BENCHMARKS - Maphead - page 46

wasn't just an obscure issue of national pride for Chile, which would lose its only access
to the Atlantic Ocean if Argentina's version of the border was drawn. The ruling junta in
Argentina at the time seemed ready to go to war over the boundary, refusing to accept an
International Court of Justice ruling for Chile and even preparing a military invasion of the
contestedislandsforDecember1978.Attheeleventhhourcameadiplomaticdevelopment
straight out of the sixteenth century: the Vatican intervened, and both nations agreed to let
the pope draw the boundary line. During the height of the conflict, Argentine and Chilean
delegations spent months sitting at tables at opposite sides of the Geography and Map Di-
visionreadingroomlikewarringcliquesinahighschoolcafeteria. Theywouldrequestthe
same maps of Tierra del Fuego in turn and study them carefully, never acknowledging the
enemy across the room. “We're neutral ground,” claims John Hébert, but it might be more
accurate to say that, for a few months, the border between Chile and Argentina ran north,
right through the basement of 101 Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Boundary lines can arouse stronger feelings than perhaps any other feature on a map.
Marking property was the purpose of many of the earliest surviving maps, and boundary
markers—piles of rocks, for example, the human equivalent of a dog peeing on a
tree—probablygobackmillenniaearlier.InmedievalEurope,thesurveyorwasahatedfig-
ure, something like the “revenuer” in mountain moonshiner lore: a corrupt lackey always
looking to stick it to poor farmers. His new map might take away part of your field, or it
might raise your rent or your taxes. In Poland, surveyors were so dreaded that even death
couldn't end their menace. The flickering lights of swamp gas—what we call will-o'-the-
wisps—were said to be the ghosts of dead mapmakers wandering the marsh by night. Bet-
ter finish your cabbage, kids, or the surveyor will come and get you!
A nice thick border and a carefully chosen color scheme can serve to unify a nation,
as on those Victorian maps in which every far-flung corner of the British Empire was al-
ways the same uniform pink , to impress on generations of schoolchildren the constancy
and reach of the Crown—the “pink bits,” students called the empire. * Map boundaries also
define, with a simple stroke of the pen, who isn't on our side: an enemy to guard against
or even territory we might take back someday. These aren't just lofty scholarly concerns.
Google fields so many complaints about the national borders on its maps that it's started
delivering localized versions to different users: an Indian user might see a border in one
place while a Pakistani user sees it somewhere else, and everyone stays contented in their
own little cocoons of geographic superiority. In 2006, when the Israeli education minister,
Yuli Tamir, announced that textbook maps of Israel would put a border around the West
Bank, rather than depicting it as undemarcated Israeli territory, hard-line rabbis announced
that God would strike her down for her blasphemy. You can't explain this all away as mere
political posturing; it's genuine offense. The clarity and simplicity of the lines on a map
make them powerful symbols.