Latin America Archives

The “Deserts” of Colombia, Most of Which Are Relatively Humid, and the “Problem Climate” of the Guajira Peninsula

Article-Grid, Caribbean, Environmental Geography, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

Given that Colombia is usually considered the world’s rainiest country, with roughly 3,240 millimeters (128 inches) of average annual precipitation, I was surprised to find tourism firms advertising visits to the “Deserts of Colombia.” To be sure, Colombia does have one true desert, as defined by climatological criteria. La Guajira Desert, in the northern Guajira Peninsula of far northern Colombia, receives some 200 to 300 mm of precipitation annually. As “deserts” are often defined as areas that get less than 250 mm (9.8 inches), this area qualifies. Its cactus-filled landscapes certainly match a common American perception of what constitutes a “desert.”

As the precipitation map posted below shows, no other part of Colombia climatologically qualifies as a desert environment. The drier areas of the country, depicted in shades of light brown on map below, receive as much as 1000 mm (39 inches) of rainfall annually, a relatively high number. The brown areas around and to the northeast of Bogota are relatively wet, as they sit at high elevations and thus have cool climates with low rates of evaporation. Where then are Colombia’s other “deserts”?

This key issue here is how the English word “desert” is defined. Historically, it could refer to any uninhabited or “deserted” place, regardless of rainfall. It later came to refer to any arid or semi-arid area that had few trees. In the early and mid-19^th century, the Great Plains of the United States was often mapped as “the Great American Desert,” but it is now never regarded in such a manner. In popular usage, the term “desert” remains vague, its meaning varying with context. I once heard a story about a group of geographers from the Middle East being taken on a field trip to California’s Mojave Desert where they exclaimed, “Desert! What desert? There are shrubs and grasses everywhere. This is a lush steppe!”

The Great Plains as the “Great American Desert” map

In some contexts, areas with very little plant life can be called “deserts” regardless of how much precipitation they receive. The “volcanic deserts” of Iceland, Hawaii, and several other parts of the world fall into this category. Highly eroded landscapes underlain by soft sedimentary rocks often have bare slopes and can thus be called deserts even if they receive substantial amounts of rain. In the United States, however, the usual term for such landscapes is “badlands.” In Colombia, not surprisingly, they are called “desiertos” (deserts).

Colombia’s well-known Tatacoa Desert in Huila department is a classic example of badlands topography. As can be seen in the photo posted below, the eroded slopes are generally bare, but abundant vegetation can be seen in the background. Here one finds a tropical dry forest, or scrubland, with average annual precipitation or around 1,000 to 1,300 mm (39 to . 51 inches). Relatively high temperatures throughout the year combined with abundant sunshine contribute to the lack of vegetation in Tatacoa’s highly eroded areas.

The arid and semiarid belt of far northern South America, centered on Colombia’s Guajira Peninsula, is situated in a latitude belt and continental position that should, all other things being equal, receive much more precipitation than it does. It thus constitutes a “problem climate” as identified and analyzed by geographer Glenn Trewartha in his important 1961 book The Earth’s Problem Climates (University of Wisconsin Press). Trewartha accounted for this unusual climate by reference to: persistent northeast trade winds blowing along or across an east/west oriented coast, producing limited orographic lift over the relatively low, flat peninsula; coastal upwelling that cools sea-surface temperatures, stabilizing the lower atmosphere, reducing evaporation and suppressing convection; and the fact that the region lies to the north of the typical seasonal reach of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) for much of the year. Recent research, according to AI, also notes the “Caribbean Low-Level Jet (CLLJ), a persistent easterly wind maximum that enhances evaporation from land, transports moisture westward toward Central America (where it rains), and produces large-scale subsidence over the Guajira peninsula.”

The “Deserts” of Colombia, Most of Which Are Relatively Humid, and the “Problem Climate” of the Guajira Peninsula Read More »

Elevation and Voting in Colombia

Article-Grid, Elections, Environmental Geography, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

As I wind down the current series on the 2026 Colombian election, a brief post on elevation and the election results seems in order. Colombia has major elevation differences, with relatively densely populated areas located in both lowlands and high plateaus. To see if there is any correlation between elevation and voting patterns, I outlined the parts of the country that are over 1000 meters and then superimposed the resulting outline on the 2026 election map. I did the same with a population density map and with the country’s basic political map. This highland outline is intricate, as Colombia has three great cordilleras (mountain and plateau systems) that are separated from each other by the deep valleys of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers. In the far south, however, the three ranges essentially converge.

As can be seen on “political/elevation” map, there is essentially no relationship between elevation and voting behavior at the national level. In Colombia’s core region, highland and lowland areas alike voted for the rightwing candidate, with important exceptions noted in previous GeoCurrents posts. In far southern Colombia, in contrast, both highland and lowland areas voted for the leftwing candidate.

Colombia Departments and High-Elevation Areas Map

Colombia 2026 Election and High-Elevation Areas Map

Colombia Population Density and High-Elevation Areas Map

At the regional level, however, correlations between elevation and voting can be found. As the paired maps of Antioquia show, the department’s highlands tended to vote for the right while its lowlands tended to vote for the left. There are, again, some significant exceptions to this pattern. Although I am tempted to look into these seeming discrepancies, it is time to move on to different topics.

Antioquia Colombia: Topography and the 2026 Presidential Election

Elevation and Voting in Colombia Read More »

A Leftwing Stronghold in a Rightwing Region of Colombia: The Once-Vital Riverport of Honda and the Nearby “Red City” of Líbano (with a nod to Alexander von Humboldt)

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Elections, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

As discussed in recent GeoCurrents posts, the northern and central parts of Colombia’s Andes region – the core area of the country – voted heavily for the narrowly victorious rightwing candidate, Abelardo do le Espriella, in the 2026 election. Several important left-voting exceptions were also noted: Bogotá with its industrial “suburbs,” and indigenous-majority districts. Another cluster of left-leaning municipalities located in northeastern Tolima Department (see the map below) calls for further investigation. As it turns out, some interesting historical and geographical factors are at play here.

Let us begin with the historically important municipality of Honda. Although situated well within Colombia’s high-elevation Andes region, Honda is actually lowland town (elevation 751 feet/229 meters), as it is located in the deep valley of the Magdelena River. Although it currently has only some 25,000 residents, Honda was once one of Colombia’s most important transportation hubs. Before the early twentieth century, Bogotá had no road or railroad connections to Colombia’s Caribbean ports. Instead, people and goods had to travel up the Magdelena River to its head of navigation at Honda. Honda was connected to Bogotá by a mule road that dates to the mid-1500s. According to Wikipedia, the town’s “golden age” was between 1850 and 1910, when “all the imported goods and articles arrived in Bogotá through the port of Honda.” It has been speculated – at least by AI – that Honda’s historical connections with left-leaning Caribbean ports, particularly Barranquilla, are linked to its current leftwing voting pattern.

The old road from the river port to the capital city, the Camino Real Honda–Santa Fe de Bogotá, traversed some rough landscapes while gaining 7,923 feet/2,415 meters of elevation from its beginning to its end. The local topography and elevation differences can be seen the map posted below, which was cobbled together from two excellent Wikipedia physical maps. The route of the road is visible in the next figure posted below, which is based on a detail taken from a map of the late 19^th century.

