Negotiated Cartographies in the Relaciones Geográficas de Indias

The Descripción de la provincia de Yauyos Toda (1586)

Bibliographic Data

ID2734576
AuthorsCarla Hernández Garavito (0000-0002-2046-0384, University of California, Santa Cruz, corresponding author), Gabriela Oré Menéndez (0000-0003-4265-8612, University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Year2023
Volume70
Issue3
Pages351-384
Publication date2023-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnohistory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0014-1801 • E-ISSN: 1527-5477
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00141801-10443465
OpenAlexW4386172448
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited26

In the sixteenth century, the Spanish Crown moved to compile a comprehensive knowledge of its European and American landholdings to materialize the idea of a unified and civilized empire. Peninsular officials sent questionnaires to the Americas, including a request for "paintings" of the urban and natural landscape, without much detail on the project's guidelines. The varied responses sent back to Spain are known as the Relaciones Geográficas de Indias. This essay investigates the cultural negotiations and potential for Indigenous representations of "depth of place" embedded in one such painting from the Peruvian highland region of Yauyos and Huarochirí. By analyzing colonial-period sources and using spatial modeling, this research underscores the different portrayals of space coexisting on the map. By comparing the painting with contemporary colonial sources, this article examines ongoing negotiations of natural and urban landscapes and an emerging view that synthesized different readings of the same landscape in a period of colonial dislocation and reinvention

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Cartography · Colonial period · Colonialism · Empire · Ethnology · Geography · Humanities · Indigenous · Natural (archaeology) · Negotiation · Painting · Political science · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Ecology · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture · Law

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