Maps of, by, and for the Peoples of Latin America

Human Organization, Winter 2003 by Herlihy, Peter H, Knapp, Gregory

Indigenous and peasant societies in Latin America and the social scientists working with them began to harness the powers of mapping in the 1990s.2 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) became widespread actors in indigenous regions in the previous decade, but by 1990 indigenous organizations had begun to organize national-level movements throughout the region (Brysk 2000; Dean and Levi 2003; Maybury-Lewis 2002). The international legal environment has also changed over time. For example, the International Labor Organization adopted Convention 107 and Recommendation 104 in 1957 to protect the rights of indigenous peoples. This was upgraded in 1989 in Convention 169, which has been ratified by Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, and Peru. The ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights favoring the rights of the Miskitu community of Awas Tigni in Nicaragua has further reinforced this atmosphere of international legal support, as well as the use of PM as an approach for dealing with land rights issues (Macdonald 2002).

Working with federations and NGOs, indigenous leaders realized that national maps represent national identities and not their own (Orlove 1993; Rundstrom 1990, 1993). They watched quietly as government agencies and outside commercial interests used state maps and mapmakers to formalize control over their lands and resources. The 1990s, however, brought unprecedented involvement of local communities in all types of research and development. These societies embraced participatory research methods and Western-style maps as tools of empowerment in "a quiet cartographic revolution" to map and gain control of their lands (Herlihy 2002).

The history of cultural and indigenous mapping provides a backdrop to the more recent thrust of participatory mapping. Although some census-based or field-based cultural maps were produced to advance the agenda of the state or serve the needs of missionary organizations, other such maps were in fact intended to call attention to the importance of local peoples and argue for a pluricultural vision of national space. For example, geographers William Davidson and Melanie Counce (1989) focused scholarly attention on the importance of mapping contemporary indigenous populations in Central America while others focused on the Andean countries (Chirif and Mora 1977; Knapp 1987, 1988). The importance of this sort of cartographic depiction of indigenous populations became evident as researchers further explored the relationships between indigenous settlements, natural resources, and conservation areas (Chapin 1992; Cruz 1984; Herlihy 1992).

Out of this backdrop, a mapping project was born in 1992 to map the land use of the indigenous Miskitu, Pech, Tawahka, and Garifuna communities of the Honduran Mosquitia. Over the two preceding years, geographer Peter Herlihy had collaborated with the NGO Moskitia Pawisa (MOPAWI) and their associated Tear Fund volunteer environmentalist Andrew Leake on the establishment of the Tawahka Biosphere Reserve in the Mosquitia rain forest corridor of Honduras (Herlihy 1997; Herlihy and Leake 1990). Anthropologists Mac Chapin and Anthony Stocks, who were then codirectors of the Central American Program of Cultural Survival, asked Herlihy and Leake, with MOPAWI, to design a workshop on indigenous lands and natural resources in Honduras for the 500-year anniversary of the European "discovery." Without sufficient resources for the countrywide initiative, they focused on the need for better cartographic coverage of indigenous areas in Mosquitia. Herlihy and Leake designed a participatory methodology based on their past experiences. It was successful in showing how local people can work with researchers to transform their cognitive knowledge of geography into maps and descriptive information, empowering them in the representation and management of their lands (Herlihy and Leake 1997).