Historical Road from Honda to Bogota map

In 1801, the great German geographer Alexander von Humboldt took an arduous canoe trip to Honda and then proceeded overland to Bogotá, where he stayed for two months. In Bogotá, von Humboldt worked with the prominent botanist and mathematician José Celestino Mutis, a key figure in the Spanish-American Enlightenment. I tried to access Humbolt’s assessments of Honda from his personal diaries, using AI as a crutch. I learned that “These emphasize practical travel difficulties, the surrounding vegetation, commerce on the river, and scientific measurements more than architectural or social details of the town.” Humboldt did note, however, that the inhabitants of Honda were “disfigured by goiters,” presumably due to iodine deficiency.

Northern Tolima, Colombia and Left-Voting Municipalities Map

Most of the other leftwing-voting municipalities of northeastern Tolima Department are located on the Magdelena River south of Honda and hence have somewhat similar historical and geographical conditions (see the map above). The exception is Líbano, a plateau town of some 36,000 inhabitants. I was initially surprised by Líbano’s leftwing election returns, as it is a coffee-growing district that was established in the mid-1800s by settlers from Antioquia Department. Today, the plateau zone of Antioquia and Colombia’s coffee-growing areas more generally are noted for their political conservatism. This is a familiar story to me, as I studied in graduate school under James Parsons, author of Antioqueño Colonization in Western Colombia (1968, University of California Press). As stated at the beginning of the book:

The temperate uplands of the northernmost Andes of western Colombia are the home of the energetic and thrifty Antioqueños, the self-styled “Yankees of South America.” They are shrewd, aggressive individualists whose extraordinary colonizing genius and vigor have made them the dominant and most clearly defined population element of the republic. Their long and effective geographical isolation in the interior highlands of Colombia is reflected in a determined conservatism and a marked cultural particularism. Being Antioqueño means more to them than being Colombian.

James Parsons Antioqueno Colonization in Colombia map

My perplexity was, however, relieved by further investigation. Líbano, it turns out, has a fascinating and unusual political history, one that still heavily influences its political orientation. As AI (Grok) performed extremely well in this instance, I will simply paste in its interpretation rather than put it in my own words:

Líbano (Tolima) has a distinctive historical tradition of radical Liberalism, early socialist/communist organizing, and lasting progressive political networks that set it apart from many nearby highland coffee-growing municipalities, which more often lean conservative or right-leaning. This explains why it backed Iván Cepeda (Pacto Histórico) in the 2026 presidential runoff while much of the surrounding area supported Abelardo de la Espriella.

Líbano was founded in the mid-19th century by Liberal settlers from Antioquia/Viejo Caldas (led by figures such as Isidro Parra). It developed as a prosperous coffee municipality in the northern cordillera of Tolima and became a known Liberal stronghold (“the Red City”). Liberal governments encouraged its growth as a party redoubt.

In July 1929, roughly 300–armed artisans, peasants, and workers (linked to the Partido Socialista Revolucionario and inspired by the Russian Revolution) briefly seized the town and nearby areas in what historians describe as one of the earliest organized communist/socialist insurrections in Latin America. It was quickly suppressed, but the episode embedded a durable local identity of agrarian radicalism, labor organizing, and left-leaning dissent. [Former] President Petro has publicly referenced the “Líbano bolchevique.” This memory continued to shape local politics and even influenced later guerrilla fronts.

During mid-20th-century partisan violence, Líbano remained a predominantly Liberal area that experienced guerrilla self-defense activity and later leftist organizing. It produced or sheltered progressive figures and retained networks tied to agrarian struggles, coffee-worker issues, and opposition to conservative dominance.

The influential Jaramillo political family (notably Alfonso Jaramillo Salazar, a longtime Liberal leader, physician, governor, congressman, and health minister, plus relatives such as Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, a Petro-era minister, and Mauricio Jaramillo) built strong local clientelist and progressive ties. In recent cycles, “jaramillismo” and Liberal factions in the area aligned with or voted for Pacto Histórico candidates rather than traditional or right-wing options. Local coverage treated Líbano as a key northern Tolima bastion for Cepeda/Pacto Histórico.

A Leftwing Stronghold in a Rightwing Region of Colombia: The Once-Vital Riverport of Honda and the Nearby “Red City” of Líbano (with a nod to Alexander von Humboldt) Read More »

The Indigenous Vote in Colombia’s 2026 Presidential Election

Article-Grid, Elections, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

The electoral geography of Colombia follows a modified “core/periphery” pattern, one in which the central region of the country tends to vote for rightwing candidates while the outer areas tend to favor leftwing candidates. As the previous GeoCurrents post showed, racial/ethnic differences contribute to this pattern. For example, Black Colombians, who generally vote for the left, are highly concentrated in the (peripheral) Pacific region. The indigenous peoples of the country are also concentrated in peripheral areas and also vote heavily for the left.

Indigenous Colombians, who number roughly two million and constitute some 4.4 percent of the national population, have a complex distributional pattern. As the first map posted below shows, the highest indigenous percentages are found in the far-eastern lowlands of the Amazon and Orinoquía natural regions (see the second map below). In 2018, Vaupés and Guainía departments were recorded as more than 70 percent indigenous, while Vichada and Amazonas registered more than 50 percent. Relatively high indigenous percentages are also found in the Pacific region of the west, in parts of the Caribbean region of the north, and in parts of the southern highlands. La Guajira in the far north is only slightly less than 50 percent indigenous. In contrast, the north-central part of Colombia has very few indigenous inhabitants.

Departments of Colombia by Percentage in Indigenous Inhabitants Map

But although the indigenous population percentage of far eastern Colombia is high, the total number of indigenous people in the region is relatively low, as it is very sparsely populated. Vaupés Department, for example, has only some 45,000 residents. As the combined map and data set posted below shows, most indigenous Colombians live in the western half of the country, where they are concentrated in a few particular areas.

Indigenous Population by Department in Colombia map

As the pair of maps posted below shows, the highly indigenous municipalities of western Colombia supported the leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda, in the 2026 presidential election. Not coincidentally, one of the few left-voting areas in the central highlands is dominated by an indigenous group, the Pijao people. Intriguingly, as noted in Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Pijao were “thought to be extinct” in the 1950s, but in the 1990s the remaining community fought for and gained official recognition. The Pijao language, however, is no longer spoken.

Indigenous Peoples in the 2026 Colombian Election map

The electoral situation among the Zenú people of the Caribbean, the second largest Colombian indigenous community, is not clear on the maps posted above. Closer investigation of Cordoba Department, however, shows that the three core Zenú municipalities, where they form a clear majority, voted for Cepeda. But several other municipalities in the region that have large Zenú minorities or slight majorities voted for the rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella. This voting pattern reflects local differences in the rural areas of the Caribbean region of Colombia that were analyzed in previous GeoCurrents posts.

Cordoba Department Colombia Indigenous People and the 2026 Election Map

Intriguingly, in Guainía Department in far eastern Colombia, two areas* with substantial indigenous majorities voted for de la Espriella. These results, however, are probably not indicative of local political views. As can be seen in the final figure posted below, both districts have small populations and low turnouts. It seems like that most of the indigenous inhabitants of here did not, or were not able to, vote. Eastern Guainía is a very remote area with minimal infrastructure and little modernization. Even basic demographic data here is highly uncertain. Although ChatGPT and Grok provide nearly identical population figures for Puerto Colombia (1,980 and 1,971), Gemini AI (Google) gives a wide range: 1,870 to 4,700. Although far less precise, the Gemini figure could easily be more accurate.

Guainia Department Colombia Indigenous Population and the 2026 Election map

*Although Colombia’s departments are mostly divided into local administrative districts called “municipalities,” that is not the case throughout the country. As noted in the Wikipedia article on Guainía Department, “There are two municipalities in Guainía: Inírida, its capital, and Barranco Minas. The rest of the territory is subdivided in corregimientos departamentales, a pending figure due to public disorder.” Grok AI, however, tells me that the official designation of such districts has been changed to “áreas no municipalizadas” that are administered directly by the departmental government, citing a Spanish-language Wikipedia page.

The Indigenous Vote in Colombia’s 2026 Presidential Election Read More »

Afro-Colombians in the 2026 Presidential Election and Caribbean Exceptions (with a Brief Comparison with the U.S.)

Article-Grid, Elections, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

A recent GeoCurrents post suggested that race played a significant role in the 2026 Colombian presidential election. The racial factor is easily seen in the voting patterns of Black Colombians, of Afro-Colombians, who number between five and seven million, constituting some nine to 14 percent of Colombia’s population. As the map to the left in figure posted below shows, Afro-Colombians are heavily concentrated in the Pacific coastal region. As the map to the right reveals, this region voted heavily for the losing leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda. Many of the municipalities in this region are more than 80 percent Black, and almost all of them gave more than 80 percent of their votes to Cepeda. As Black Colombians have a roughly 80 percent poverty rate, it is not surprising that they favored the leftwing candidate.

Afro-Colombians and the 2026 Election Map

The correlation between Afro-Colombian identity and leftwing voting is not, however, as close as it might appear. A lack of correspondence is seen in some parts of the racially mixed Caribbean region. As can be seen on the paired maps posted below, a few heavily Black municipalities are scattered across northern Colombia. Many of them voted strongly for Cepeda, but several favored the victorious rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella. As the next map shows, the most conservative-voting Black-majority municipalities have relatively small populations and can be considered substantially rural.

Northern Colombia Black Population 2026 Election map

Northern Colombia Black Population 2026 Election map 2

Curious about the differences between Black voting patterns in the Pacific and Caribbean regions of Colombia, I queried AI (Grok) about possible explanations. The response seems convincing, at least at a superficial level:

Pacific Afro-Colombian communities (Chocó, parts of Valle/Cauca/Nariño) tend toward higher isolation, stronger ethnic/organizational identity, and alignment with left/progressive platforms addressing territorial rights, violence, and exclusion. Caribbean Afro-Colombian populations are often more integrated into mestizo-majority coastal societies, with greater influence from traditional parties, cattle/agriculture economies, and patronage networks. Group consciousness and ethnic voting are real but weaker or more conditional there.

Of the conservative-voting Black municipalities seen on the map above, Altos del Rosario is the most intriguing. Approximately 82 percent Afro-Colombian, it gave 63 percent of its votes to de la Espriella. Altos del Rosario is noted for its high poverty level (roughly 70 percent), its meager infrastructure, and its poor public services. In its 2024 mayoral election, it narrowly selected an unconventional leftist, Juan Carlos Romo Pérez, who goes by the name “Happy.” A relatively young politician, Romo Pérez is from La Guajira Department in far northern Colombia, which has a sizable indigenous population. He represents the Movimiento Alternativo Indígena y Social (MAIS), a political organization that advocates eco-leftist policies.* On gaining office, he focused on infrastructural development and quickly gained widespread support. According to AI, “a mid-2024 survey placed Romo Pérez near the top among mayors of small municipalities in the region, [with an approval rating of] around 82–83%.” In April 2026, however, he was hit with a corruption scandal. Charged with the “improper handling of public resources,” Romo Pérez was suspended from office for three months without pay.

I have a difficult time understanding how a community like Altos del Rosario could elect an eco-leftist mayor in 2024, give him strong approval, and then turn to a hardline conservative presidential candidate in 2026. Perhaps the corruption charges played a major role, but I suspect that the main factor is the differences between local and national politics, as mediated through patronage networks. But without further investigation, this is unfounded speculation.

Examining Black-majority municipalities in Colombia that voted for a rightwing presidential candidate made me wonder whether any Black-majority counties in the United States supported Donald Trump in 2024. As I am quite familiar with the two maps posted below, I initially doubted that any could be found. But after investigating the issue, I found 10 such counties, mostly located in Mississippi and Georgia. As can be seen on the next map posted below, these counties are characterized by both narrow Black majorities and narrow Trump victories. Heavy Republican voting by White residents, as would be expected in the rural South, along with low Black turnout, could easily explain these seeming discrepancies. Nationwide, moreover, roughly 15 percent of Black American voters nationwide opted for Trump in 2024. If replicated locally, such a voting pattern could easily swing a closely contested local election in his favor.

U.S. Black Majority Counties 2024 election maps

Trump-Voting Black-Majority Counties 2024 Map

The most curious Black-majority Trump-voting county Issaquena County, Mississippi, which has the largest African-American majority (62 percent) in the set. But note on the map that Issaquena gave Trump only a slight plurality of its votes, 47.6 percent. Kamela Harris essential lost the county because it gave an inordinately high percentage of its votes to third-party candidates, some on the far right, some on the far left, and others unclassifiable. Such skewed election results partly reflect the county’s very small population (1,338). Only six residents of Issaquena voted for Claudia De la Cruz of the Marxist/Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), but that still represented almost one percent of the county’s total votes.

* Main aspects of the MAIS platform include: Defense of human rights and “Mother Earth”; Transformation of socio-economic, territorial, cultural, and political structures to achieve equity, peace, and buen vivir; Unity in diversity, ancestral indigenous wisdom, environmental harmony, participatory democracy, and ethical/transparent politics; An alternative economic model respecting different visions of development and environmental protection.

Afro-Colombians in the 2026 Presidential Election and Caribbean Exceptions (with a Brief Comparison with the U.S.) Read More »

The Caribbean Region in the 2026 Colombian Election and the Rural Vote

Article-Grid, Elections, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

The previous GeoCurrents post on the 2026 Colombian election argued that Colombia, like most Latin American countries, does not have the stark urban/rural electoral divide that now characterizes the United States. The post showed that in Colombia’s conservative central region, cities and rural areas alike generally voted for the rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, with the important exception of Bogotá.

Colombia’s Caribbean region, however, exhibited a different pattern. As can be seen on the first map posted below, this part of the country solidly favored the losing leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda. But as the second map shows, de la Espriella triumphed in many of the region’s municipalities (or local districts), often by a significant margin. Most of these right-leaning areas are in the interior portion of the region and thus have significant connections with Colombia’s conservative central highlands, although quite a few are near or even on the coast. More important, most of these conservative-voting areas are characterized by low population densities. In contrast, the largest cities of the region all favored the left. A degree of urban/rural political differentiation thus seems evident.

2026 Presidential Vote In Colombia’s Caribbean Region Map

2026 Presidential Vote In Colombia’s Caribbean Region, Municipalities, Map

The urban/rural political divide in Colombia’s Caribbean region, however, is not pronounced. As can also be seen on the map posted above, the Caribbean municipalities that voted most heavily for the left actually tend to be located in more peripheral areas. A map limited to Bolivar Department (posted below) allows us to explore these patterns in more detail. As can be seen, four of the five municipalities containing the department’s largest cities were carried by Cepeda. But some of the “bluest” (rightwing-voting) as well as some of the “darkest magenta” (leftwing-voting) municipalities are sparsely populated and essentially non-urban. As a result, we can only generalize about the political orientation of the Caribbean region’s largest cities, which favored the left, although not overwhelmingly. No generalizations seem possible about the department’s lightly populated municipalities. Here, local factors tend to be far more important than population density. In particular, the Colombia’s Caribbean countryside has long been noted for its “political machines” and patron-client networks, which can largely determine election results at the local level.

