Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met

Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr. is assistant professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
For more information about Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr., visit the Author Page.

“This provocative case study alternately provides a reexamination and, in places, reiteration of the core arguments of spatial history. It demonstrates how cartographic practices simultaneously created and transformed ethnicities while significantly contributing to the contemporary marginalization of Native peoples.”--CHOICE

“Richly illuminating. . . . Methodologically innovative and framed by compelling questions, Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met opens up possibilities for comparative research in other borderland regions in South America and beyond. It offers scholars a whole new perspective on imperial and Native territorialities, which competed and intersected in the making of a meaningful border.”—Hispanic American Historical Review

“Provides an extremely coherent and comprehensible analysis of a very complex topic. . . . Erbig contributes considerably to recent debates on indigenous agency and indigenous knowledge in colonial history and in the history of science. His study goes far beyond the observation . . . that border-making and mapping were cooperative undertakings to which both European and indigenous actors contributed.”—Journal of Early American History

“Where Caciques and Mapmakers Met accomplishes the herculean task of placing Indigenous mobile populations in the center of imperial conflicts in South America, demonstrating their pivotal role in the making of the borderline. . . . An invaluable contribution to borderland history, Indigenous history, the history of cartography, colonial/imperial history, and the regional history of Rio de La Plata.”—Journal of Social History

“This book tells a nuanced story of border-making at a critical moment in Latin American political and cartographic history.”—The Americas

“Erbig’s sweeping, incisive history of South America—presented unassumingly as a history of border making—tells this story with granular detail, revealing a process that unfolded over more than a century.”—Colonial Latin American Review