this.
The first author is involved with feminist and
critical geography collectives in Ecuador where she
came in contact with members of the Colectiva
Miradas Criticas Feministas al Territorio and their
proposal of the cuerpo-territorio method. Her own
political-militant participation in the Critical
Geography Collective of Ecuador, which for the first
time in April 2019 brought together all of the differ-
ent collectives in the region, made her acutely aware
of how cuerpo-territorio has been traveling within
Latin America, particularly among collective
research activists’ circles. Adding to this is her own
transnational migration experience from a very
young age, which triggered her interest in engaging
with Anglophone feminist geography. Notably, dur-
ing the writing of this article, she was invited to
attend the climate change camp in Leipzig,
Germany (see https://www.klimacamp-leipzigerland.
de/en/program/climate-camp/), where she employed
the cuerpo-territorio method to draw out embodiment
of environmental racism among white Germans. To
her surprise, two other workshops at the climate
change camp used the cuerpo-territorio method,
acknowledging its Latin American origin.
The second author has long been familiar with
the language of embodiment, resulting from the
emotional turn in Anglophone geography. Yet, she
has been continuously frustrated by the impossibility
of conveying emotional and embodied experience of
environmental pollution and exploitation through a
semistructured interview. Asking questions about the
embodied reactions and feelings that people experi-
enced in mined and fracked Appalachia often have
not yielded any significant or explicit result.
Participants have been at a loss for words and at
times become very silent, depressed, and sad when
asked about how the environment around them has
changed and what their perceptions of the water
they bathe in or drink are. Moreover, women
research participants often described visceral connec-
tions with the water and nature that a Western
ontological perspective could not be reconciled with
 Cuerpo-Territorio
(Caretta et al. 2020). Women environmental acti-
vists often convey a sense of being one with their
surroundings that informs their embodied sense of
self and identity. Words were often not enough to
capture these data, which tended to be strapped by
the routines of an interview guide. Accordingly, the
second author has struggled to find a method that
can overcome these barriers (Caretta et al. 2020).
She has also received pushback from peer reviewers
questioning the validity of her data and the actual
ability of her chosen methods to address the scale of
the body. After meeting the first author, traveling to
Ecuador, learning about cuerpo-territorio, and seeing
firsthand the comparable dimensions of the extrac-
tive industry across the American continent
(Caretta et al. 2020), she will apply this method
moving forward to her research site.
Cuerpo-territorio offers an opportunity to overcome
this methodological impasse in the study of embodi-
ment in Anglophone feminist geography through its
participatory and visual approach and its explicit
ontological grounding in the unity of body and
space. Moreover, its origins in indigenous communi-
tarian feminisms, whose ontology spurs the notion of
an inseparable relationship between body and terri-
tory, suggest that feminist methods can contemporar-
ily result from feminist epistemologies originating
elsewhere as those of Latin America. As the second
author’s propensity to employ cuerpo-territorio in
Appalachia shows, we contend that feminist geo-
graphical practice can gain creative potential when it
is responsive to other spatial epistemologies, in this
way responding to an earlier call to further feminist
debates outside the discipline (Moss 2005) by proac-
tively decolonizing Anglophone feminist geography.
Given the intrinsic relationship between research
questions and methods chosen for any research topic
(Moss 2005), the analytical project of feminist geog-
raphy is expanded when taking into account
decolonized feminist theories and politics. That is,
what aspects of the contexts we are engaged with
from a feminist politics influence our feminist meth-
odologies (Jenkins, Verity, and Dixon 2003). For
feminist methodologies to exist, they must originate
within feminist theory and feminist politics (Moss
2005). Politicizing methodology through feminisms
(Moss 2005) has often been the way of assuring that
a methodology is feminist. How about when it is
politicized through a decolonized feminist politics?
Our response is that decolonizing feminist
11
geographical theory can result in new feminist meth-
ods in line with indigenous and decolonized method-
ologies (Oslender 2019). This approach has certain
implications for how we do gender and feminist
geographies (McDowell 1992). Harding (1987) has
often been cited for the importance of understanding
the difference between feminist epistemology, meth-
odology, and method, suggesting that we must
understand these in successive order for any given
research project. Conversely, in the case of cuerpo-
territorio, by recognizing its potential as a decolonial
feminist geographical method we are working back-
ward; that is, discussions on methods and their
potential implications for feminist geographic meth-
odology and epistemology. Often, debates on decolo-
nizing critical geography theory and praxis focus on
epistemology and pluralizing our spatial ontologies
(Hunt 2014). In this article, we argue for the need to
focus on working up from cuerpo-territorio, a distinct
geographical decolonial feminist method, when study-
ing the relations between the body and space. To
further this point, we must be aware of how cuerpo-
territorio is a decolonial feminist geographical method.
In what follows, we highlight the lineage of the
cuerpo-territorio method as part of Latin American
decolonial feminisms theory and embedded in con-
temporary Latin American critical geography praxis.
