Maps, Texts, and History - The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Euclides da Cunha - page 287

Map 9. Buenaño/da Cunha map.
The Buenaño/da Cunha map with its “corrections” is reproduced here as map 9 . This
map sits suspended in its grid with no other referents than latitude and longitude. The
area away from the channel is mere blankness. It documents the place-names of all the
estates—the fuzzy transverse lines that give this reduced map the aspect of a caterpillar.
The areas where the density of names declines are those inhabited by caucheiros . By
the time the expedition traveled, both sides had regional administrative posts as means
to reduce tensions during the adjudication, and these are indicated on the map. Other
particularly important sites (the ruins of missions, administrative seats, the oldest estab-
lishments) were “geolocated” through astronomically determined points of latitude and
longitude that accompanied the travel report but were not on the map itself.
TheBuenaño/daCunhamapwasaneffectiveBrazilianimperialdocument,onewhose
joint production gave it the imprimatur of legitimacy. The Peruvians, as explained earli-
er, were interested in undermining this cartographic effort but were also in many ways
indifferent to the meanings of this particular act of scientific mapping. They believed
that the juridical antiquity of their claims would not be superseded by the charting of
rivercoursesdeepintheheartofwhattheytookas“their”terrain.Theysawtheexercise
as mainly carrying out political requirements of the Treaty of Petrópolis and as a way to
gainusefulmilitaryandeconomicinformationonaregionaboutwhichtheywerepoorly
informed.
Everypossibleidiomofimperialrightwouldbeinvoked,butthismapanditsdiscurs-
ive accompaniment revealed a powerful story of unremitting Brazilian settlement that
stretcheduptheriverformorethantwothousandkilometersandmorethanfourhundred
settlement sites and trading posts. With each place-name the fuzzy, sinuous map line
spoke of geopolitical presence, especially compared to the occasional village far upriver
in the Peruvian landscape. Da Cunha's other maps, those of the varadouros and of the
seringal , would, as we will see, imaginatively expand that fuzzy line into an immensity