Bolivar Department 2026 Colombian Election Map

Although Colombia’s Caribbean region has been tending left in recent elections, it does not have the consistently leftwing orientation that characterizes the Pacific coastal region and the southern highlands. As can be seen in the map set posted below, in 2018 five of the region’s seven departments favored the victorious rightwing candidate Ivan Duque, over Gustavo Petro of the left. Four years later, Petro swept the Caribbean region and won the national election. Conservative Colombians hoped that de la Espriella would have a better showing in the region in 2026, as he is a native son. Although born in Bogotá, de la Espriella was reared in Monterío, the capital of Cordoba Department, located roughly 31 miles (50 km) from the Caribbean Sea. He speaks with a costeño (Caribbean coastal) accent, has supposedly identified himself as “costeñísimo,” and used the slogan “costeño vota a costeño” in his campaign. This regionalist strategy was not successful.

Colombian Presidential Elections 2014-2026 Map Set

The Caribbean Region in the 2026 Colombian Election and the Rural Vote Read More »

Does Colombia Have an Urban/Rural Electoral Divide? Despite Bogotá, Not Really

Article-Grid, Elections, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

A recent GeoCurrents post suggested that the electoral geography of the United States has strikingly deviated from that of Latin America during the 21^st century. In the U.S., population density has become one of the main influences on voting patterns, with cities favoring candidates on the left and the countryside preferring those on the right. An analysis of the 2026 presidential election in Peru revealed no such divide, as both the primate city of Lima and its metropolitan area voted strongly for the (narrowly) victorious rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori.

Could an urban/rural electoral divide be emerging in other Latin American countries? As Colombia recently held a presidential election, also narrowly won by the rightwing candidate, it bears examination on this score. At first glance, it seems to fit the pattern found in the United States better than that of neighboring Peru. Bogotá, by far the largest city in Colombia, gave the leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda, a seven-point victory, even though the province that almost surrounds it favored the right-wing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, by roughly same margin (see the map posted below).

In Bogotá and its larger metropolitan area, which extends into Cundinamarca Department, socio-economic class was a much better predictor of voting behavior than population density. As can be seen in the middle map of the figure posted below, which shows the densely settled “urban zone” of Bogotá proper, the northeastern neighborhoods strongly supported de la Espriella while the southwest strongly favored Cepeda. Not coincidently, the former area is the wealthiest part of Bogotá and the latter is the poorest part. As can be seen on the map to its left, the metropolitan parts of Cundinamarca had a mixed voting pattern. Here the strongest support for the left was found in the municipality of Soacha, a major city itself with a population of nearly 900,000. Not surprisingly, Soacha is described by Wikipedia as “an important industrial zone [that] is home to mostly working-class families.” Intriguingly, in the capital district of Bogotá, the area that voted most heavily for Cepeda is Sumpaz, a high-elevation, low-density locality in the district’s far south that is described by Wikipedia as “completely rural, with no city services.”

Bogota and Its Metro Area in the 2026 Colombian Election Map

In other parts of Colombia as well, voting patterns rarely reflect the urban/rural divide. Instead, the strongest influences are socio-economic class, regionalism, and ethnicity/race (as we shall see in this and subsequent posts). As can be seen on the map posted below, all the country’s largest cities* favored the candidate who triumphed in the departments in which they are located, often with roughly similar margins. In short, in Colombia’s 2026 presidential election regional political culture figured much more prominently than rural/urban differentiation.

Cities & Departments in the 2026 Colombian Election Map

Not all Colombian departmental capitals, however, voted for the candidate favored by the department in which they are located. In Boyaca, for example, Tunja, the capital and largest city, supported the left while almost all other parts of the department voted for the right. But a closer look at Boyaca’s voting patterns shows that urbanism was not the decisive factor. As can be seen on the map posted below, the cities of Sogamoso and Duitama, which are almost as large as Tunja, favored the right, although narrowly in the latter case. The decisive factor in Tunja’s leftwing orientation is probably its large university. As the map also shows, the three other parts of Boyaca that voted for Cepeda are not densely populated. Two of them are reported – by AI – to have strong labor organizations associated with mining and heavy industry, whereas the third has a very large indigenous minority. Again, class and ethnicity outweigh any possible urban/rural electoral divide.

Boyar Department in the 2026 Colombian Presidential Election

The two additional figures posted below also seem to indicate the general lack of correlation between population density and voting behavior in Colombia. The paired maps show that three of the country’s most densely populated departments, as well its three least densely populated ones, supported the leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda.

Population Density and Voting in the 2026 Colombian Election map 1

Population Density and Voting in the 2026 Colombian Election map 2

The maps posted above, however, might be misleading, as they examine voting patterns at the departmental level, giving them a low level of resolution. The analysis thus far has only shown that cities in Colombia’s right-leaning departments also tend to support the rightwing candidate, or at least did so in the most recent presidential election. It still remains to be seen whether rural areas in left-leaning departments also supported the leftwing candidate in the same contest. That will be the subject of the next GeoCurrents post.

If Colombia had the same urban/rural electoral divide that characterizes the United States it would lean more to the left, as it is a much more urbanized country. Colombia’s intensive urbanization is unfortunately concealed by most official statistics. The Wikipedia article “urbanization by sovereign state,” for example, ranks the U.S. as slightly more urban (83.3%) than Colombia (82.4%). But different countries define “urban” in different ways, and the U.S. Census Bureau employs a broad definition, classifying any small census-block area that has at least 5,000 inhabitants or 2,000 housing units as “urban,” even if it is far from any sizable city. Using different definitions and methodology, the UN’s “World Urbanization Prospects 2025” determined that only 35 percent of the people of the U.S. live in actual cities, as opposed to 62.5 percent in Colombia. Measuring “rural” and “urban” populations is, however, notoriously difficult, and finding general agreement on a single metric is probably impossible.

One problem is the fundamentally different spatial patterns of “urbanization” in the United States and most other countries, including Colombia. Most Colombian cities are densely populated, and there is usually a sharp divide between the city and the countryside. The United States is characterized by more of a gradient. Few of its cities are thickly settled by global standards, and density tends to gradually decline from urban cores to outer cities, to inner suburbs, to outer suburbs, to exurbs, and finally to the actual rural zone. Dispersion, moreover, often extends to the smallest towns and hamlets (or “census-designated places,” as used by Wikipedia). A tiny moribund settlement in the American West can occupy a larger area than a substantial town in Colombia or Europe.

* Excluding those located within the metro areas of larger cities.

Does Colombia Have an Urban/Rural Electoral Divide? Despite Bogotá, Not Really Read More »

Afro-Peruvians and the 2026 Election in Peru

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Elections, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

The three northwestern coastal departments of Peru, Tumbes, Piura, and Lambayeque all voted solidly for the victorious rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori, in the 2026 election, giving her, respectively, 64.4%, 57%, and 58.9% of their votes. By Peruvian standards, these three departments are roughly average in terms of social and economic development (see the maps in the previous post). All three have agriculturally oriented economies, and all have long favored conservative, market-oriented policies.

