Missionary Instruments, Techniques, and the Cartographic Construction of Western Amazonia
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Chauca, R.
1UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA Email: rchauca@ufl.edu
Abstract
In this presentation I seek to examine the instrumental foundations and performances that made the early modern Spanish missionary cartography of Amazonia possible. By this I mean to study the very tools and techniques that Jesuits and Franciscans used to carry out their cartographic endeavors while in Amazonia, which constitute an understudied historiographic topic. One problem to surpass is that in this case we are not dealing with a group of experts or “cartographers” in a proper sense. Missionaries were at the forefront group of agents of the Iberian Crowns in charge of the exploration, evangelization, occupation, and possession of the Western Amazonian space. As a result of these activities, and in order to perform them in a satisfactory manner, it became necessary to obtain an accurate knowledge of the lands and rivers they were sent to. Members of the Society of Jesus, for instance, have been praised as the cartographers par excellence of Amazonia. On the one hand, Jesuits became important cartographers of the South American countryside, including Amazonia, without a doubt and they did receive a basic knowledge on cartography as part of their curricular formation. The details of the cartographic formation of these friars, however, are a topic not yet fully explained and that I will explain in this presentation. More important, what I found problematic is not only the preeminence ascribed to the role played by members of the Society in the mapping of South America but, above all, that they were performing their cartographic skills as a result of a proper professional or academic training. First of all, members of the Order of Saint Francis were as or even more prepared in the cartographic arts than the Jesuits. As a result, their mappings of Western Amazonia were equally impressive. Yet, I argue that both Jesuit and Franciscan cartographic crafts in Amazonia were more the result of pragmatic experiences than a consequence of their academic formation. By this I do not mean to underestimate missionary cartography as a type of “second-order” science but, instead, to highlight that its performance as a scientific discipline in Western Amazonia did not follow traditional academic or professional lines. There was nothing resembling a formal office or position of cartographer among missionaries in Amazonia such as the ones that existed at metropolitan and viceroyal levels in the Spanish Empire. Cartography was not a proper discipline—which makes more complicated to trace the missionaries’ instrumental means that allowed them to map and to make maps. However, they did map Western Amazonia and, as result, we have now those maps, mostly in a manuscript form, that show the application of their cartographic knowledge. In addition, their reports, correspondence, and some of the books on cosmography and geography held in the conventual libraries of Jesuits and Franciscans in South America provide information on the instruments they acquired and the techniques through which they performed their cartographic craft. That is, they did practice science despite not being proper “scientists.”
Keywords
Missionary Cartography; Instruments and Techniques; History of Amazonia