Cartographic archives: Excavating the subterranean with a camera

Here, we will write We will bring clarity to the old word. The origin The beginning of all that has happened to the peoples of K'iche’ Nation of the K'iche’ Here we begin the teaching, The process of bringing clarity to things and, The relationships between that which is hidden and, That which has been revealed by Tz'aqol. […] When everything was narrated, Together with what was done in the clarity of existence, the clarity of the word. […] We will bring this out to light because there aren't other places to read the Popol Wuj, An instrument of clarity arrived to us from the shores, Where our darkness is made sense of, An instrument of clarity about the origin of life, as we call it now. –Popol Wuj (circa 1600]). Spanish translation by Sam Colop (2011) and English translation by the author. Maps are complex artifacts that can simultaneously illuminate and obscure. They bridge the realms of the visible and the invisible, probing the limits of what can or cannot be seen. Much like any piece of literature, maps carry with them an authorial voice, a specific vision of the world, and a desire to make that vision known to others. In any map, the mapmaker's voice conveys a desire to materialize the land through a specific signification system composed of names, lines, dots, and signs (Harley, 1988;1989; 2002). Yet close analysis of dozens of historical Hacienda maps of an Indigenous town in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico (drawn between 1866, 1918, and 1919 by Yucatec cartographers) reveals another possible reading of maps. This reading of maps is grounded in a photographic approach that explores the visual multiplicities of these documents, powerful reminders of Indigenous history tied to the Yucatec henequen (Agave fourcroydes) plantation system and the consolidation of both modern agrarian capitalism and the formation of the Mexican state at the beginning of the 20th century.1 Using the camera as an instrument of observation, I dwell in the materiality of maps, allowing the different visions of the document to be the main point of departure for my thinking. This essay explores how map fragments shown here2 can be understood as an archive of Yucatec subterranean history, characterized by the entanglement between Indigenous history, changing mapping practices, and different orientations toward the land. As my main instrument of visual analysis, the camera allows me to examine the cartographic history of a Mayan town called Homún.3 The careful revision of this history shows the historical inscription of a number important number of subterranean sites, described in their original Mayan names: Xkeben, Yaxbacaltun, Onichen, Akabchen, Xmamil, Xcuchen, Acula, Oxola, Chelem, Koman, Kampepen Noria, Chen Kanun, Chenchibe, Pozo Jaybil, Tihohob. All these names will eventually disappear from the contemporary maps of this town. Nevertheless, when analyzing these older maps, the Mayan names of places are still there, and by looking at these sites, reinscribing them through the camera, we illuminate the narratives hidden in their Mayan toponymics. Here, the names and the very act of naming the subterranean foregrounds a particular history of Indigenous dwelling in the land. Even in the earliest accounts of the Maya, such as those recorded in the pages of the classic Mayan book of origins known as Popol Wuj, the underground space of Xibalba and the Seven Caves of Life is understood as the main source of the divine, all life, and the origins of humans (Breton et al., 2003). Naming this subterranean place is thus a way of calling attention to the Indigenous relations sustained by the recognition of subterranean spaces and their histories. It is a form of memorializing the specific social worlds connected to the underground and the life made possible above the ground through everything underneath. The argument of this essay is simultaneously anthropological and aesthetic, where the photographs are essential elements for the sensorial apprehension of the map as a site of social memory. My approach to these images considers the materiality of the map as a point of departure to engage in a speculative reading of the Indigenous histories of this town in southern Mexico. I center my attention on the new material forms produced through visual magnification to find a different reading of these maps, one situated at the limit of the unknown elements of this region. Both the known and the unknown are negotiated by illuminating the physical characteristics of the paper as an unexpected site of history. This Indigenous-inspired reading of maps as instruments of concealment allows us to reconsider the potential rereading of maps as subversive tools to destabilize their intrinsic colonial gaze and historical silences (Trouillot, 1995). Could the materiality of a map become an essential space for political intervention beyond the critique of its colonial origins? Could a re-reading of a map illuminate another kind of analytical move? What would such a reading offer to us? What kinds of voices and subjectivities could we uncover in the material traces of the map understood as a vibrant archive? Two closely intertwined forms of “dwelling” structure my thinking around this image (Figure 1). Dwelling—both as a process of inhabiting the land and occupying a map's visual space. Both forms of dwelling involve finding a space for oneself. My use of the concept of dwelling is informed by Mayan writers, whose poetic imagination perceives the land as “the consequence of the various relations between iik (wind), cháak (rain), k’áax (land/forest), as a space co-created among birds, animals, sounds, silences, dreams, colors, lights, and shadows” (Uc, 2021). This Indigenous Mayan perspective on multiply produced land is enriched by Keith