Artery is a forthcoming book that takes readers on an immersive journey into the world of transport, travel, and trade along Colombia’s Magdalena River. This legendary waterway connecting the country’s Andean interior and Caribbean coast has long served as a conduit for the expansion of colonial and racial capitalism in the Americas. A period of stagnation began in the 1950s, but state-backed projects have recently sought to resuscitate commercial navigation through a series of engineering works. This initiative has brought the Magdalena back into focus as 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 even as they undergo profound changes in Colombia and indeed in the world at large.