Colombia's western Coffee Region is renowned for the whiteness of its inhabitants. This book examines these legends, showing how local communities, settlers, speculators, and politicians struggled over jurisdictional boundaries and the privatization of communal lands in the creation of the Coffee Region.

""Muddied Waters" is an outstanding contribution to the history of race and colonization in modern Colombia. It invites revision of current interpretations of Colombian and Latin American regionalism."--Marco Palacios, coauthor of "Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society"