An ignored geography, the map of the deep America is still pending

There are more than 35 official countries in the American continent whose existence is related to the history of their colonization by the European powers. There are 18 that emerged from the subdivision of the Spanish colonial empire, and therefore use the Spanish language as the official language, there is a large state of Portuguese language (Brazil) that has inherited the undivided Portuguese colonial territories. To these must be added several English-speaking countries states, two of which (the United States and Canada) have sub-continental dimensions and the rest are much smaller political units (eg Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and other more  small islands) and a couple of territorial states related to the old French (Haiti) and Dutch (Surinam) colonization. Geographers must begin to recognize that beside the official political map, there is a real, different and profound cultural map, which includes all the surviving First Nations within the framework of their traditional territories.

This map has not been made yet. There are hardly any so-called ethnographic maps that include the approximate location of indigenous peoples or political maps that reduce the nationality of First Nations to the weak contours of their reserves, practically indistinguishable from the limits of large plantations or mining concessions.

In reality, the true map of America is about to be made. This map must clearly show all the nations of America, without exclusions. It must show the Mapuche country. There are still one and a half million Mapuche, many of whom are reluctant to identify themselves within the states that conquered and oppressed them: Chile and Argentina. The Mapuche nation has not been able to obtain its status. Nor has it been included in any map as such. It must show the Guaraní nation. There are still several hundred thousand Guarani distributed in several hundred communities: the Mbya scattered throughout the length and breadth of their ancient ancestral territory that is now called Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, the Ava Chiripá and the Pai Tavyterá / Kaiova in the western range of Alto Paraná, the Ñandeva and Ava-Guaraní in the western Chaco. They have no territory, no self-government, not even the right to travel on their own land without the documents required by the states that today occupy their former territories. Nor is there a map that includes the ancient Toba nation, related to the current Mocovíes and the disappeared (?) Abipones and Charrúas. No map shows us where the Quechua nation is. Its ancient territory: the Tahuantisuyu, today is painted in various colors corresponding to several countries that are called: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina. Nor does the Aymara nation appear, whose representatives have been divided into three countries (Peru, Bolivia and Chile) along artificial borders. The same can be said of the Arawaks and Caribs scattered throughout the jungles from the southern chaná (terena and guaná) to the guajiros of northern South America.

Similarly, there is no map of Central America or Meso-America that colors the territory of the Kuna on the Isthmus of Panama and neighboring islands, nor the Mayan territory in Guatemala, Mexico and Belize, nor the country of the Nahuatl. in the Valley of Mexico or the home of the Purépecha nation, in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Nor does the large nation of the Navajos, the Iroquois confederation or the beautiful homeland of the Haida, the Haidaway archipelago, figure unjustly and grotesquely until very recently on maps with the irrelevant name of Queen Charlotte Islands.