H. Basso's (1996) work on Apache maps, demonstrating how narratives are preserved and circulated through place names, thereby becoming critical forms of Indigenous wisdom grounded in the practice of dwelling. More specifically, Basso's analysis of “place-names” highlights dwelling as a necessary step in interpreting Apache—and arguably Mayan—maps. Overall, my analysis of Mayan Indigenous names and naming practices in this essay views annotations as acts of authorship that gain significance through a cumulative history of readings, uses, and misuses (Kalir & Garcia, 2021). Central to my understanding of these maps is how the names of places and the collective history of readings and uses of those names constitute a distinct form of agency through memory. A specific agency that manifests through the memorialization of different encounters of people with the land. Here, I reflect on the material and visual instability of cartographies, considering them as objects full of vibrancy. Unlike other maps of Yucatán, the maps of the town of Homún found at the Archivo General del Estado de Yucatán, (AGEY) archives are unique in their depiction of the complex local geology, one that is defined by thousands of caves, sinkholes, underground rivers, and other subterranean spaces with their original Mayan names. As Mayan historian José Ángel Koyok Kú (2023) notes in his work, Yucatec sinkholes and caves have historically been central resources for Mayan communities as the only sources of potable water in the region, as sites of agroecological abundance, and as critical landmarks to define land rights between groups. Yucatec historians have shown the material and symbolic importance of subterranean sites during the colonial and postcolonial eras (Bracamonte Sosa, 1993, 2003; Ortiz Yam, 2011). However, in a region faced with rapidly growing agroindustry and large-scale infrastructure projects, many of these critical subterranean sites have been erased from both the maps and from the local landscape in lieu of homogeneous and flattened spaces better suited for capitalist extraction. The essay works against this capitalist flattening impulse, tracing instead the signs of erasure and the marks of Mayan presence that are still visible on paper, traces that can still be read in the toponymics that are intimately tied to the local Mayan history and memory. In the multiple exposure photographs that ground this essay, the camera looks closely—even microscopically—at maps and their multiple layers of names, erasures, and absences, seeking a new medium to reinscribe this place's local history and memory. In doing so, we speculate about the histories of the subterranean world from the vantage point of a small Indigenous town in southern Mexico. Looking at these maps and the various annotations of the local terrain, instances of friction render visible both the mapmaker's production and historical use of the map and the voices of Mayan Others whose experience of place is pushed to the margins. Using photography as a medium of analysis allows this piece to interrogate the history of the subterranean landscape of this small town through a multimodal approach of visual magnification, reinscription, and superposition made possible through the lens of the camera. Such a process also allows us to bring back to life subterranean “place-names” and their interconnected histories of Indigenous dwelling. In this alternative reading of historical hacienda maps of Homún, the emergent blurs and opacities in the photographs become an opening to read the multiple voices of each cartography. The long-forgotten Mayan names of these subterranean sites get recovered through the camera and become once again narrative instruments, rendering visible the sounds, silences, dreams, colors, lights, and shadows that make Mayan land possible. The hacienda map changes prove the consolidation of a capitalist agrarian world over the last century. Yet, they also offer a way of reading these Mayan signs as symbols of a local history of Indigenous resistance. Mayan communities defend their territories by protecting the names, memories, and material realities of the parts of the land that make life possible. Anthropologist William Hanks (2009) once said that anyone who has spent time with Yucatec people will recognize the complexities of Indigenous identity in the peninsula. Most Mayans will tell you that the language they speak is not “real” Maya and that they do not see themselves as “really” Maya either. Both statements are expressed frequently in Yucatec Maya and Spanish. Mayan indigeneity is often both apparent and elusive. Indigenous poet, Pedro Uc (Uc, 2021) has argued that being Mayan is not a reality that is necessarily defined by skin color or language but by specific values and ethics toward the land. For him, Mayan indigeneity is best understood as a distinctive relationship to place, history, and community. In his writings on rebellion, resistance is a process of rendering visible the sounds, silences, dreams, colors, lights, and shadows that make the continued existence of Mayan people on this land possible. The physical transformation of the map over time allows us to consider maps as repositories of the region's multiple moments of colonialism and dispossession. Critical to this methodology is the commitment to build a multimodal reading of maps as actual archives and not just naturalized one-to-one depictions of the world. Turning our attention to maps as physical records means attuning ourselves to intertwined collective histories over time; it means considering the kind of “enunciability” made possible through a map reading (Derrida, 1996). My approach here aims to interrogate the relations between maps, mapmakers, and map-readers by attuning myself to the changing material qualities of documents. As I pursue this argument, however, I