Jeffrey Erbig takes readers along and across contested borders in the Río de la Plata, where Indigenous and Iberian competition and collaboration unfolded slowly and unevenly over a long eighteenth century (1730s to the 1850s) that was marked by dramatic political, economic, and territorial changes (Africans appear on the book's cover but are mentioned only a handful of times). The book focuses on three critical borders in the Río de la Plata: Madrid (1750s), San Ildefonso (1770s), and the “status quo line of the first several years of the 1800s” (108). The title is somewhat misleading. The 10,000-mile boundary created between Spanish and Portuguese South America sets the backdrop in the opening pages, but Erbig subsequently clarifies his exclusive focus on “the southernmost portion of the Madrid and San Ildefonso demarcation efforts, which occurred in the Río de la Plata region” (8).
The opening chapters establish the historical context of Indigenous and colonial spatial practices (Chapter 1) and theories of territoriality and possession (Chapter 2) in the Río de la Plata, where “local arrangements frequently outweighed imperial or ethnic allegiances” (33) and “sovereignty flowed through interpersonal relationships rather than through rigid territorial jurisdictions” (48). As Spanish and Portuguese officials established Montevideo and Colônia, they conceded that the interior was controlled by Indigenous tolderías/toldarias, whose name derives from the “tentlike buildings” that characterized “portable encampments of autonomous Native communities” (24).
Tolderías planted themselves strategically and in different ways to control the movements of people and goods across lands claimed by both colonies (26). By mapping tolderías named in 700 manuscript sources onto GIS datasets (9), and analyzing a rich variety of colonial-era maps, Erbig shows how “Minuán caciques developed spatial networks . . . along coastal routes, while Charrúas traveled between the Paraná and Uruguay rivers and their tributaries,” signaling a “broad territorial reach of particular caciques” that “implies a certain level of hierarchy among tolderías” (28, 29). We are unable to learn more about these communities because “a scarcity of sources prohibits a detailed discussion of social organization” and “little evidence exists to suggest that such ‘imposed identities’—Bhanes, Charrúas, Guenoas, Minuanes, Yaros, and others—were meaningful to the Native peoples to whom they referred” (24, 25).
Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Madrid and San Ildefonso boundary commissions, illustrating the paradoxes of expeditions that “partitioned borderland territories that neither empire effectively controlled” (72, Chapter 3) yet still “transformed interethnic relations” (108, Chapter 4). For some tolderías, the arrival of imperial border makers led to violent family separations, while other caciques consolidated their power. These responses were not ethnic, linguistic, or cultural, as colonial sources documented different outcomes for communities that shared a name, belying “any ‘Charrúa’ or ‘Minuán’ response” (126) and defying paradigms like “resistance or accommodation” (134). Rather, responses were guided by spatial relationships: tolderías near the border “faced greater pressures and violence,” whereas those far off “found opportunities to exploit imperial initiatives and appropriate the boundaries for their own purposes” (126).
Chapter 5 examines colonial reports of raids and captive-taking, a largely Spanish cruelty designed “to remove Charrúas and Minuanes from lands coveted by settlers” (138). Once Indigenous people were separated from tolderías and read by colonial agents as sedentary rather than mobile, they became “‘Indians,’ a discursive gesture that masked individuals’ provenance or kinship ties” (138) and helped fashion a narrative of Indigenous disappearance (162). Because “a paucity of source materials has impeded discussions of Charrúa and Minuán self-identification,” it is hard to understand what these affiliations meant to Indigenous, African, or Iberian subjects before or after the arrival of mapmakers (162).
This book tells a nuanced story of border-making at a critical moment in Latin American political and cartographic history. It will make an excellent addition to graduate seminars on the spatial turn and the Río de la Plata.
