Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Historias de la cartografía de Iberoamérica: Nuevos caminos, viejos problemas

2011; Duke University Press; Volume: 91; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-1165280

1527-1900

Karl Offen,

Philippine History and Culture

Over the last three decades the study of maps and the history of cartography have experienced a veritable renewal. Through works by J. B. Harley and others, maps are now routinely studied as cultural products created in particular times and places, part and parcel of the spaces they represent. By the time the John Hopkins University Press published a selection of J. B. Harley’s articles posthumously in 2001, the revolution in the study of maps and the history of cartography was already in full swing in the English-speaking world. However, as the editors of Historias de la cartografía de Iberoamérica make clear, it was not until this collection was translated into Spanish and published as La nueva naturaleza de los mapas: Ensayos sobre la historia de la cartografía (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005) that a similar transformation took place among scholars in Ibero-America.The vast majority of the 19 chapters assembled for this volume originated as presentations at the First and Second Iberoamerican Symposiums in the History of Cartography held in Buenos Aires in 2006 and Mexico City in 2008, respectively. These were the first academic meetings of their kind held in Latin America, and this book is one of the first to capture the academic florescence these meetings portend.The volume showcases a diversity of styles by geographers, architects, historians, archivists, and humanities scholars predominantly based in Latin American universities. Coverage of Argentina (6 chapters) and Mexico (5) predominate, but Brazil (3), Cuba (1), Chile (1), Iberia (2), and even Portuguese Macao (1) also receive treatment. The volume contains over 80 historical maps printed in black and white, but some chapters make use of no maps, and over 40 of the maps included are in only four chapters covering Macao, Buenos Aires, Minas Gerais, and Cuba. Unfortunately, we never learn if these maps were originally printed in color, their actual size, and in some cases where the maps were taken from or are currently held. Meanwhile, some maps are out of focus or are otherwise illegible. There are exceptions of course, including the maps in Francisco Roque de Oliveira’s chapter comparing the symbolic systems in Chinese and European maps of Portuguese Macao in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the crisp and clear reproductions illustrating Jorge Macle Cruz’s systematic overview of Cuban cartography in the late nineteenth century.The editors have divided the entries into four sections, shortened and translated here as Cartographic Representations, Cartographies of Territory, Cartography and Planning, and Cartography and the State. These groupings suggest the range of materials contained, but each section does not sustain focused coverage of its themes, and many chapters could be located in different sections. As with many conference paper collections, the authors do not engage one another, and common themes are often redundantly introduced (e.g., the Relaciones geográficas) or are theoretically incongruent. For example, the concept of territory is used inconsistently. Some chapters assume the term to be unproblematic, as if maps were teleologically seeking to approximate a well-defined space (e.g., a nation, a city). David Turnbull’s classic Maps Are Territories, Science Is an Atlas (University of Chicago Press, 1993), however, reminds us that the map precedes the territory. An outstanding contribution illustrating this important point, and particularly the role of defense in driving both map production and the signposting of space, is Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos’s study of littoral maps of the Pacific of New Spain and its northern frontier in the eighteenth century. Another good example of this view is Alejandra Vega Palma’s study showing how Chilean identity is configured by graphic representations highlighting a strip of land west of the Andes in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.That an edited volume is less than the sum of its parts should not detract from the several standout entries. In addition to the studies mentioned above, Carla Lois illustrates cartographic desire by cogently showing how a scientifically minded Argentine state between 1852 and 1941 — before decrees specified cartographic conditions for maps to be “official” — graphically incorporated the indigenous lands of the Gran Chaco and Patagonia. Maria do Carmo Andrade Gomes’s chapter on the technical and discursive combination of fieldwork and drafting room abstraction by members of the Geographic and Geologic Commission of Minas Gerais during its formative years (1891 – 1930) is also innovative and exciting. Several other chapters are also worthy of mention but space prevents their summary.As the editors note, the volume seeks to introduce the diversity of themes within the history of cartography being investigated by a new generation of Ibero-American scholars making use of long-overlooked graphic materials; in this sense it succeeds.