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24 \ Mapping the Center of the World 24 Chapter 2 Mapping the Center of the World Through the study of Geography a people animates, awakens, develops and progresses, as only it constitutes today’s living science; the elevation of views, as one says, and pecuniary benefits—what are they but the real fruits of exact knowledge describing all we see and observe on the surface of the territory of our planet? Luis Tufiño, 1911 Between 1903 and 1909, four new maps of Quito appeared, a small number, to be sure, but one that equaled the number of city plans drawn over the course of the previous century. This period marked the onset of a pronounced expansion in local cartographic projections designed to facilitate urban planning, conduct censuses, or promote tourist vistas. The authors of these charts included a motley assortment of amateur geographers, architects, foreign commercial hires, and military personnel. Over the course of the first decades of the new century, normative tropes slowly emerged in their works, dominated by a symbolic lexicon considering Quito as a legible space framed dialectically by its colonial core and a modern frontier displacing the underdeveloped and “barbaric” countryside. Underlying this process lay a consensus that maps represented “fruits of exact knowledge,” as military geographer Luis Tufiño put it. His elaboration not only served utilitarian aims but also provided a vehicle for patriotic progress. The contention that maps act as neutral representations of objective reality has been subject to criticism in recent years. As J. B. Harley first pointed out, maps often serve as tools for justifying and obscuring power relations through 25 / Mapping the Center of the World their incorporation of symbols, the eliding or inclusion of populations, and the creation of focal points by the highlighting of specific aspects of the physical landscape.1 Denis Wood and John Fels, among others, have extended Harley’s analysis by highlighting the subjectivity of the cartographic projection itself, most recently arguing that maps may best be understood as a series of “propositions ” rather than as mirrors of reality.2 Similarly, John Pickles has elucidated a variety of approaches to understanding what he terms the “cartographic gaze,” that is to say, the set of practices and techniques that together brand maps with the authenticity of science and the veneer of objectivity.3 These reconsiderations of mapping practices have given rise to an ever-growing number of studies documenting how maps have served the goals of colonial states and commercial interests through the territorialization of space, that is, the process of naturalizing the claims of states and businesses to control space without regard for the contours of the landscape or the interests of its inhabitants. Crafting this “God’s-eye view,” however, can no longer be considered a process bereft of contestation from the subjects of the cartographic gaze. As Raymond Craib has argued with regard to nineteenth-century Mexico, state attempts to locate and cartographically delineate “fugitive landscapes” both articulated hegemonic power relations and demonstrated the limits of state domination over outlying populations that engaged in a selective dialogue with national cartographers in order to defend and articulate local interests subject to elision through mapping processes.4 The constitution of urban maps bears a general resemblance to the national, imperial, or colonial processes of territorialization described above. However, given the particular importance of the city as a marker of citizenship in Spanish America, urban views should also be considered an expression of what Richard Kagan has termed the “communicentric” ideal. As such, urban maps not only act as a tool for use in implementing crude exploitation and control over territory but also express a more subtle articulation of collective identity (what Kagan terms civitas or civic-communal identity) that can at times be divorced from cartographic accuracy (urbs or constructed space).5 The maps of Quito discussed below denominate particular elite constitutions of the city’s character. A review of their communicentric imagery helps illustrate the complexity of the hegemonic project involved in the representation and production of Quito space. Despite a general consensus as to the legitimacy of cartography as a direct topographic reflection, Quito maps also showcase shifting and conflicting considerations of social legitimacy and visions of community . Of particular importance is the alteration of the dominant city view, from one characterized by insular religiosity to that of a tourist destination at the center of the world, with a monumental colonial core, sophisticated northern districts, and bountiful environs. This process intersected with...

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