The Map of the Coatzacoalcos River (1580): The First Cartography of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

ABSTRACT

The Coatzacoalcos River is one of the most important rivers in Mexico. The oldest map of this river was drawn by Francisco Gali in 1580. Unlike most maps made in New Spain in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, this map is purely European in style and is somewhat reminiscent of a nautical chart. Analysis of the map suggests that it was made hastily. Both the errors in the distances and the numerous corrections that can still be observed support this conjecture. It seems that Francisco Gali was more interested from his point of view as an explorer and navigator in the most important aspect of the region: the possibility of connecting the North Sea and the South Sea through the Strait of Tehuantepec. In this respect, the map of Coatzacoalcos would have been drawn to show the viability of using the river as an interoceanic passage.

KEYWORDS:

• Coatzacoalcos River
• Francisco Gali
• Spanish America
• Sixteenth Century
• Mexico
• Tehuantepec Isthmus

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on the contributor

Manuel Morato-Moreno graduated in Architecture from the University of Seville. He received his PhD in Architecture from the University of Seville in 2010. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Graphic Engineering, University of Seville, where he teaches on the Undergraduate Degree in Civil Engineering, Undergraduate Degree in Aerospace Engineering and Undergraduate Degree in Industrial Technology Engineering. Currently, and is head of the department. His current research interests include history of cartography, history of relief depiction, land surveys in the Renaissance, topographic maps and regional cartography.

Notes

1 About the transport of materials from Coatzacoalcos to build ships on the Pacific coast, see Moorthead (1949).

2 Among the authors that use the surnames Stroza Gali are Cline (1972), Acuna (1982), Berthe et al. (1991), Mundy (1996), KaganMarias (2000) and Padron (2004); among others. In the documents found in the Archivo General de Indias, the name used in all cases is Francisco Gali, like in classical historiography of the time.

3 AGI, Filipinas, 18A, R.5, N.30. Carta de la Audiencia de Manila con 31 puntos.

4 However it does contain references to geographical coordinates, so the legend contained in the top of the map, the author wrote: ‘The whole coastline is of this view and a height of northern latitude sixteen fair degree.’

5 The places where these ‘paintings’ are currently housed are the University of Texas at Austin (37), the Archivo General de Indias in Seville (27) and the Real Academia de Historia in Madrid (12), to which must be added the Relación de Tlaxala which passed from Philip II’s personal archive to the Glasgow University Library. See Cline (1972).

6 The inclusion of the fleur-de-lis in the compass roses to indicate the north is documented for the first time in a nautical chart of Jorge d'Aguiar de 1492; see Rivera Novo and Martín-Merás (1992: 29). See also García Franco (1947: 45).

7 Roque in Spanish means a kind of rock over the sea. On the map it could refer to the volcanic character of the sierra going into the sea, or to the coral reef that runs parallel to the coast (Favila Vázquez, 2016: 224).

8 In the dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, brazo is defined as part of the river that, separating from it, runs independently until it meets again with the main channel.

9 We have used Cad-Earth™ and AutoCad™.

10 In the sixteenth century, latitude was easily found, any navigator could locate the Pole Star, which is approximately aligned with the polar axis of the Earth. During the night with a simple instrument such as the crossbow, a sailor could measure the vertical angle between the Pole Star and the horizon, a value that practically coincides with the latitude of the place. By day, latitude can be determined by the meridian height of the Sun.

11 On the map that accompanies the Relación of Tlacotalpa, Gali wrote the record of the latitudes of ten places in the map legend, and due to an error in transcription or instrumentation, their readings suffered a deviation of between 48′ and 1° 12′; these mistakes were later avoided in the map of Coatzacoalcos (Price, 1957; Mundy, 1996; cited by Morato-Moreno, 2018).

12 Francisco Gali knew the Mexican coast very well. He surely was on an official mission when he was entrusted with the three jobs in the area: Tlacotalpa, Coatzacoalcos and Tehuantepec (Manso Porto, 2012: 64).

13 Although this ancient river port has disappeared and no archaeological remains of it have been found, some authors have located it approximately by triangulating the distances in leagues known to exist from the surrounding villages. See Barros (2007: 343).

14 The calculation of longitude or meridian was for a long time a disheartening problem, almost unsolvable. The cosmographers of the time of Columbus resignedly considered it as a limit placed by Providence on human knowledge. So serious was it that the monarchs of the Atlantic states – Spain, Portugal, France, and England – offered substantial rewards to anyone who discovered a method of determining geographic longitude. See Morato-Moreno (2016).

15 On the map of Tlacotalpa the graphic scale is 1: 431 408, and the scale calculated by MapAnalyst is 1:438 300. See Morato-Moreno (2018).