Map Art and Popular Geopolitics: Mapping Borders Between Colombia and Venezuela

Abstract

This paper discusses whether the maps made by visual artists and media designers can be a form of counter-mapping, communicating narratives that may blur how state borders are currently defined. Maps and artworks have inseparable histories and many studies have been carried out in order to explore the role of cartography in the construction of national imaginations. If official maps published in atlases and textbooks are still limited to national territories, artistic maps became an important source of information about shared identities and cross-border activities. Taking as a case study maps made in a collaborative art project between Colombia and Venezuela and maps published in the Colombian mainstream press, the paper identified contradictory narratives, which can simultaneously dissolve and reinforce international borders. Starting with the analysis of images created in a very particular context, this paper seeks to contribute to ongoing debates regarding the relations between map art and popular geopolitics.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Professors Anne-Laure Szary, Kenneth Madsen, Johan Henrik Schimanski and Denis Wood, for comments and advice. I am also very grateful for the staff from the Colombian library Luis Àngel Arango and the artists from the Proyecto Mapa, mainly Luis Angel Parra. Any inaccuracy in the paper is my own responsibility.

Notes

1. A. L. Parra and R. Benaim, Proyecto Mapa (Bogotá and Caracas: Arte Dos Grafico and Quinta Papeles 2000).

2. On the relation between art and journalistic maps, see D. Cosgrove, ‘Maps, Mapping, Modernity: Art and Cartography in the Twentieth Century’, Imago Mundi 57 (2005) pp. 35–54.

3. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso 1999) p. 100.

4. T. Winichakoul, Siam Mapped. A History of the Geo-Body of Siam (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press 1994).

5. See for example B. Harley, The New Nature of Maps. Essays in the History of Cartography (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press 2002); J. Black, Maps and Politics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1997); D. Wood, The Power of Maps (London: Ed. Routledge 1992).

6. H. Van Houtum, ‘Remapping Borders’, in T. M. Wilson and H. Donnan (eds.), Companion to Border Studies (Oxford: Wiley-Blackewell 2012) pp. 405–418.

7. M. Casa-Cortes and S. Cobarrubias, Drawing Escape Tunnels through Borders: Cartographic Research Experiments by European Social Movements, in L. Mogel and A. Bhagat (eds.), An Atlas of Radical Cartography (Los Angeles: Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Press 2008) pp. 51–68.

8. Van Houtum (note 6) p. 411.

9. Ibid., p. 407.

10. D. Wood, Rethinking the Power of Maps (New York and London: Guilford 2010) p. 111.

11. I conducted a search for journalistic maps in the archives of the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo and the weekly magazine Semana, both from 1990 to 2010. In addition, I collected examples from the art project Proyecto Mapa, which began in 1996 and had its book published in 2000.

12. R. Rees, ‘Historical Links between Cartography and Art’, Geographical Review 70/1 (1980) p. 61.

13. On the personification of Europe in renaissance maps see M. Wintle, ‘Renaissance Maps and the Construction of the Idea of Europe’, Journal of Historical Geography 25/2 (1999) pp. 137–165.

14. S. Caquard, W. Cartwriht, and B. Piatti, ‘Special Issue on Art and Cartography’, The Cartographic Perspective 46/4 (2009) pp. 289–291.

15. See, for example, M. H. Edney, ‘Cartography Without Progress: Reinterpreting the Nature and Historical Development of Mapmaking’, Cartographica 30/2-3 (1993) pp. 54–68.

16. D. Wood, ‘Commentary on David Woodward, Ed., Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays’, Cartographica 24/3 (Autumn 1987) p. 78.

17. Ibid., p. 77.

18. M. Heffernan ironically used this expression in ‘The Cartography of the Fourth Estate: Mapping the New Imperialism in British and French Newspaper, 1875–1925’, in J. R. Akerman (ed.), The Imperial Map. Cartography and the Mastery of Empire (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2009) p. 298.

19. C. Delano-Smith, ‘Art or Cartography? The Wrong Question’, History of the Human Sciences (1989) p. 91.

20. B. Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Harvard: Harvard University Press 2009).

21. D. Cosgrove (note 12) p. 53.

22. Wood, Rethinking (note 10) p. 189.

23. W. W. Ristow, ‘Journalistic Cartography’, Surveying and Mapping 17/4 (1957) pp. 369–390.

24. See E. Boria, ‘Geopolitical Maps: A Sketch History of a Neglected Trend in Cartography’, Geopolitics 13 (2008) p. 299.