One distinctive socio-cultural feature of northwestern Peru is its relatively large proportion of Afro-Peruvians. Black Peruvians constitute 11.5 percent of the population of Tumbes, 8.9 percent of the population of Piura, and 8.4 percent of the population of Lambayeque, the highest figures in the country. One might expect Afro-Peruvians to favor leftwing candidates, which is certainly the case in Colombia regarding Afro-Colombians (as can be seen on the final two maps posted below). Unfortunately, racial electoral data in Peru is not available. It has been noted, however, that Afro-Peruvian issues received little attention in the 2026 platforms of all Peruvian political parties. If Black voters in Peru did favor the leftwing candidate, Roberto Sánchez, then the dominant mestizo population of the northwest must have voted even more strongly for Fujimori than the total departmental tallies would indicate.

Afro-Peruvians and the 20026 Election Map

Afro-Colombians the the 2026 Election map

Afro-Peruvians and the 2026 Election in Peru Read More »

Per Capita GDP and HDI in the Peruvian Election of 2026 (And More Problems with AI)

Article-Grid, Economic Geography, Elections, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

This penultimate post on the 2026 Peruvian presidential election examines the relationship between the electoral results and socio-economic development at the departmental level. Not surprisingly, the rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimori generally supported the interests of the business community and the wealthier segments of society, whereas the leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez focused more on marginalized communities and the poorer segments of society. One might therefore expect Fujimori to have done better in Peru’s more economically productive departments, as reflected by per capita GDP figures. But as it turned out, departmental GDP per capita was a poor predictor of election results. As can be seen on the paired maps posted below, Sánchez won the most economically productive department, Moquegua, as well as many of those in the second-highest tier. He also won the lowest-ranked department, San Martin, and many of those in the second-lowest tier. By the same token, Fujimori took a majority of votes in some of the most economically productive provinces (Ica) and some of the least (Ucayali).

2023 Peru Per Capita GDP by Department Map

There are several reasons why GDP per capita at the department level does not indicate voting behavior, both in general terms and in the 2026 Peruvian election. Most important, high figures do not necessarily mean high median wages and salaries, especially in resource-dependent economies. Peru’s Moquegua Department has an elevated per capita GDP figure because it has relatively few people but highly productive copper mines and processing facilities. The productivity of the mineral sector, in turn, spurs demand for higher wages and enhanced social services, boosting leftwing candidates. Similar dynamics are at play in other Peruvian departments, such as Pasco in the central Andean region. They were formerly common in the United States, where mining-dependent counties were once reliable strongholds of the Democratic Party.

Peruvian departments with relatively low per capita GDP figures generally have small mining sectors and are characterized by poor infrastructure and extensive subsistence-oriented agriculture. As would be expected, most departments in this category supported the leftwing candidate, Roberto Sánchez. But again, there are important exceptions. The eastern lowland province Ucayali, for example, has the fourth lowest per capita GDP in Peru (according to ChatGPT), yet it supported Keiko Fujimori. Ucayali has experienced rapid population growth in recent decades, concentrated in its capital city, Pucallpa, which grew from 170,000 residents in 2000 to 326,000 in 2017. The department’s economy is heavily dependent on natural resource extraction, particularly logging. Many people in the department are concerned that the environmental and indigenous-rights policies of the political left would threaten that economic foundation. Many others, of course, are more concerned about environmental degradation and cultural survival. The election results suggest that the former group slightly outnumbers the latter (the department gave 52.56 percent of its votes to Fujimori and 47.44 percent to Sánchez).

It would be interesting to map the departments of Peru by median income and compare the resulting map with that of the 2006 election. I was not, however, able to locate reliable data. Instead, I mapped the country’s departments by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), which combines several social and economic indicators. I turned to AI for the most recent HDI data, but again ran into reliability issues. At first glance, the best set of numbers seemed to come from Grok, which I mapped accordingly (see below). Grok put Ancash Department in first place, but Google AI (Gemini) claims that Lima (both the province and the separate metropolitan region) rank in the top position. ChatGPT, to the contrary, put Moquegua and Arequipa in the two highest slots. More significantly, it ranked Ancash in a significantly lower position, stating that:

Áncash is not among the top five [Peruvian departments by HDI]. In the most recent UNDP report, Áncash is highlighted for having one of the largest reductions in human development once inequality is taken into account (one of the country’s highest inequality-adjusted HDI losses), even though its overall HDI is around the national middle range.

This ChatGPT response made me want to map its Peruvian HDI rankings, both in conventional and inequality-adjusted terms. But although the chatbot kept telling me that the data that I wanted is readily available, it refused to provide it. Here is its first and third responses:

ChatGPT Response 1:

I can absolutely produce:

A complete ranking of all 25 departments by HDI (2024 values).

A complete ranking of all 25 departments by inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI/IDH-D).

A comparison table showing:

HDI

IHDI

percentage loss due to inequality

change in rank after adjusting for inequality.

ChatGPT Response 3:

I can’t accurately show the full ranking because I don’t have the actual 2024 department-level values. The official 2025 UNDP Peru Human Development Report makes the complete ranking available only in its downloadable Excel annex (“Anexo 1 – IDH 2017–2024 a nivel distrital“), not in the report text or any searchable web page. The web index confirms the annex exists, but it does not expose the rows of the spreadsheet

If I had unlimited time and patience, I would turn to the “Excel annex” in question for the data that I want. But my time and patience are limited, and I had hoped that AI would be able to do such work for me. Perhaps I should pay more money for the AI services that I us.

But despite such frustrations, the basic human development patterns of Peru are clear: HDI figures are quite high along the coast and are significantly lower in the highlands and in the eastern lowlands. Such patterns do not correlate well with those found on the recent electoral maps. The high-HDI coastal region, for example, is politically divided, with the northern segment leaning right and the southern segment leaning left.

Finally, I would also note that different AI providers also gave somewhat different figures for per capita GDP by province. These differences can be assessed by comparing the data provided by Gemini (Google), ChatGPT, and Grok, which can be seen in the maps posted below. Gemini (Google) provided an actual map (sourced from Reddit), whereas the other two provided data that I mapped myself. I have also supplied a map based on 2014 data provided by Wikipedia. These various sources in combination tell us that the per capita GDP of Lima Department and Lima Metropolitan area have dropped relative to the rest of the country since 2014. This relative decline probably stems from the growing significance of the mining sector in Peru’s national economy.

2023 Peruvian GDP Per Capita by Department and 2026 Election Results Map 2

Depu 2023 Per Capita GDP by Department Map 2

Peru 2014 Per Capita GDP by Department map

Per Capita GDP and HDI in the Peruvian Election of 2026 (And More Problems with AI) Read More »

Oxapampa: A Conservative-Voting Province of Partial Germany Ancestry in the Andean Highlands of Central Peru

Article-Grid, Elections, Ethnicity, Historical Geography, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

Comparing an elevation map of Peru with a map of its 2026 presidential election shows that most highland area voted for the defeated leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez. Tension between the people of the Andean plateaus and those of the economically dominant coastal region and its metropolitan center of Lima are deeply engrained, giving the highlands a distinctly leftwing orientation. But the same maps also reveal a few exceptions to this rule. The most interesting one is the province of Oxapampa in the eastern part of the department of Pasco.

