Hydraulic Mapping in Mendoza, Argentina (18th and 19th centuries) as a Tool for Historizing Space and Spatializing History

Abstract

In traditional historiography, visual documentation, such as historic drawings and maps, has too often being used to illustrate, and thus to enhance, texts with the addition of photos or old engravings. The possibility of considering the historical value of such graphic documents had been usually ignored. Diagrammatic representations of public works projects (such as sewage or running water systems, pavements, etc.) usually contain not only a confined historical space, but also complement it with the inclusion of literal information, iconographic or architectural images, old and new waterways, contour lines, public facility locations, crop types, protoindustrial installations and literary references to social amenities of the featured spaces. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to show the possibilities open to historical research through the creative utilization, via historical cartography, of a traditional source.

 The method chosen to show the usefulness and historical potential of old maps and cartograms is to examine a 1754 survey, embedded in a dispute over the closure of a road passing through a mill in the Argentinean city of Mendoza in the middle of the 18th century, and begin weaving historical, social and cadastral information around it. Next, we analyze the map using graphic software (not geo-referencing) to show the different digitization stages involved before finally contextualizing the historical and political processes in which the “reworked” chart had been inserted. The findings of the digitization and computer graphics exploration make available a previously unknown historical plan to the existing cartographic maps of Mendoza. Paradoxically, the 1754 plan turned out to be the first of the real surveys of the city of Mendoza after its founding in 1561. One of the most important contributions of this digitization process is to provide an image of the urban parcels surrounding the historical area where the city had been originally erected. There are no previous images of this zone and the next available survey was completed in 1885. One of our early conclusions is that far from what is usually assumed the “Spanish checkerboard” approach to urban development did not automatically transfer to the territories of American cities founded during the Spanish colonization process.