A Geography of Hard Times: Narratives about Travel to South America, 1780-1849

Introduction

I, like all men, have found myself living in hard times. —J. L. Borges HISTORY BETWEEN TWO MAPS THE HARD TIMES that are the focus of this study open, symbolically, with the crucial year 1780, which marked the beginning of the end of the colonial period for the countries of South America. The event that justifies singling this particular year out of a century chock-full of discontent within the Spanish viceroyalties1 is, of course, the murder in Cuzco’s central plaza of José Gabriel Túpac Amaru Inca, his wife Micaela Bastidas, their sons Francisco and Hipolito, and several cousins, principal lieutenants of his rebellion, and other men and women who followed him.2 Before he suffered being drawn and quartered, his body pulled apart by horses and his bodily remnants scattered throughout the territory of Cuzco, Túpac Amaru’s tongue was cut out. His provocative power of speech, which had succeeded in uniting Peru’s diverse ethnic groups against the government, would forever be quieted. Yet this descendant of the Incas knew how to write the Spanish tongue, and among his possessions was found a final proclamation which would later be viewed as his manifesto, which begins as follows: Don José I by the grace of God, Inca, King of Perú, Santa Fé, Quito, Chile, Buenos Aires, and the continents of the Southern seas, Duke of La Superlativa , Lord of the [rivers] César and Amazon, with dominion over the Gran Patití, matchless Commissary and Distributor of divine mercy with respect to treasuries, et cetera. As it has been agreed in my council, in careful consideration on repeated occasions, some secret and some public, that the Kings of Castile have for nearly three centuries usurped the throne and dominion of my people, burdening my vassals with unbearable tributes, taxes, moneys, fees, duties upon goods, duties upon sales, taxes of fifths, taxes of tenths, viceroys, courts . . . (Translated from Lewin, 153) 1 Introduction This document of rebellion lends itself well to analysis as testimony to the indigenous mentality toward the end of the colonial period.3 Here I want to point out only two of its salient aspects. The first is that Túpac Amaru’s manifesto is, in my opinion, a map in which the descendant of the Incas attempts a reconstruction of his ancestors’ empire from its center, Cuzco, while using names that would be recognizable to the Spanish crown. Demarcating the territory, he declares himself, by the grace of God, not only Inca but “King of Perú, Santa Fé, Quito, Chile, Buenos Aires, and the continents of the Southern seas, Duke of La Superlativa, Lord of the César and the Amazon , with dominion over the Gran Patití.” The objective of this “oral map” is the generation of a geographic discourse of territorial re-appropriation which, although it has little to do with the cartography of South America that we would recognize, recalls the Mapa Mundi sketched by Guamán Poma de Ayala, which embodied not only an Inca geography but a system of knowledge of time and space anterior to European cartography.4 On another level, a fundamental objective of this territorial manifesto is to identify the sites where the Spanish crown collected all of its taxes, “burdening my vassals with unbearable tributes. . . .” This map, like cartography in general, is intended to clarify borders so as to determine tributes and specify ownership of lands.5 Although Túpac Amaru’s manifesto did not have the desired effects and soon became utopian, in its moment it was feared by the Spanish crown. It served as a revolutionary battle cry for the communards of all the territory from Argentina to Nueva Granada. The closing date of this study is symbolic as well. In 1849, the first official maps of all the provinces of Venezuela and Colombia were commissioned . They were to be prepared by the Italian cartographer Agustín Codazzi who had fought as a mercenary officer in the revolutionary armies alongside Luis Aury. These innumerable military campaigns across the geography of the South, together with Humboldt’s studies, allowed Codazzi to become the official cartographer of the republics of Gran Colombia. Like Túpac Amaru’s map, Codazzi’s also had a political goal, that of marking the limits of the countries and organizing the collection of taxes. But his were not maps with an ethnic center like that of the Inca. They were drawn within the symbolic system for space and time that had been...