Visual Expeditions supporting Geopolitical Vindications: Maps, Photographs and Other Visual Devices in the Diplomatic Dispute over the Andes as a Natural Border (1900)?

CARLA LOIS

Pictures from an Expedition

Londres

Lugar: Chicago; Año: 2020;

Several treaties and agreements reached between Argentina and Chile governments in the 1880s and 1890s were only partially successful in establishing the international border on the Andes. There remained some discrepancies about how to draw the line in poorly explored areas, and the two countries intended to apply different criteria to solve the problem. Paradoxically, the starting point of all disagreements between Argentina and Chile was an assumption shared by both: namely that Argentinean and Chilean territories were inherited following the dissolution of the Spanish Empire in the New World, and that both states had agreed that the Andes Mountains separated their dominions, as had been previously established by the colonial administration. In fact, that consensus depended upon the mutual recognition of all documents - the old and the modern, the public and the private - which had referred unvaryingly to the mountain range as the eastern border of Chile .However, by the end of nineteenth century, two concomitant processes turned this consensus into a weak and (especially) ineffective criterion. First, modern ways of organizing territorial sovereignty required more precision concerning what ?cordillera? meant in order to establish the rights and duties of people (citizens) settled there and to claim ownership of local resources. Second, the very idea of territorial boundary was progressively reconceptualized; initially understood as a more general zone, it increasingly came to be seen as a discreet and mappable line .In that context, after Argentinean and Chilean experts had stipulated that the Andes worked as a border, the critical point was how to draw a dividing line along the mountain chain. But while the Argentine experts suggested drawing a line following the highest summits (topographic criterion), their Chilean counterparts suggested a line that divided the Atlantic and the Pacific drainage basins (hydrographic criterion). Each country maintained a criterion whose application would result in a gain of territory for itself and in a loss for the other.In order to present their arguments, the Argentinians prepared a document (titled Argentina Evidence, 1900 ) aimed to support and develop the topographic criterion on the basis both of the theory of natural borders and visual materials (pictures, maps, diagrams, gravures, and panoramic photos). ?Desiring to facilitate the work, it has been sought to get together all the data which permit the appreciation of the exactness and fitness of the line traced by the Argentine Expert?? (xvi), Francisco Pascasio Moreno leaded the organization of a comprehensive work: this 1,091 page, four-volume report contains 71 maps, 182 photos, 175 fold-out panoramic photos, 12 engravings and 15 sketches . In general term, the work is presented as anonymous, tough it is possible to follow some traces to identify the Moreno?s responsibility as a director of this diplomatic document. In change, there is no explicit or implicit information about graphic materials, their making process, their dates or their makers. Although some historical maps have been visibly redrawn from their originals, mostly of materials are as coherent and intertwined, as they seem to have been produced for this work.