In Transit Cartographies: Oral Maps and Social Memory in El Cajón (Catamarca, Argentina)

Abstract

In this work I present and explore the way in which space expresses milestones of social memory among inhabitants of El Cajón, Catamarca, Argentina, resulting in a highly dynamic product rather than an immutable plane. Particularly, I analyze how local cartographic imagination is conveyed through true oral maps in which the territory condenses notions regarding history, geography, myths and cultural practices.  The inquiry, triggered as a consequence of ethnographic attempts to make a map with local dwellers, attempts to examine the way in which memory unfolds in the territory, as well as to reflect on the methodological reformulations that the cartographic co-construction process entailed.