Claudia Leal, "Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia" (U Arizona Press, 2018)

New Books in African American Studies · Sep 23, 2019 · 1h 6m

Claudia Leal’s Landscapes of Freedom: Building a Postemancipation Society in the Rainforests of Western Colombia (University of Arizona Press, 2018), narrates the unknown history of the transition from slavery to freedom in the Pacific lowlands of Colombia. Not only does Leal centers a region long neglected in histories of Colombia—and more generally in histories of slavery and manumission in Latin America—but she also asks us to use this case to understand the centrality of the environment in any historical account. According to Leal, the particularities of the environment of the Pacific…