Artery racial ecologies on Colombia's Magdalena River

"An immersive journey into the world of fluvial transport and logistics along Colombia's Magdalena River, Artery examines the entanglements of race, nature, and capital underpinning the contemporary global order. Austin Zeiderman's account foregrounds the plan to create a multimodal logistics corridor along the waterway and it revolves around the people and places central to the movement of vessels and goods: most prominently riverboat captains and crews, but also shipping company managers, operators of ports and logistics hubs, government officials, scientific and technical experts, and riverside communities. The legendary artery connecting the country's Andean interior and Caribbean coast served as a conduit for the expansion of colonial and racial capitalism in the Americas until the 1950s. State-backed projects have recently sought to resuscitate commercial navigation through a series of hydromodification works, making the Magdalena a node for the articulations of race, nature, and capital at the heart of the contemporary global order. The river is now a rich site for examining the hierarchical regimes of difference central to the environmental and economic present"--