A common political stance among Latin
American feminist collectives is mi cuerpo como
primer territorio, or “my/our bodies as the first terri-
tory” (Millan 2017, 158). This statement is used in
several feminist political struggles, ranging from the
decriminalization of abortion to the gendered forms
of resistance to extractive industry. In honoring the
body as a territory and, as a first territory, what is
prioritized by cuerpo-territorio is both the lived expe-
riences of and the emotional attachments to place.
Each participant, or group, recognizes where in her
body feelings are experienced or remembered in rela-
tion to their everyday place and space and then
draws on the body map to reflect on this representa-
tion. Starting from the body and depicting space and
place onto it effectively inverts the usual map pro-
duction of drawing figurines onto a map. By revers-
ing this praxis, cuerpo-territorio questions even the
most critical mapping methods found within Latin
American social cartography methods focusing on
community mapping (see Iconoclastas at https://
www.iconoclasistas.net/) because it emphasizes bodies
over territorial space. By placing racialized bodies at
12 Zaragocin and Caretta
the forefront of creating other spatial ontologies
from place-based epistemologies, this method is a
way to decolonize geographical and feminist geo-
graphical knowledge construction. As Cruz (2017)
highlighted, cuerpo-territorio has gained traction in
Latin America because of its decolonial emphasis on
knowledge construction derived from indigenous
women’s worldviews. Racialized bodies become the
protagonists in depicting their everyday space at
multiple scales, such as the home, their community,
and the state, making their bodies manifestations of
embodied resistance or harm, for instance. Body
maps thus become political artifacts as the embodied
representations of mining on the bodies of women
make apparent how natural resource extraction
affects bodies and communities. In this way, it fol-
lows the conceptual intentions of fields like feminist
geopolitics, in providing a specific method that
emplaces the body as the first scale from which to
shape a multiscalar analysis.
In sum, cuerpo-territorio is a decolonized and
decolonizing feminist method that prioritizes the
body over national, official space and accounts and
is used to denounce, for instance, the extractive
industry, gender-based violence, or the relationship
between them. We reiterate: A cartographic feminist
method generated outside Anglocentric feminist
geography is only possible when decolonizing geo-
graphical knowledge construction. This process hap-
pens by prioritizing collective knowledge, which is
gaining significant traction in Latin American criti-
cal geography circles through the work and function-
ing of collectives (Zaragocin 2019c). In these circles,
cuerpo-territorio is used as a concept and the method
is prioritized as an important political feminist praxis
of the moment, creating a common discourse among
feminist collectives focused on issues of territory,
gender-based violence, and extraction. By proposing
the use of method and concept derived from indige-
nous women’s epistemologies and spatial ontologies
and translocating it onto Western discussions of the
body, we argue that cuerpo-territorio can also become
a decolonized feminist geography method in
Anglophone feminist geography that furthers already
existing conceptual discussions on decolonization
proposals concerning embodiment and land resis-
tance (Daigle 2018). Moreover, our proposal of
cuerpo-territorio, a concept that has traveled from the
south to the north, contributes to the current propo-
sition of the decolonial turn in Anglophone
geography, which has been to delink from Western,
white, and Global North epistemologies to engage
with subaltern ones (Jazeel 2017; Radcliffe 2017b).
Additionally, the employment of cuerpo-territorio in
Latin America questions emerging Latin American
feminist geography and more established critical
geography narratives. In fact, feminist geography in
Latin America revolves around Anglophone texts,
resulting in a prioritization of Western theory of crit-
ical geography (Zaragocin 2019a). A few feminist
geographers are engaging directly with Latin
American decolonial feminist theory (Cruz 2017)
such as cuerpo-territorio, effectively decolonizing femi-
nist geography within the region.
We are proposing the method of cuerpo-territorio
in the context of Anglophone feminist geography to
contribute to the study of embodiment. When study-
ing the body and emotions in space and place, data
have been traditionally gathered through a range of
ethnographic methods such as interviews and focus
groups. There are intrinsic limitations of verbal and
written data, however, when the goal is to study
feelings and corporeal experiences. Sensitive emo-
tions might be triggered by an interviewer’s ques-
tions, and participants might be reluctant to share
those. We argue that a visual, hands-on, and partici-
patory method can overcome these limits and bring
about coproduced validated knowledge. By having
participants draw the territory on the body, knowl-
edge is cocreated, with the voices and experiences of
participants having primacy in the research process.
Importantly, the coconstructed knowledge is in an
accessible format for participants and the general
public, facilitating a process of advocacy by partici-
pants themselves. Hence, we make the case that
research in Anglophone feminist geography concern-
ing embodiment can benefit from employing the
cuerpo-territorio method. This method adds to body
mapping, the employment of which by feminist
geographers is seminal (Sweet and Ortiz Escalante
2015, 2017), by directly engaging with the everyday
embodied and lived realities of participants.
Anglophone feminist geography has built its identity
and faith on bringing to the forefront the spatial,
everyday, lived experiences of disenfranchised
groups. Yet, this goal has often been reached with
methods that do not align with the ontological fore-
grounding of the participants’ population (cf.