remain cautious of perpetuating the violent colonial logic in the of of and photography et al., I consider how forms of historical of in their and us to interrogate the through its and This aims to the of to land. on work, I find in the of cartographic instances of friction that bring both the and the Indigenous whose experience of this place is erased from this of the land. analysis of the visual elements map as a critical site of signification also with my experience of Mexican maps where “the space and place of the is not by and physical but through a signification system composed of lines, and and symbols that subjectivities with cartographic through the symbols of The signification system that I in these maps beyond the lines, and symbols and the material traces of the map as a physical each I offer the names, and of the map constitute the signification system through which the presence of the and the erasure of Mayan life can be read on the maps. However, the and transformation of these maps become a language of its a of symbols whose of and the map a history of silences and My approach here the of instead of the narratives of the camera and the map as of a & the and the map as important sites to and necessary Overall, in this I and the of visual to the colonial and of land in an approach that considers the of a image can point to an number of to new analytical for cartographic The for how to read these maps as archives from a in toward with other of I find the objects in and through to be traces of the and we in our I that a new kind of attention to these traces has me to different relationships with my and I see multimodal practice as a way of new I a particular to which multimodal as a practice that and between against the of an which to as and I the of whose work between the of et al., 2021). by vision of as a means to reconsider the voices of those who have been historically My attention in this essay on the between and which multimodal as a means of probing and the between the and between reality and & The of with photography to silences by the between the and the of a different kind of archive to a kind of This of is grounded in the analysis of names and naming practices connected to sites on the I can on these historical maps a unique history of forms of inhabiting the land of the and its subterranean The Peninsula a complex subterranean landscape an and the of this the Yucatec by the water that through the and of this landscape et al., all this critical of the at the center of this interconnected subterranean world, the Maya have to with these subterranean sites for of the importance of water in Yucatán, notes that to being the main source of water in the sinkholes have been in the history of the Peninsula they have been repositories of have the of have and have been sites of objects of and, sites of large-scale Even the and of Spanish colonial Mayan a unique relationship with the land and its underground as sites of the of different and their work on the history of Yucatán us that many of those in through the land by Maya people to and the and the physical characteristics of and other critical elements of the landscape as they through the land. on this notes that of that often to and that to the production of an of that the and the through that histories in the in and other in of and in Mayan that made those and of and of have marks in the landscape and in the specific names of the places that those and those collective of The Mayan names of sinkholes and caves specific of and history connected to the subterranean and its in Indigenous on the such as Kampepen or tell about the forms of the dwelling of the Maya in this place that we call Keith Basso's (1996) work on the practice of a I see the Mayan names of sinkholes and caves as instances of as of historical forms of sites through the relationships that people with the subterranean world. Mayan names like Kampepen or these to Indigenous histories of that to be in the kinds of objects and qualities by these names. When considering the forms of wisdom that are in the of the Apache with the the importance of that one cannot an sense of place in the world of places such as or the to the the Kampepen subterranean site in its a presence that that of its physical names also carry a form of agency that can still be read on the maps. names are often to a form of agency in as naming the of an the agency of naming in sites to The places we have been to in places that to carry their Mayan names the specific of the people who have these toward their history and sense of to a on this that places an for about who one or of who one to or on who one Critical in Basso's understanding of place is this between the practice of through space and the process of history in with the elements of the A sense of at each step through the the or the caves on the In this through the land and the names of sites is to the and that structure the of the that has been over a over many through the and over many moments of the names to the The of through the land and dwelling in the landscape is at once an act of memorialization and also an act of apprehension of place as as of sense of As the names of places is a way of of the and a place a space for This form of reading the landscape is only possible because of a historical of the local Indigenous communities with different forms of and sense of the various landscape this is to that in a can the kinds of to a place people and use to those For about the historical of Mayan communities and their sites of symbolic Koyok Kú how the sinkholes in the k’áax are also an important of this land they a means of with the underground world, a place with its distinct who dwell in sinkholes and caves and relationships between humans and the of the world. 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