Highlands of Peru in the 2026 Presidential Election

Oxapampa Province, Pasco Department, 2026 Election Map

Pasco is as a sparsely populated department, with fewer than 300,000 inhabitants, that is rich in mineral resources. Its capital city, the mining center of Cerro de Pasco, sits an elevation of 14,210 feet (4,330 meters), making it one of the loftiest cities in the world. Pasco’s eastern province, Oxapampa, is situated on the eastern side of the Andean divide, with elevations ranging from 17,400 feet (5,300 meters) at the highest peak (Huaguruncho) to 660 feet (200 meters) in the Amazonian lowlands of the east. Most of Oxapampa’s roughly 100,000 inhabitants live the mid-level elevation zone in the western part of the province, which is the area that supported the rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimoiri in the Peruvian presidential election of 2026.

Oxapampa’s conservative voting behavior may be linked to its settlement by German immigrants in the mid 1880s. The unusual history of the province is outlined in the Wikipedia article on the village of Pozuzo:

In the 1850s, Peruvian President Ramon Casilla proposed building a railroad from the capital city of Lima across the Andes Mountains, and onward to the navigable rivers of the Amazon Basin. Part of the plan (the only part realized) was to import German and Austrian Catholics to settle on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in the tropical rainforests of the Amazon region, then populated only by indigenous people. In 1855, the Peruvian leader signed an agreement with German traveler Kuno Damian von Schütz-Holzhausen to recruit 10,000 Germans and Austrians to emigrate to Peru and establish colonies on the eastern flanks of the Andes. The Peruvian government agreed to pay the cost of the passage from Europe to Peru of the emigrants and the cost of transporting them overland to Pozuzo and other areas designated for their settlement. …

On arrival [in Peru], Schütz found that the Peruvian government had done little to prepare for the arrival of the colonists and their transportation to Pozuzo. The colonists undertook a difficult journey on foot and mule to reach Pozuzo, starting from the port of Huacho, reaching an elevation of more than 4,700 metres (15,400 ft) crossing the Andes, to Cerro de Pasco, onward to Acobamba (Ambo) and, constructing the road en route, to Pozuzo. The town was established in 1859 by 172 of the original 302 colonists who had departed Europe together. Many had deserted en route or had died or been killed during the journey.

The population of the German settlers rapidly increased in the early decades, but their descendants eventually intermarried extensively with other Peruvians. Their culture gradually became more Peruvian than German. Some aspects of German culture, however, have persisted, helping make Oxapampa an important tourism destination in recent years. An AI assessment of the current ethnic composition of the province runs as follows:

In the town of Oxapampa, the German cultural presence is significant but not dominant. Many residents have partial German/Austrian ancestry, reflected in surnames (e.g., Schmidt, Müller), Tyrolean-style architecture, festivals, food (e.g., local beers), and some traditions. However, extensive intermarriage with mestizo, indigenous (e.g., Yanesha), and other groups means “full” or dominant German descent is limited. Nearby Pozuzo (founded by the original colonists) has a stronger enclave feel, with estimates of ~1,000 people of more direct Austro-German descent in a district of ~5,000–9,000.

German Influence in Oxapampa Province, Peru

Oxapampa: A Conservative-Voting Province of Partial Germany Ancestry in the Andean Highlands of Central Peru Read More »

The Peruvian Presidential Election of 2026: Strong Rightwing Support in Metropolitan Lima

Article-Grid, Borders, Geopolitics, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

The second and final round of Peru’s 2026 presidential election was razor close, with the victorious rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimori receiving 50.11 percent of the vote and the defeated leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez receiving 49.89 percent. Not surprisingly, election maps reveal a country politically divided along geographical lines. The next several GeoCurrents posts will examine Peru’s electoral division, looking at its various dimensions. The current post considers the urban-rural split, which is essentially the opposite of what is found in the United States and most other wealthy countries. In the U.S., population density has recently become one of the best predictors of voting behavior, with rural areas and small, non-metropolitan cities favoring the right and highly urbanized areas favoring the left. In Peru’s 2026 presential election, the rightwing – or perhaps far-right – candidate, Keiko Fujimori, triumphed largely due to support from the country’s largest city.

This electoral population-density divide can be glimpsed in the maps posted below. The first shows that a substantial majority of Peru’s 1,838 districts voted for the losing candidate Sánchez, which indicates his substantial support in less-densely populated areas. The same map also show that most major cities supported Fujimori. But important exceptions to these generalizations are also revealed. As can easily be seen, Sánchez won in all the major cities of southern Peru. The following three-map set also indicates that Fujimori received some of her strongest support in extremely low-density districts in the far-eastern part of the country. Obviously, population density is not the only factor at play, as will be explored in later posts.

Peru 2026 Election Population Density Map

What really gave Fujimori her edge was her strong support in the Lima metro area, by far the largest urban area of the country. Roughly 35 percent of Peru’s people live in Lima and its adjacent port city, Callao, and she received roughly 64 percent of their votes, taking every district. As would be expected, Fujimori did especially well in the wealthiest neighborhoods, most of which are located near the urban core. These tendencies can be seen by locating the elite districts of San Isidro and Miraflores on the electoral map (see the map posted below). Not surprisingly, Fujimori took a smaller share of the vote in the poorest districts of Lima, which, according to AI, are Puscana and Puente Piedra. Yet she still received more than 60 percent of the vote in impoverished Puscana.

Metropolitan Lima 2026 Peruvian Election Map

An urban shift to the right is also evident in left-voting southern Peru. Although Sánchez easily won Arequipa Department, taking 64 percent of its vote, the election was more evenly contested in the city of Arequipa, Peru’s second largest. As can be seen in the next map set, the central part of the city is mapped in a much lighter shade of green than its outskirts and adjacent rural areas. Fujimori won several districts near Arequipa’s urban core. She did especially well in Yanahuara, which, according to AI, is “one of the most affluent and desirable districts in Arequipa.” In Cusco, the second-largest city in southern Peru, Sánchez had better results, as Fujimori lost every district in Cusco Province (a subdivision of Cusco Department). But again, the city itself is a lighter shade of green than its outskirts. Here Fujimori’s best performance was in relatively well-off Wanchaq district. Her worst performance by a large margin was in Ccorca district, which, according to AI, “is characterized by Andean indigenous communities, subsistence agriculture, and limited urban development.”

Arequipa and Cusco 2026 Peruvian Election Map

In Peru, as in true in most of Latin America and indeed over much of the world, rural areas and small cities tend to have lower levels of social and economic development than large cities. As a result, it is not surprising that the less urbanized parts of Peru tend to support candidates on the left who seek redistribution of wealth and power. Yet it is also true that the poorer parts of Lima have low levels of economic development and pronounced poverty. As a result, I am surprised that they supported the rightwing candidate in the 2026 election. Clearly, other factors must also be considered.

The Peruvian Presidential Election of 2026: Strong Rightwing Support in Metropolitan Lima Read More »

Mapping Yerba Mate Consumption and That of Its Cousin, Ilex vomitoria (Yaupon)

Article-Grid, Latin America, psychoactive substances / Martin W. Lewis

Almost all data sources rank Turkey (Türkiye) as the world’s top tea-drinking country, and by a considerable margin. According to Wikipedia’s article on the subject, annual per capita tea consumption in Turley is 3.16 kg (6.96 lb), far overshadowing second-place Ireland’s 2.19 kg (4.83 lb). Yet according to a World Population Review article that lists 2024 tea consumption by country, the people of southern South America drink much more tea than those Turkey. Here the per capita tea consumption of Argentina is mapped as seven times greater than that of Turkey. What gives?

