National Cartography and Indigenous Space in Mexico

Abstract

This chapter discusses Antonio Garcia Cubas's Atlas geografico, estadistico e historico de la Republica Mexicana, in which viewers can still encounter the traces of an ambitious state undertaking of the nineteenth century. The atlas opens to a map of the country, and following it, each of Mexico's thirty-one states appears on two-page spreads. The space of the nation thus unfolds and expands across its pages. Such atlases would have been quite familiar to audiences in the United States as well; armchair travelers in New York or Omaha, Nebraska, could choose to view their own nation thus in their national atlases. An unusual feature of Mexico's atlas came in the closing pages of this modern image of nation. At the end of the volume appear two indigenous maps, both from the sixteenth century, both taking the form of itineraries, both showing the fabled journey of the Aztecs from their edenic home of Aztlan sometime in the dim reaches of the thirteenth century.