What is it about?
In the Spanish colonization of America, representation of its territory became a necessity. Most of the maps that indigenous and Spanish mapmakers drew during the sixteenth century did not conform to the cartographic canons used in renaissance Europe. In this corpus we find an exceptional case with all the characteristics of scientific representation, such as the Spanish royal cosmographers hoped the new overseas territories would be mapped: the map of Zapotitlán.
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Why is it important?
Although this document has been studied by several authors, this paper focuses particularly on the cartographic procedures, with new contributions: an analysis of the representation system used, the extent of area represented, and the determination of scale.
Perspectives
This article focuses on the debate on the scientific nature of cartography produced during discovery, conquest and Spanish colonization of the Americas.
Dr Manuel Morato-Moreno
Universidad de Sevilla
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This page is a summary of: El mapa de la Relación Geográfica de Zapotitlán (1579): una isla de racionalidad en un océano de empirismo, Journal of Latin American Geography, January 2011, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.1353/lag.2011.0031.
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