The answer to this seeming mystery is that the writers at World Population Review have confused yerba mate with tea. Although producing a caffeine-rich beverage superficially similar to tea, yerba mate (a species of holly; Ilex paraguariensis), has no relationship with tea (a species of camelia; Camellia sinensis). Evidently, mate is consumed in much greater quantities in mate-drinking cultures than tea in consumed in tea-drinking cultures.

Although yerba mate is now globalizing, consumption is still focused in four South American countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Brazil. Maps of mate-drinking that highlight these countries are somewhat misleading, however, as most of Brazil falls outside the mate zone, as seen in the second map below. Consumption in Brazil is heavily concentrated in the far south, particular in the state of Rio Grande do Sol. This pattern is not surprising, as Rio Grande do Sol was long contested by the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires, and later by Brazil and its Spanish-speaking neighbors to the south. As a result, its culture has some affinities with those of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. In Brazil, the people of the state are often called gaúchos, which would be equivalent to calling Texans “cowboys.” Actual gaúchos tend to drink a lot of yerba mate, just as American cowboys have historically consumed a lot of coffee.

The people Rio Grande do Sol generally embrace their gaúcho designation. As Ruben George Oliven explains in a 2006 Nations and Nationalism article:

From the 1930s, Brazil experienced a growing national centralisation and the construction of Brasilidade (Brazilianness). The military regime (1964–85) deepened centralisation and emphasised national identity, little space being left for regional identities. With the political opening and the redemocratisation of Brazil, starting at the end of the 1970s, the stress was on differences in a period in which Brazil had already achieved a high degree of integration. Identities were re-created, among them that of Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil, where a strong revival of gaúcho culture took place. The 1980s and 1990s were marked by a growing development of activities and disputes linked to the gaúcho tradition. In spite of the fact that Rio Grande do Sul is predominantly urban and industrialised, this process reached out to the state’s rural past and the equestrian figure of the gaúcho.

Intriguingly, the world’s three main hot, caffeinated drinks – coffee, tea, and mate – all have religious roots. Coffee was popularized in Yemen by Sufi mystics who found it useful for keeping awake during all-night chanting sessions. Tea was first popularized in China by Buddhist monks who found it useful for keeping awake during all-night meditation sessions. The story of mate is different, but it too has religious aspects. In pre-colonial times, mate consumption was evidently limited to two relatively small subgroups of the Guaraní people. The Jesuits subsequently united the Guaraní people of Paraguay under a theocratic state. They encouraged mate consumption and effectively domesticated the plant. Mate eventually became the national beverage of Paraguay, and later expanded into Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil.

Yeba mate is closely related to another caffeine plant, Yaupon, which grows in the southeastern lowlands of the United States. Indigenous peoples drank Yaupon tea, sometimes to excess. The plant’s scientific name, Ilex vomitoria, “comes from an observation by early Europeans that the ingestion of the plant was followed by vomiting in certain ceremonies[;]… the vomiting may have resulted from the great quantities in which they drank the beverage, coupled with fasting.” Such a fasting and (caffeine-) feasting regime also probably had spiritual roots.

Yaupon is now undergoing something of a comeback in the U.S., grown by people who want a “healthy coffee alternative” and who value its beauty and the food that it provides for wildlife. As Lily Anderson Messec writes:

Pollinators flock to its masses of tiny white flowers in spring, and birds eat the berries that follow the flowers. Most importantly, our native insects feed on these plants they have evolved with, providing protein rich meals (in the form of themselves) for birds and other wildlife.

The wildlife, however, are not the only ones eating it. The prime reason I planted my Yaupon was for its caffeine rich leaves. By weight, the leaves contain more caffeine than both coffee beans and green tea —the highest caffeine content of any plant native to North America. Yaupon holly is also high in antioxidants and less bitter than green tea. It is a close cousin of the South American yerba maté (Ilex paraguariensis) and its tea is similar in flavor and quality.

Mapping Yerba Mate Consumption and That of Its Cousin, Ilex vomitoria (Yaupon) Read More »

The Paradoxical Position of Bahia in the Brazilian National Imagination

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, Ethnicity, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

Northeast Brazil has the highest percentage of people with African ancestry in the country. But due to the way that race is classified in Brazil (see the previous post), most of the region’s inhabitants are classified as Pardo, “brown,” or of mixed race. According to official statistics, the northeast’s Black population is relatively small and is significantly outnumbered by its white population (see the second map below). Of Brazil’s northeastern states, Bahia has the highest percentage of Blacks and the lowest percentage whites. Most enslaved Africans brought to Brazil arrived in Bahia, and as a result the state has long had a disproportionately African population. But even in Bahia, whites outnumber Blacks, at least according to official statistics. On the detailed map of racial distribution posted below, only one municipality in Bahia is depicted as having a Black plurality.

Bahia occupies a distinctive and in many ways paradoxical position in the Brazilian national consciousness. It has long been celebrated as Brazil’s site of origin, with its main city, Salvador, having served as the capital of colonial Brazil until 1763. Salvador is famed today for its colonial architecture and is an important tourist destination. But Bahia has also long been disparaged by Euro-Brazilians for its African cultural practices and its large Black population. On a map of Brazilian regional stereotypes (below), Bahia is marked as a land of “Black Witchcraft.” The Urban Dictionary defines the word “Baiano” first as “a person from the state of Bahia” and second as “a derogatory term for a poor, colored, or poorly educated Brazilian (used analogous to the English word n****r*).” According to my Brazilian friends, the second definition is most often used in São Paulo, where many poor Baianos work in construction and in other difficult and dirty jobs.

But the position of Bahia in Brazil’s national imagination is more complicated still. The state is also celebrated for many of its cultural practices that have spread to the rest of the country, centered on music, dance, religion, and cuisine. Such Afro-Brazilian cultural features as samba, candomblé, and capoeira are associated with Bahia but are now often viewed as essential aspects of Brazil itself. On the map of Brazilian regional stereotypes, Bahia is also noted as the land of samba. Many writers have remarked on Bahia’s paradoxical position. According to Anadelia Romo, Bahia is “alternately romanticized and denigrated, it has served both as a cradle of Brazilian national identity and as an embarrassing symbol of Brazilian backwardness.” Similarly, Livio Sansone writes:

[T]his is just part of the paradox: the counterpole of [Bahia’s] political weakness is the prestige and vivacity of Afro-Bahian culture. This is a culture that at times enjoys plenty of official recognition – mostly as regard to the religious dimension (the Afro-Catholic candomblé religious system) cuisine, and music – but which has a major role in the public image of Brazil and Brazilianess at home and abroad…”

Such contrasting images of Bahia have evidently obscured several important characteristics of the state. Annadelia Romo further argues that Bahia has often been misleadingly depicted as a “living museum.” As she writes, “to see Bahia as inherently, essentially rooted in Africa ignores a creative and important process of cultural grafting that has been at work over the course of the 20th century. To see Bahia as a cultural preserve is to see it as static whereas Bahian culture has been anything but.” Scott Ickes focuses instead on the socio-economic aspects the Bahian paradox. As he argues, “Newfound acceptance of these [Bahian Afro-Brazilian] customs was a democratic move forward, but it also perpetuated the political and economic marginalization of the black majority.”