Kindon, Pain, and Kesby 2007). Cuerpo-territorio can
respond to this divide, because it is explicitly used
 Cuerpo-Territorio
with the goal of political and social engagement while
being profoundly feminist and, because of its commit-
ment to local, embodied, and indigenous ontologies,
decolonial. Our hope is that making the case for a
decolonized feminist geography in Anglophone femi-
nist geography will influence how cuerpo-territorio con-
tinues to propel a decolonial turn within critical
geography in Latin America, as well as the decolonial
turn in Anglophone geography.
Conclusion
Bringing feminist epistemological questions from
Anglo-centric literature in relation to Latin American
decolonial feminism, through a transnational dialogue
between us, two feminist geographers, we try to untan-
gle this question by enacting a decolonized politics of
translocation by acknowledging how theory is changed
through how our bodies travel across unequal plains of
knowledge construction. We argue that there is a fem-
inist geography method that can contribute to the
study of embodiment but take one step further to pro-
pose a decolonial feminist geographical method, that
of cuerpo-territorio. In this way, we are returning to
central feminist epistemological questions but with
decolonial feminist geographical lenses drawing from
the ongoing engagement with decolonial feminisms in
Latin America (Naylor et al. 2018; Zaragocin 2019a).
In bringing this discussion to Anglophone feminist
geography, we are partaking in new forms of decolo-
nizing feminist geography across scales through pro-
cesses of decolonized translocation of feminist
geographical theory (Zaragocin forthcoming).
Proposing cuerpo-territorio as a decolonial feminist
geographical method for the study of embodiment,
body, and territory provides several insights for
Anglophone feminist geography. We are introducing
cuerpo-territorio in transnational debates on feminist
geographical methodologies while making the case that
we can understand cuerpo-territorio as a decolonial femi-
nist geographical method for the study of embodiment.
We have done this in the following three ways. First,
we engage with existing decolonization debates within
Anglophone critical geography that emphasize embodi-
ment and land (Hunt 2014; Daigle 2018; Ramirez
2018). We do this by proposing a particular method
grounded in a distinct relationship between body and
territory. In this sense, the method of cuerpo-territorio
decolonizes the field because it demands an engage-
ment with decolonized feminist politics and the Latin
13
American epistemological proposals of decolonial femi-
nisms and indigenous communitarian feminist outside
of Western dominant feminist frameworks. Second, we
suggest that cuerpo-territorio is in fact a feminist method,
not just a conventional method that is made feminist.
Cuerpo-territorio is a feminist method and a decolonized
and decolonizing method for feminist geography
because it stems from an indigenous communitarian
feminist concept. It is also a method that prioritizes the
body as the most important scale from which to derive
information and reflections on space. Embodiment of
extractive industry and the emotional attachments and
corporeal experiences of these phenomena emerge
through this method. Third, most debates on decoloniz-
ing Anglophone critical geography focus on pluralizing
epistemologies in geographical knowledge construction
(Jazeel 2017; Naylor et al. 2018). Here, we contend
that methods can pave the way to further decolonize
geography. The importance of collective and communi-
tarian knowledge construction must be further empha-
sized, because it also connects with existing debates on
radical accountability (Daigle 2018). The latter empha-
sizes the need for researchers to acknowledge their role
within settler colonialism, meaning where our research
fits in sustaining ongoing forms of coloniality. We have
engaged in a transnational account of radical account-
ability. As members of the feminist collective processes
of territorial reflections occurring in Latin America
from praxis and militant activity and feminist geogra-
phers whose work has been guided by the ethics of par-
ticipation and dissemination back to originating
communities (Caretta 2018; Caretta and Cheptum
2019), by writing this piece we have engaged in a
transnational dialogue from a feminist politics of a
decolonized translocation of feminist geography. Theory
traveling through and from our bodies has been crucial
in developing the reflections that have shaped this arti-
cle. We call for fellow feminist geographers to widen
their networks, beyond Anglophone geography, to
decolonize our discipline by opening up to learning and
engaging with different ontologies to do feminist geog-
raphy coming from different geographies to expand our
subfield’s analytical repertoire.
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Virginia University Press.
SOFIA ZARAGOCIN is an Assistant Professor in
the Department of International Relations at
Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Quito 170901,
Ecuador. E-mail: szaragocin@usfq.edu.ec. Her primary
research interests are decolonial feminist geography
and processes of racialization of space. She has writ-
ten on geographies of settler colonialism along Latin
American borderlands and collective feminist geog-
raphy dynamics in Ecuador. Her most recent
research looks at engaging Latin American critical
feminist geography with U.S.-based Latinx and black
geographies.
MARTINA ANGELA CARETTA is an Assistant
Professor in Geography in the Department of
Geology and Geography at West Virginia
University, Morgantown, WV 26506. E-mail:
martina.caretta@mail.wvu.edu. Her most recent
research revolves around the gendered embodied
dimensions of natural resource extraction and how
those are manifested through water pollution and
scarcity. She is also concerned with the gendered
impacts of the neoliberal academia, specifically focus-
ing on mentoring and support practices among junior
geography faculty.