Matterialising grassroots hydrosocial territories: Visualising and politically reframing what matters in the upper Yanuncay River, Ecuador

The Yanuncay River Basin, in Azuay Province, Southern Ecuador, is facing mounting pressures from extractive industries, particularly large-scale mining and hydropower projects, that seek to grab and control the river and related territories. This article presents the counter-mapping methodology that was used with impacted communities residing along the river's headwaters and páramos. It presents and discusses how through an engaged participatory discussion, negotiation and resulting visualisation process, a grassroots map of their territory was co-created. This map reflects the communities' ecological knowledge, their experienced emotional and lived relations as well as their socio-economic dependence on their territory. The map is now being used and discussed by these communities and their broader river defence networks to support their efforts to protect the river. Based on our analysis we argue that counter-mapping is not merely a technical practice of visualisation but a political process of resistance that allows communities to articulate, express and reframe what in their territory matters to them (‘ matterialise ’). This matterialisation enables them to visually represent and discursively manifest their spatial-political and onto-epistemological territorial visions and interests. These challenge prevailing development models that threaten their river and related livelihoods in name of socio-economic progress.