Mapping and Forgetting

Centered on the mapping of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, this essay explores the relations between cartography, national imaginaries, and personal archives. Undertaken in 1917 by the Rondon Commission during the period of the First Republic (1889–1930), the making of the map spanned decades of Brazilian history, as it was finally published in 1952 during Getúlio Vargas's democratic presidency. Its making entailed the exploration of the vast Brazilian hinterlands, the transformation of Indigenous peoples, and the shaping of the lives of the explorers, guides, and cartographers engaged in the enterprise. Since its beginning, the making of the map was directed by Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon's close collaborator, the military cartographer and chief of the cartography section of the Rondon Commission, Francisco Jaguaribe. As Jaguaribe was the author's paternal grandfather, the effort of mapping what was then the immense terrain of Mato Grosso became embedded in the memorial archives of her family. The author envisions the map as a material object, as a repertoire of imaginaries, a monument, ruin, and allegory. In narrating its saga, the author seeks to entwine personal lives with national projects, individual/collective oblivion with national erasure, and mapping with experiences of creation and destruction.