Society & Natural Resources

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Radical Cartographies: Participatory Mapmaking

from Latin America
edited by Bjørn Sletto, Joe Bryan, Alfredo Wagner, and Charles Hale, Austin,
TX: University of Texas Press, 2020. ISBN 978-1-4733-2088-4

Michael K. McCall

To cite this article: Michael K. McCall (2021): Radical�Cartographies:�Participatory�Mapmaking

from�Latin�America , Society & Natural Resources, DOI: 10.1080/08941920.2021.1881195

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2021.1881195

Published online: 07 Feb 2021.

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SOCIETY & NATURAL RESOURCES

BOOK REVIEW

Radical Cartographies: Participatory Mapmaking from Latin America, edited by

Bjørn Sletto, Joe Bryan, Alfredo Wagner, and Charles Hale, Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press, 2020. ISBN 978-1-4733-2088-4

The collection provides emic accounts from practitioners of how participatory mapmaking
has been employed by indigenous groups (and Afro-Colombians and Quilombolas) in con-
crete actions of defending their territories, their resources, and their identities in Latin
America. In the book, the concept collects other names: radical or new social cartography,
performative pedagogy, auto-demarcation, or social polygraphy. The 13 chapters contain
three cases from Brazil, two from Colombia, one each from Peru, Mexico, Venezuela,
Ecuador and Nicaragua, and two from the Mapuche Nation overlapping the modern
Argentina/Chile frontier which illustrates well that the subjects are indigenous nations or
communities, not modern countries. All the cases are organic composites, but in reduction-
ist language, the authors are observing and deconstructing what is being mapped and why,
and to a lesser extent, how and by whom?
The chapters necessarily quarry deep into what is being represented or mapped. In some
of the stories, the “what?” are the material facts and maps of the local resources that are
given value by the local knowledge of holistic land management – of food plants, forests,
and especially water (e.g., Chapters 2, 3, and 6–8). But in most cases, the storytellers find it
impossible to handle this without more profound nuanced appreciations of what cultural
worldviews or cosmologies signify to the indigenous peoples – the “harmony” of nature-
society-identity with constructs of landscape and place and origin myths, the framing of
stewardship or care, and alternative dimensions of temporality. Any translation to “western”
scientific concepts and language is incomplete and Godelian; the worldview of one culture
cannot be written in the language of another. The stories aim to “make navigable” essences
of cosmovisions—the guardian spirits, earth beings, fires, volcanoes, jaguars, and always,
water. The ontological and epistemological challenges are tackled in several discourses, espe-
cially in Mapuche cosmovisions and Ecuador (Chapters 3–5 and 10) with tantalizing brief
glimpses of the deep ecological wisdom, e.g., kimvn mapuce or sumac allpa. Elements easier
to grasp are the centrality of toponyms and the emic naming of environmental resources
(Chapters 2, 3, and 5).
The singular urban story (Chapter 9) concerns the political alignment of peoples who cre-
ate common cause to claim a multi-origin “indigenous territory” in a new urban setting. It
is maybe a general deficiency of a book entitled “Participatory Mapmaking from Latin
America” that the content is only of indigenous communities and excludes auto-mapping
from mestizo lands, or gendered cartography, or resistant urban communities; thus, for
example, no reference to the seminal work of Iconoclasistes from Argentina.
The “why?” in the stories fit the expectations that participatory mapping is usually inex-
tricably linked to land, threats to territory, or reclamacion de tierra. People must map in
order to protect, but Bryan (p. 203) asserts that therefore, community mapping is a
“defensive response”. In terms of modern mapmaking this is partly true, but individuals and
cultures always have “mental maps” not expressed on paper or in GIS. However, the book
rightly emphasizes why indigenous groups always have to contest their lands using the tools
2 BOOK REVIEW

of modern governance and legalities. This entails titling, cadasters, and the focus here,
authoritative maps, even though the people know well that the lines on paper do not
adequately represents the richness of their capacities and concordance with their territories.
The struggles for land are encapsulated in the phrase, “the war of maps” (Chapters 9 and
11). Colonial processes in Latin America as elsewhere in the ancient and modern world
always legitimize their land grab actions with the faked myth of terra nullius, followed up by
name changes in the toponyms, then the “colonising maps” and land titling, and then the
fences and clearance wars. The consequent massive thefts of land are indicted in Chapters 5,
10, and 11.
The creation of internal or neighborly conflicts where before was ambiguity and mutual
acceptance of fuzzy boundaries is common in participatory mapping, and is properly recog-
nized in Chapter 11. Other chapters however highlight only the potency of the map prod-
ucts for community struggles against powerful governments or corporations. This is not
surprising because the stories are written by protagonists who have their own positive stories
to tell, but the downplaying of internal conflicts is noticeable in the book.
The stories also explore other primary drivers of “why”—the defense of spaces and terri-
tory inextricably entangled into emotional identity with the land, the values of self-worth,
solidarity and coherence, and the intergenerational community exchanges between the accu-
mulated wisdom of the old and the curiosity of the young.
“By whom?” raises ethical inclusivity questions. The majority of the stories here, as in par-
ticipatory mapping with indigenous communities globally, rely boldly on the testimonies of
the elders and traditional, community leaders. Some chapters recognize “who speaks for
whom?” as a core issue of representativeness (Chapter 12). Most chapters do not; they accept
unquestioningly that these are the most appropriate sources. So who in the community
decides the toponyms, the boundaries, autonomous spaces, access entitlements, or good
landcare? This is a rare glimpse of non-reflectivity in the book; would global north readers
accord such uncritical respect to their own political elders?
Few chapters explore the details of “how” the tools and methods are actually used in map-
making. Chapter 4 is a valuable exception. Most chapters reference standard GPS and GIS
tools, also photomaps and graphic tools such as CorelDRAW, and an array of social investi-
gation tools from PRA (participatory rural appraisal) and Citizen Science such as narrative
workshops. It is surprising to see no applications of Participatory 3D modeling, a high
impact modality for exploring territorial dimensions with local communities. Innovating car-
tographers will appreciate the “non-standard” methods, including emic map icons, oral his-
tories, non-linear histories, calendar maps, circular maps, and maps of dances and games
(found in Chapters 2 and 8–10).
The intention of the book is clear—that these emic accounts of participatory mapping for
spatial justice should enlighten an English monoglot audience, and it succeeds magnificently.
Some of the stories may veer toward ethnological tourism—what right, besides intellectual
curiosity, do external audiences have to gaze on the spiritual relations between a people and
their land? But significantly, the vast majority of the storytellers state unequivocally that the
intentions behind their maps are to support struggles with external domination and hege-
monic power. Most of the chapters, moreover, reiterate the popular community support for
the mapmaking and the consequent maps.
The stories are direct, clear, and well-translated, unfloriated by intellectual language, bar
some editorializing—“postrepresentational” and “rhizomatic formations” are not the lan-
guage of the storytellers. Community participatory mapping in the global South was first
 SOCIETY & NATURAL RESOURCES 3

brought to wider academic attention in the 1990s. The “decolonialised cartographies” in this
book develop the vision: they demonstrate the authenticity of local authorship, the cultural
authority, and the political framing. They deserve an attentive audience.

Michael K. McCall
Centro de Investigaciones en Geografıa Ambiental (CIGA), Universidad Nacional Autonoma
de Mexico (UNAM), Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico
mccall@ciga.unam.mx

# 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

https://doi.org/10.1080/08941920.2021.1881195