Maps, Texts, and History - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 278

letters traded by the chiefs of party of the Brazilian and Peruvian commissions as they
traveledtheuppertributaries. Incontrast,theBrazilian reportincluded“Complementary
Notes of the Brazilian Commission,” which involved the history of mapping, geograph-
icalinformation,andsettlementofthePurús,whichIpresentinlaterchapters.Giventhe
magnitude of this territorial contest and how overwhelmingly important the discursive
elements were, it is perhaps not surprising that Rio Branco deployed the most powerful
writer he could, one who happened to be a romantically lyrical nationalist.
ThePeruvianswouldinsistthatlegalprocedureandtheprecedentoftheSanIdelfonso
Treaty placed the Purús well inside their national boundaries. They viewed the conflict
as really about respecting venerable territorial boundaries that had carried over from
colonial times. 1 The Peruvian framing documents, despite recording some sharp ex-
changes,includedadossierofblandbureaucraticpracticessuchas“Onsuchdaywewill
coordinate the chronometers,” “We agree to take measurements only during the day.”
The salience given to this correspondence indicated that the value of the map for them
was largely cadastral and, given the particular moment's unpleasantness, procedural and
military.
The Peruvian government was reiterating a strategy deployed in an earlier conflict
with Ecuador, where Peru contested Ecuador's “false sale” to a British charter company
of terrains Peru had taken to be its own on the basis of colonial treaties. Peru argued
that the hierarchical authority of the Viceroyalty of Lima retained a kind of “federal”
power over lower administrative units— audiencias ; thus Lima's historic claims should
prevail over governing bodies of mainly regional influence. This Peru-Ecuador conflict
had been decided in the Peruvians' favor, invoking Idelfonso demarcations. 2 Bolivia's
case was similar: it had been part of the audiencia of Charcas. It was a dangerous pre-
cedent for the Upper Amazon: if the logic of Peru-Ecuador prevailed, the earlier Idelf-
onso line would remain the boundary, and Brazil would have to retreat from these lands
or fight for them.
The Brazilians, on the other hand, believed they were surveying lands they had ac-
quired legitimately, because Idelfonso was a contract between the extinct empires of
Spain and Portugal, and more recent boundary agreements with the republics of Peru
and Bolivia had been signed during Brazil's empire, which also no longer existed. New
boundary regimes had to be put into place, presumably informed by treaties signed by
the various modern republics.
The key element was uti possedetis , but other components had to be assembled as
well.
The idioms of Brazilian nationalism would have to be presented in terms of ethnic,
settlement, language, administrative, spatial, and symbolic continuities. Political philo-
sopher Ernest Rénan's ideas were pivotal for da Cunha's essays on nation building: