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19
Maps, Texts, and History
Background to Euclidean Cartography
Euclides had to generate the intellectual apparatus of the Brazilian boundary negotiations
using the science, poetics, and politics of history and landscapes. His approach required
the development of several distinct types of framing documents including maps, supple-
ments to the field survey, and a series of essays on comparative cultural and diplomatic
history. The first two types of documents—the charts and their commentary—were the
technical elements distilled from the Amazonian experience, interpretive reflections, and
additions to the fieldwork. The Baron had also suggested that da Cunha write a series of
essaysforpublicationinthe
JornaldoComércio
—the
WallStreetJournal
ofBrazil—that
wouldbepartisanandwouldanalyticallyandideologicallyshapethelargerdebate.These
were produced between June and September 1906, an enormous amount of research and
writingtogeneratesoquickly.Theessayswerepartofapublicrelationsblitztorecastthe
understandingoftheAmazonboundaryquestionandarguethecaseovertlywhileBrazili-
annegotiatorswrangledoveritprivatelyinthechambersoftheplenipotentates.DaCunha
also had his own agenda: a yearning for what we would today call “equitable develop-
ment.” He would have to hew a precarious balance between Brazilian triumphalism and
his concerns about social justice.
Whatwasatstakewas,asdaCunhaputit,“thelargestterritorythathadeverbeencon-
testedbetweentwonations,some720,000km
2
inoneoftheveryleastknownpartsofthe
planet,” where conflicting colonial documents and maps inflamed the clamor over rights
to Amazonian terrain and rubber forests. Not only was it the largest area in contest, but
also Brazil's last. Once finalized, whatever the configuration, Brazil's border would be
completed, and the outlines of the nation defined. This was a culminating element of Rio
Branco's statecraft.
The official Peruvian position, as I have noted, was that Peru's lands extended to the
historical lines established by the Treaty of San Idelfonso (1777), and thus Bolivia had
had no legal right to transfer to Brazil what Bolivia claimed as its terrains. This conflict
between Peru and Bolivia was put to arbitration in 1902 with the Argentinean president
as mediator, but then languished.
The effort from da Cunha'sside focused onmaking the Purúsdefinitively Brazilian, so
idioms of nationalism and imperial justification, as well as his own hopes for a more so-
cially just Amazonia, saturate these writings. Da Cunha produced several maps that were
key parts of this exercise, along with the formal cartographic depiction of the Purús that
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