Rethinking Maroon Heritage: Coloniality and the Politics of Heritage-Making in Le Morne, Mauritius

Abstract

This article examines the politics of heritage-making in Mauritius through the case of Le Morne Mountain, a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed as a symbol of maroon resistance. Despite this global status, heritage governance by the state largely remains at the level of performative symbolic reconciliation without addressing structural inequalities, while private actors benefit from the site’s cultural value through tourism activities. The article traces how eco-cultural narratives in tourism projects increasingly commodify and depoliticize histories of maroon heritage, transforming them into consumable experiences. Although Le Morne is framed as a cultural landscape linking memory, land, and culture, the communities whose histories are co-opted remain spatially dispossessed and marginalized. These contradictions reveal that heritage production in Mauritius remains a terrain of struggle and exposes how power asymmetries are reproduced. However, mobilization by on-the-ground communities is a pressing reminder that decolonizing heritage must move beyond symbolic recognition toward structural transformation, foregrounding land justice and reparations.