CARTOGRAPHIC REIFICATION

Germany had difficulty relinquishing pre-W.W. I “ancestral German lands” (did it not later require lebensraum?); Venezuela claims half of Guyana; Ecuador claims a chunk of Amazonia as large as the territory it now controls; Argentina labels its maps (showing “Greater Argentina”) with the “Islas Malvinas,” even though Britain won the Falkland Islands War; and China draws its boundaries around the islands in the South China Sea, thus overlapping competing claims of other countries. These are examples of “cartographic aggression” and “map-as-symbol-of-the-state” (terms used in How to Lie with Maps, by Mark Monmonier).

When I lived in Taiwan, in 1988, the Taiwan government, in a bizarre exercise, required every copy of an issue of National Geographic, which included a map of East Asia, to be hand-stamped on the cover stating that the Nationalist Government on Taiwan, Republic of China (ROC) (its self-designated names) did not recognize Mongolia as a sovereign state, that it was still a territory of ROC!

States, as part of their sovereign statehood, endow cartographic representations power to reify their territorial integrity.

Yes, maps serve interests and shape reality by re-presenting the world, according to the dictates of the cartographer, who is sometimes the state-sanctioned carto-referee of borders. It is a serious game.

CARTO-PROPAGANDA IN DEEP RAIN FOREST

While crossing the border from Ecuador to Peru, in 1983 (headed to the Rio Napo, in Amazonia), the Peruvian border guards, with shouldered rifles, ordered the two foreigners off the bus, into the guard hut, to search our luggage. They asked one question only: “Tienes algunos mapas?” Did we have any maps? Maps? Deep in the rainforest?

The border dispute between Ecuador and Peru originated when the last Inca divided his empire between his two sons just before the arrival of Pizzaro. The area remained a frontier (etymologically, a region that “fronts”) between the two Spanish audiencias and continued as such with the formation of the modern states of Ecuador and Peru. The two countries fought a border war around 1941, evidently won by Peru. (Ecuadorians peevishly informed us that Peruvians were “monos”--monkeys.)

The Peruvian border guards were confiscating maps published in Ecuador which show the large chunk of Amazonia we were in as part of the national territory of Ecuador. The government of Peru did not want the carto-propaganda to reach the outside world. Cartographically, the two countries are still at war. (It does not help that Chevron has been pumping oil out of the region, to the benefit of Peru--a further affront at the frontier.)

Spatial events which occurred half a millennium previously were being played out deep in the Amazonian rain forest, nearly at gunpoint, on two unsuspecting foreigners.

I wish I could now possess a map of Ecuador showing the contested chunk of rain forest, so I could illustrate that particular rain-forest geography of propaganda.

TERRITORIAL CLAIMS AND CARTOGRAPHIC NON-NEUTRALITY

In 1983, while crossing the border from Guatemala into Belize, I noticed the prominent, official sign on the Guatemalan side informing travelers heading east that they were entering the Guatemalan province of Belice’ (Spanish orthography). The dispute goes back to when, in the nineteenth century, the British took the area and its valuable forest resources (indeed, it became a logging colony), yet was still claimed by the Guatemala government, which based its claim upon the prior Spanish authority over Central America.

On that first visit I noticed British fighter jets protecting Belizean airspace. Upon revisiting in 2000, besides continuing hispanicization of the country, the British military was gone. Its presence had deterred Guatemala from acting on its threats. Guatemala finally relinquished most of its claims except for a small area near Punta Gorda (I visited a Maya village there) in the south. In 2000, disputes resurfaced.

This illustrates that a state, as part of its raison d’etat, is supremely mindful of its territorial integrity. Its borders must be protected; its claims not easily given up. Consequently, its maps are not cartographically neutral.