The Movable Center: Geographical Discourses and Territoriality During the Expansion of the Spanish empire. Walter Mignolo, in: Coded Encounters: Writing , Gender and Ethnicity in Colonial Latin America, ed Francisco Javier Cevallos-Candau, 1994. U of Mass Press
Terminology and Who’s Who?
Semiosis: studies signs and symbols that produce meaning
Territorial representation: description, mapping, drawings of colonial holdings
Omphalos syndrome: omphalos means navel; the syndrome refers to thinking one’s territory/self to be at the navel (center) of the world
Guamán Poma de Ayala : Amerindian (Quechua) nobleman who documented treatment of the Indians in the Andes by the Spanish
Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, Collasuyu, Cuntinsuyu: provinces of the Incan Empire
Cosmographer: one who maps the features of the world (and heavens)
Council of the Indies: governing body of the Spanish colonies in the Americas
Altepeme: native concept of the land, including the traditions of the people inhabiting the land, as a
“place” and a living, spiritual force
Encomienda: colonial economic institution, which granted colonial land to the Spanish and gave them the right to extract labor and tribute from the Indians
Geographical discourse: a system of language and symbols based on conceptions of power.
QUESTIONS:
Why were the Chinese mandarins so surprised by the map they saw (Fig 1) at Ricci’s mission?
Why were maps so important in the sixteenth century?
What is “Father Ricci’s move?”
What does the author mean when he writes, “the power of the center does not depend on geographical representation but, on the contrary, geographical representations are built around the power of the center”? (p. 19)
What is the “omphalos syndrome”? What does it have to do with both Christian and Amerindian
(particularly Peruvian) notions of territory?
Describe Guamán Poma’s world map (Fig. 13).

What was the Council of the Indies?
What was Velazco’s task? How did he go about collecting information about the colonial territory?
Who were Father Ricci and Velazco? How were their tasks similar and how were they different?
Who drew the pinturas and why?
How did the sense of space and power centers differ in the pinturas from Western ways of mapping?
What does the author mean by “native resistance to territorial mapping”?
The author contends that Velazco denied or ignored native territorial representations. Why does he say this?
How were the pinturas hybrid maps of space and place?
At the end of the article, the author contends that contemporary communities (e.g., the Chamulas in southern Mexico) maintain a non-Western sense of territory and space. He asks: “Should they be taught to look at the world as Ortelius or López de Velazco did or should they be encouraged to develop their own alternative spatial perceptions? Can we today still hold our beliefs that a “true” territorial organization shows how the world really is or should we accept their diversity as we accept linguistic diversity which in an ideal or science-fiction world could lead to coexisting and equally valid organization of space, to a plural epistemology not necessarily dependent on a fixed center? The movable center would then become a metaphysical metaphor for an ideal world that resembles the state of affairs before rather than after the economic and religious expansion of the West and the consequent mapping of the earth.” What are your thoughts about this statement/question?