Cartographic Memory: Social Movement Activism and the Production of Space

Human geographer Juan Herrera's first book, Cartographic Memory, offers a study of an overlooked space and story of the Chicano movement. While cities such as San Antonio, Denver, Los Angeles, and others in the US Southwest hold most of the accounts of the Chicano movement, Herrera centers on Oakland. More specifically, Cartographic Memory anchors a historical narrative in the Latino Bay Area neighborhood of Fruitvale during the 1960s and 1970s. The main question Herrera asks is how can the impacts of social movement activism be measured in a different way? Herrera approaches the answers to this question through a spatially grounded approach. Utilizing oral histories, archival research, and ethnography, Herrera demonstrates how social movements transform places, develop connections or “routes” across geographic lines, and create spaces for new imagined futures.The book is organized into five chapters. In Chapter 1, Herrera provides a history of the multiple political actors and organizations in Fruitvale that went on to shape and create the activist geography of the neighborhood in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 2 historicizes Fruitvale's Chicano Movement and places it in the context of the activist and political activities that had begun nearly twenty years earlier. Chapter 3 maps out the creation of Fruitvale's Spanish Speaking Unity Council (SSUC) in the 70s through funding from the Ford Foundation and the Southwest Council of La Raza. This chapter takes readers along routes outside of the neighborhood and into New York City and San Antonio. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of the Fruitvale Transit Village completed in 1999. Chapter 5 documents other momentary and ephemeral organizations and direct actions taken on by the Fruitvale activists.Herrera makes several theoretical interventions throughout the book. The first is “space as archive.” Herrera reads space as an archive of the Chicano movement in Fruitvale. This theoretical intervention allows us to read space as an archive of multiple social movement struggles. Herrera came to this theoretical intervention through his research process and from the activists he interviewed, learned about, and from. When asked about the impact of their work, the activists pointed to the built and transformed urban space as proof of the success of their activism. Make no mistake, the built and transformed urban environment of Fruitvale we see today is an archive, a living one. It does not represent merely a single historical moment in time, but a continuing struggle.Building upon Maylei Blackwell's concept of retrofitted memory, Herrera employs his second theoretical contribution with his concept of cartographic memory. Herrera defines cartographic memory as “a practice activists deployed and a framework for understanding how leaders defined their activities though the invocation and graphing of space” (p. 14). Herrera's cartographic memory underscores the geographic form activists’ memories take on. Herrera points out that “maps can also be used to tell alternative histories and futures” (p. 14). Cartographic memory is not simply a way to remember, it is also a political reshaping of space and includes a particular kind of mapping that emphasizes the contributions of certain groups. Herrera utilizes cartographic memory as a methodological tool for his approach to analysis and writing about the creation and mapping of space.Herrera's study is beautifully written and his decision to focus his study on the activism that took place through a single neighborhood in Oakland proves to be successful. It allows readers to recognize the everyday contributions of activists and highlight the role of women, children, and multi-generational coalitions that formed in the Fruitvale neighborhood and went on to reshape urban spaces. Together, the people of Fruitvale established arts organizations, created youth educational programs, set up a free health clinic, established a land trust and built a park, and participated in everyday acts of helping each other. Herrera challenges the typical portrayal of the Chicano movement where these “epic male heroes” are centered rather than the multiple communities and people who contributed to the larger national movement (p. 22). Cartographic Memory also challenges the notion that the Chicano movement was an ephemeral moment in time, instead the author situates Fruitvale and its activism as a part of a legacy of community activism, as a part of a longer tradition of Mexican American activism and a civil rights struggle that did not end in the 1970s. Cartographic Memory is a well argued and important addition to the historiographies of social movement history and geographic place-making. It also provides several important theoretical frameworks and tools that can be applied to further the way we engage with and write about social movements.