'El unico remedio para florecer la provincia': extraction and opportunity in the Curso de el rio Atrato and the Descripcion de la Provincia del Zitara

The Curso de el rio Atrato. Plan de la Provincia del Zitara, created in the final quarter of the eighteenth century, offers an encyclopedic yet stylized look at the Atrato River, a major fluvial thoroughfare in the Colombian Choc & oacute; and an important gold mining region in New Granada. These documents offer a seemingly exhaustive snapshot of society, ethnicity, demography, hydrography, geography, and economy found in no other map of the region. Nevertheless, a close reading of map and text reveals that they exaggerate economic opportunity and minimize the dangers posed by native Cuna Indians and foreign adversaries. Additionally, these documents present an enigma. We do not know who created them or for whom they were created. We do not know precisely when they were made or why. And, for decades, their whereabouts have long been a mystery. In this article, I rediscover the location of map and descripcion and present evidence to suggest that at least two versions of map and text exist. The map's argument, centered on increasing mining yields in the region, places it within a genre of persuasive cartography that petitioned for resources, including settlers, enslaved labor, supplies, defense, and/or infrastructure. A careful analysis of the Atrato map and text underscores how such pleas were specific to time and place.