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varadouros were often parts of an extensive indigenous system of connections between
settlements andmovementthroughheadwaterareas,alatticeworkofcommunications. 25
Silences and Lies
Maps are also interesting for what they do not reveal—cartographers point out that their
silences can be as evocative as their traces. In the Buenaño/da Cunhas map, the nota-
tion of varadouros is surprisingly infrequent, even though, of course, they were “every-
where.” But more interesting, perhaps, is the map that da Cunha sent down with his
privatelettertoRioBrancoandrecopiedandsignedinitsfinalforminMarch1906.This
mapshowsafewofthemain varadouros thatleadfromtheheadwatersofthePurúsinto
the Ucayali and the Madre de Dios, but its most notable feature is that the elements are
inverted. Longitudinal lines run from left to right. The Urubamba/Ucayali and Madre de
Dios/Manú meander through what in most conventional mappings would be Brazilian
territory, while the Purús twists through “Peruvian” terrains. The Manú River appears to
be the main tributary of the Amazon. The “observation” notes that the map is inverted
“following conventions of the Northern Hemisphere.” Basically the map is upside down
and reads as though the observer were placed above the equator and facing south—but
even so read so, it remains intentionally inaccurate. Since the other maps produced by
da Cunha follow standard conventions, this map may have been produced in this way to
foil potential military field copyists.
Map 11. “Map of the headwaters of the Purús and the varadouros that link them to the Madre de Dios
and the Ucayali. Prepared in accordance with the work of Joint Reconnaissance Commission of the
Upper Purús.” The dotted lines represent varadouros . These were incomplete mappings, since the
Chandless map shows many more. The text at the bottom left states: “This map inverts itself according
to cartographic conventions that are appropriate to the Northern Hemisphere.”
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