Flora Endémica. Narrativas geológicas y reescritura para desmontar una mirada colonial del territorio.
Abstract
Endemic flora presents an exercise in rewriting and visual montage aimed at dismantling the colonial gaze over the territory of southern Veracruz. Drawing on the nineteenth-century account of Mathieu de Fossey and his exoticizing description of the port of Coatzacoalcos, the text weaves together archival materials, photography, drawing, and personal memory to resignify the relationship between identity, territory, and local flora. In dialogue with Cristina Rivera Garza’s concepts of geological writing and desedimentation, the essay explores the historical layers that shape contemporary experiences of the landscape, activating a memory that challenges persistent colonial imaginaries. The rewriting of the colonial narrative operates as a critical device that updates the past within the present and frames endemic flora as a central element of rootedness, resistance, and identity formation. The project thus proposes a reading of the territory that combines political reflection, artistic practice, and affective ties, opening possibilities for poetic and communal imagination in opposition to dominant discourses about the region. Due to the experimental nature of the text, I am attaching its deployment in a virtual space, where the essay is presented as a montage. This allows for a different reading of the document in relation to the image, which serves as its driving force: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVJlvMRvs=/Downloads
References
De Fossey, M. H. (2022). México (S. Alberro, trad. e introd.). El Colegio de México.
Fernández Polanco, A. (2022) Lectores de signos, lectores de guiños. Estudios Curatoriales, (Número especial Pensar con Imágenes), 91–111.
Ferrer Muñoz, M. (2002). La imagen del México decimonónico de los visitantes extranjeros: ¿Un Estado-nación o un mosaico plurinacional? (1.ª ed.). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas.
Ríos. (2025). Fragmentos de la lectura de llegada a Coatzacoalcos de Mathieu de Fossey [Video]. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/1134276402
Rivera Garza, C. (2019). Los muertos indóciles: Necroescrituras y desapropiación. DeBolsillo
Rivera Garza, C. (2022). Escritos geológicos. Iberoamericana
Wechsler, D. B. (2015). Todo arte es contemporáneo. Pensar con imágenes, la perspectiva curatorial. Estudios Curatoriales, (3).
Yusoff, K. (2018). A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis. University of Minnesota Press.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal accept the following conditions:
Fuentes Humanísticas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, which allows third parties to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same license as the original.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Authors may enter into other independent and additional agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the article in this journal (e.g., placing it in an institutional repository) as long as they clearly indicate that the work was first published in this journal.