25. H. Speier, ‘Magic Geography’, Social Research 8 (1941) p. 311.

26. S. Schulten, ‘Richard Edes Harrison and the Challenge to American Cartography’, Imago Mundi 50 (1998) pp. 174–188.

27. Caquard et al. (note 14) p. 289.

28. Casa-Cortes and Cobarrubias (note 7) p. 65.

29. A. Volvey, ‘Land Arts. Les fabriques spatiales de l’art contemporain’, Travaux de L’Institut de Géographie de Reims 129/130 (2008) p. 3.

30. Ibid., p. 3.

31. G. Ó Tuathail and J. Agnew, ‘Geopolitics and Discourse: Practical Geopolitical Reasoning in American Foreign Policy’, Political Geography 11 (1992) pp. 190–204.

32. Ibid., p. 192.

33. On Popular Geopolitics see J. P. Sharp, ‘The Reader’s Digest and Popular Geographies of Danger at the End of the Cold War’, in K. Dodds and D. Atkinson (eds.), Geopolitical Traditions (London: Routledge 2000).

34. A. L. A. Szary, ‘Walls and Border Art: The Politics of Art Display’, Journal of Borderland Studies 27 (2012) pp. 213–228.

35. Ibid., p. 10.

36. Parra and Benaim (note 1).

37. El Tiempo, 15 Oct. 2000.

38. Parra and Benaim (note 1) p. 55.

39. El Tiempo, 9 Oct. 2000.

40. Parra and Benaim (note 1) p. 109.

41. By using the name “Guyabana”, the artists also mention the Venezuelan claim to Guyana.

42. Parra and Benaim (note 1).

43. Anderson (note 3).

44. El Mundo, 10 March 1999.

45. El Espectador, 8 Dec. 1998.

46. G. Rey, ‘Las Otras Verdades de Venezuela’, in S. Ramírez and J. M. Cadenas (eds.), Colombia-Venezuela: retos de la convivencia (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela 2006) p. 336.

47. See A. Grimson (ed.), ‘Introdução. Fronteras Políticas versus Fronteras Culturales?’, in A. Grimson (org.), Fronteiras, Naciones e Identidades. La Periferia como Centro (Buenos Aires: Edicciones Ciccus, La Crujia 2001) p. 13.

48. Ibid., p. 27.

49. Parra and Benaim (note 1) p. 135.

50. L. S. V. Ramirez, ‘El conflicto colombiano y su interacción con las crisis de los vecinos’, in Dimensiones Territoriales De La Guerra Y La Paz (Bogotá: UNAN 2003) p. 70.

51. See L. O. Machado, A. R. Novaes, and L. C. Monteiro, ‘Building Walls, Breaking Barriers: Territory, Integration and the Rule of Law in Frontier Zones’, Journal of Borderlands Studies 24/3 (2009).

52. Grimson (note 47).

53. El Tiempo, 2 May 1995.

54. Ramirez (note 50) p. 16.

55. D. Pécaut, ‘Les FARC: longévité, puissance militaire, carencer politiques’, Hérodote. Revue de geographie at de géopolitique 12 (2006) p. 79.

56. Semana, 27 Sep. 2007.

57. Ibid., p. 29.

58. W. R. Tobón, ‘Violencia, Conflicto Armado y Narcotráfico’, in J. M. Galán, R. Vargas, F. Thoumi, and W. Ramírez, La Batalla Perdida contra las Drogas: Legalizar es la Opción? (Bogotá: Intermedio 2008).

59. G. Sanchez, ‘Los estudios sobre violencia: balance y perspectivas’, in G. Sanchez and R. Peñarenda (eds.), Pasado y presente de la Violencia en Colombia (Bogotá: CEREC 1986).

60. Ramirez (note 50).

61. See R. M. Vargas, Drogas, conflicto armado y desarrollo alternativo: una perspectiva desde el Sur de Colombia (Bogotá: Acción Andina Colombia 2003).

62. Ramirez (note 50) p. 69.

63. Van Houtum (note 6) p. 517.

64. Ibid., p. 517.

65. D. Newman, ‘The Lines that Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our ‘Borderless’ World’, Progress in Human Geography 30/2 (2006) pp. 143–161.

66. Ibid., p. 149.

67. Observation discussed by Szary (note 34).

68. Parra and Benaim (note 1).

69. Boria (note 24).