The common stereotypes of Bahia, both positive and negative, pertain most closely to the state’s more densely populated eastern coastal region. Bahia’s deep interior is distinctive in many ways. Far western Bahia, for example, is part of the Brazilian boom zone of highly mechanized agriculture. The city of Barreiras, at the heart of this farming frontier, is rarely discussed either in or outside of Brazil. But as the Wikipedia article on the municipality notes:

In recent years [Barreiras] has experienced an economic boom and is one of the fastest-growing cities in the state of Bahia if not in Brazil. … From the decade of the 1970s to the present, the municipality has gone from 20,864 inhabitants to 120,000 and undergone important transformations. It has received public and private investments that have modified the social and economic profile. After 1990, the intense agricultural activity has caused changes in practically all the economic and social sectors. … Irrigation, the level terrain, and the dry climate with well-defined dry and rainy seasons have made Barreiras a leader in agriculture. … Going along with the development of agriculture, traditional cattle raising gave way in the 1990s to the use of high technology …

Needless to say, this depiction has little connection with the ways in which Bahia is commonly imagined in Brazil. But Bahia is a huge state, significantly larger than California. And as is the case in Bahia, most parts of California also fail to match the stereotypical vision of the state.

*Astoundingly, this slur word is spelled out in the Urban Dictionary.

The Paradoxical Position of Bahia in the Brazilian National Imagination Read More »

Racial and Regional Voting Patterns in Brazil’s 2022 Election

Article-Grid, Elections, Geopolitics, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

Some clear racial voting patterns are evident in the 2022 Brazilian election. A map of Brazil’s relatively densely populated eastern strip, for example, shows a clear north/south divide. Its northern half is mostly non-white and voted heavily for Lula da Silva, whereas its southern half supported Bolsonaro and has a population of mostly European descent. To be sure, a few exceptions are found, such as the mostly white, Lula-voting area in the extreme southeast. When one looks at maps of Brazil as a whole, however, the situation is revealed to be much more complicated, as it does in maps of individual Brazilian states and regions. The second map posted below indicates the Brazilian states in which Bolsonaro found his highest level of support in 2022. As can be seen, four of these states have mostly non-white populations. All four of them are located in Brazil’s western zone of deforestation and agricultural expansion.

Before digging further into the details, it is important to note that race has been conceptualized differently in Brazil and the United States. In the U.S., a person with any ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa has been conventionally regarded as Black, whereas in Brazil a person with any European ancestry has conventionally been regarded as non-Black – not as “white,” to be sure, but as pardo, or brown. Historically, Brazil encouraged interracial marriage, partly due to the racist hope that it would result in a gradual “whitening” of the population. As a result of these attitudes and practices, Brazil’s Black community is estimated as constituting only around seven percent of the country’s total population. On the detailed map of racial distribution used in this post, hardly any Brazilian municipalities are shown as having a Black plurality, let alone majority. But by the U.S. system of racial classification, the Brazilian population would be reckoned as roughly half Black, with the northeast having a clear Black majority. Brazil also lacks the heritage of overt racial discrimination that characterizes the United States. Still, people with substantial African ancestry tend to be markedly poorer and less educated than people of primarily European ancestry, and they do suffer from stigmatization. But class status can partly override race; as noted in a 2007 scholarly article, “The idea that ‘money whitens’” is a classic topic in the sociological literature on race in Brazil.”

In northeastern Brazil, the poorest part of the country, voting patterns and racial patterns show little correlation. Although the population of northeastern Brazil is mostly non-white, the region does have pockets of mainly Euro-Brazilian settlement. One prominent example is the south-central part of the state of Rio Grande do Norte. Income maps show that this region is more prosperous and has less dire poverty than the rest of the state, but is still relatively poor by southeastern Brazilian standards. It is not, however, distinguishable on the 2022 electoral map, as it voted, like neighboring non-white areas, heavily for Lula. Almost all of the districts in northeastern Brazil that supported Bolsonaro in 2022 are in the coastal area of Alagoas, a mostly pardo (or mixed race) area. Deeply entrenched patron-client relationships, in which local elites influence the voting patterns of non-elites, might explain this seemingly anomalous pattern.

The largest number of people classified as “Black” in Brazil are found in Bahia, a large state that covers the southern half of the northeastern region. Bahia as many distinctive cultural features, which have been both celebrated and disparaged in the rest of Brazil. The final post in this GeoCurrents series on the 2022 Brazilian election will look more closely at Bahia.

Racial and Regional Voting Patterns in Brazil’s 2022 Election Read More »

Voting Patterns in the 2022 Election in Brazil’s Cerrado Region

Article-Grid, Elections, Geopolitics, Latin America / Martin W. Lewis

As noted in a previous post, the deforested areas of Brazil’s Amazon Basin supported the extreme rightwing candidate Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election, whereas the non-deforested areas supported the leftwing candidate Lula da Silva. Somewhat similar patterns are found in the vast Cerrado zone to the south of the Amazonian region.

The seasonally wet and dry Cerrado was mostly covered by savannah vegetation in its original state. It was long considered almost worthless for agriculture, due to its acidic soils and low levels of plant nutrients. Brazilian agricultural scientists at Embrapa, however, learned how to make the Cerrado productive, mostly by adding large quantities of lime and phosphorus to the soil. They also bred new strains of originally temperate crops that would grow well in this tropical environment. Subsequently, clearance of the highly diverse Cerrado vegetation intensified, with much of the region converted to mechanized farmland. As this occurred, Brazil surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest soybean producer. This process has resulted in major economic gains but also in social tensions, heightened economic inequality, and extensive environmental degradation. As little land in the Cerrado has been preserved for nature, it has been called Brazil’s “ugly duckling of conservation.”

As can be seen on one of the maps posted below, much more of the southern and western Cerrado has been transformed into modernized farmland than the northern and eastern part of the region. As might be expected, the main agricultural centers in the western Cerrado voted heavily for Bolsonaro in the 2022 election. The less transformed northeastern Cerrado, contrastingly, voted heavily for Lula in the same election. This environmental/economic/electoral pattern is similar to the one seen in the Amazon.

Economic class is a major factor here. The northeastern part of the Cerrado extends into the poorest part of Brazil (the eastern part of the greater northeast). As Lula was very effective in alleviating poverty and enhancing social development in his earlier terms as president, he retains great popularity in the more impoverished parts of the country. Although some areas in the northeastern Cerrado have become major centers of soybean farming, relatively few people are employed on the mechanized farms and low levels of income remain widespread, as can be seen on the first set of maps posted below. As a result, there is relatively little correlation between voting patterns and agricultural production zones in this part of Brazil, as can be seen on the second set of maps below (the areas outlined in white on the electoral map have Brazil’s highest soybean yields).

The patterns that I am describing here are quite simple and are meant to be taken only in a suggestive sense. Much more detailed work would have to be conducted to make any conclusive statements. I do find it interesting however, that a major area of mechanized soybean agriculture in far western Bahia state in northwestern Brazil voted heavily for Lula de Silva, quite in contrast to the soybean centers in Mato Grosso and other western states. States matter a great deal in Brazil, and Bahia is highly distinctive, noted for having the largest African cultural and demographic imprint in the country. I will explore correlations between racial patterns and voting patterns in the next GeoCurrents post.

(Many thanks to André Goldman for sharing his knowledge of Brazilian political geography and thus helping me write these posts. I will add André’s insightful comments to my earlier Brazilian election posts later this week.)

Voting Patterns in the 2022 Election in Brazil’s Cerrado Region Read More »

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