Master's Thesis

Indigenous geographies are often limited to topography and the spaces in which indigenous migrants’ traverse to the United States without analyzing memory and the negotiation of geographies that transcend topography. Mixtec indigenous geographies do not solely exist in and between spaces of migration but also are inclusive of the violent confrontations that occur on their terrains these violent acts are embedded in the memories of such conflicts amongst Mixtecs in Oaxaca, their diaspora, and Mixtec community members. Through memories of violent conflicts with the Mexican government, and the collective solidarity formed to resist state repression, the Nochixtlán Massacre of 2016 in the Mixtec region of Oaxaca provides the a bility to understand Mixtec geographies as more than terrains of migration. Through in-depth qualitative ethnographic interviews of teachers of the Sección 22 teacher's union of the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, and Mixtecs in the region as well as their diaspora, I demonstrate how Mixtec geographies expand into Mixtec collective memory , which form new terrains to resist state sanctioned violence and repression. The Mixtec indigenous peoples of the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, Mexico are engaging in place making as indigenous Mixtecs on the sites of the Nochixtlán Massacre of 2016, successively morphing their terrains as geographies of resistance despite state sanctioned police violence. I encourage geographers, and other disciplines alike, to extend their ideas of landscape beyond the topography and to encompass memory as a space of geography, within indigenous landscapes.