Un estudio sobre el uso del patrimonio cartográfico indígena como material pedagógico en América hispana

This article discusses the use of cartographic heritage of native populations of Hispanic America as a pedagogical tool for teaching social sciences in a historical context in which the colonization not only implied the economic exploitation of the continent but also the subordination of the cosmologies of these populations. The indigenous and local knowledge was either eliminated or instrumentalized for economic purposes. The mis-valorization of the indigenous cartographic heritage was closely linked to its assessment under the occidental epistemological and ontological schemes that reduced it to a set of practices, superstitions or approximate and imprecise convictions. At the same time, facing the risk of losing their land, from the beginning of colonial period, native populations came to use plans and maps to represent the lands on which they had the right to use and to support their petitions to the colonial authorities. This tradition to attribute to cartographic heritage a strategic role continues in a socio-political environment marked by the emergence of indigenous social movements claiming their territorial rights. In this historical process, using the indigenous cartographic heritage as a pedagogical tool for teaching history and geography was marginalized compared to its strategic -legal function to subvert relations of power