The article explores cartographic and statistical registers of poverty as geo-legal technologies operating across shifting visual economies which structure ways of seeing and concealing ‘the poor’ in the urban landscape.

Drawing on the concept of ‘cuerpo-territorio,’ we conceptualize non-Western “other mappings” as situated and historical performances that center embodied experiences, such as the multiple and persistent traumas of coloniality, that are invisibilized in Cartesian cartographic processes. In doing so, these mappings unveil how Cartesian cartography does the traumatic work of coloniality while fostering alternative, embodied spatial imaginaries based on situated practices and visceral geographies.

Drawing from multisensory visual ethnography, this paper explores the perspective of ‘tactile empathy’ through photographic/video recordings based on the matching of seen and experienced touch described by neuroscientists.