GONZALEZ DE AGÜEROS: THE MAPS & THE HISTORICAL DESCRIPTION OF CHILOE II

  The maps and the Historical Description of fray Pedro González de Agüeros: Last shreds of the Chiloe´s missionary cartography in the XVIII Century. (Part 2)

6. The Maps of the Chiloe Archipelago by Fray González de Agüeros

The historian Isidoro Vázquez de Acuña, says that in each authority, missionary or explorer who settles 

in Chiloé, exists a kind of telluric impulse that “makes them interested in the archipelago and its people, 

beyond the fulfillment of their mission” ((Vázquez de Acuña, 1988:8)[1] Pedro González de Agüeros 

was not unaware of this spell and years later, in 1789, physically far from the archipelago, he offered 

the Minister of the Indies to write a Description of Chiloé, fundamentally motivated by the cartographic

 tradition developed in the college of Ocopa.  This proverbial habit, had its origin in the establishment

 of new missions that went into the Amazon jungle and where it was reached by lost roads.

 To rationalize the travel records, maps began to be drawn in the convent. Friar José Amich,

 a Barcelonan, pilot of the Royal Navy, introduced Cartography in Ocopa in 1747. He also worked

 rebuilding the fortress of Callao, after the 1746 earthquake. Amich enters the Ocopa school around 

1750, being also its first historian. The historian Mrs. Carmen Montaner says that through these maps

 the Franciscans “provided for the first time graphic information of unknown territories for the

 Crown”, and that the King of Spain began to say "thanks to the Franciscan missionaries, graphic

 information of a territory that belonged to him, but he ignored"  the maps, adds Mrs. Montaner, 

"constituted an important proof of justification of the missionary work of the Franciscans of Ocopa 

to the King, their main sponsor" These maps were copied in Ocopa and sent to the Viceroy of Peru 

and the King of Spain. Therefore, they are mainly preserved in the documentary repositories in Spain. 

(Montaner, 2018:4).

      A recent publication by Professor David Rex Galindo, refers to the writings of González de Agüeros, showing him as an advocate of the Bourbon reform program on the borders, where the missions of the Ocopa college were located, and how these missions and their missionaries were "institutions of the imperial expansion, colonization and evangelization" strengthening Hispanic rules in the Bourbon period. The author says that González de Agüeros echoed this in his studies, as evidenced by the letters and reports reserved for the Council of the Indies and the monarch; where the religious pragmatist tunes the reformism of the Bourbons. Rex points out that the work of González de Agüeros offers "a perspective of the dynamics that, both locally and globally, affected the southernmost peripheral regions of Spanish America at the end of the 18th century" (Rex, 2020:156).

7. The Maps

 There are three maps of the Province of Chiloé made by González de Agüeros:

a. The first, dated 1785, is a sheet of 29x42 centimeters with a box formed by a thick red and blue

 line that distinctly mark the quarters of a geographical degree in both, latitude and longitude. In the

 lower right corner,, a box with the signature of the drawing "Map of the Province of Chiloé in the 

Kingdom of Chile and the number of its inhabitants"; in the same box the number of inhabitants of 

each parish and its head is indicated. For the contours of the coast, a double gouache line of almagre

 and blue color was used, it has a marked scale of ten leagues; relief is shown with shaded hills. The

 original is in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, signed as

 ES: 41091. AGI/MP-PERU-CHILE 222.

b. Also dated in 1785, the map entitled "Description of the Province and Archipelago of Chiloé, in the kingdom of Chile and Bishopric of La Concepción": It is a  29 x 42 centimeters sheet with slight differences in the outline of the coasts of the previous map , it does not indicate reliefs, the color of the lines in almagre with a blue gouache. The scale is 10 leagues, it has a yellow box with a lower tricolor line that divides each parallel into sixths. The toponymy is similar to the previous one. The original that González de Agüeros calls Map No. 5, is in the Royal Academy of History in Madrid and has been published in volume 5 of the History of the Franciscan Missions in Eastern Peru, from which we extracted the fragment of the figure 2 below.

Fig. 2 Fray Pedro González de Agüeros´ Map  Legend: “Descripción de la Provincia y

 Archipiélago de Chiloé, en el reino de Chile y Obispado de la Concepción”. (1785[1]).

c. A third map, the most widespread of all, is the printed Geographical Map, contained in the Historical Description Book. Its size is 51 x 71 cm, and it was engraved by Francisco Ugena. On page 248 of the Description, the author says that it was made according to a map that was sent to King Carlos III by the Viceroy of Peru in 1752. It is likely that such map was made by Mateo Abraham Evrard, an Englishman residing in Chiloé (Vázquez de Acuña, 1988). From a brief reading of the graph of this map we point out: It has an outer box where the parallels and meridians are indicated; It ranges from 41°25" - 43°22" south latitude and 72°20”- 74°” west longitude. The scale is 20 leagues per degree. On its upper right corner, a poster leafily framed by laurels, in the upper part, the coat of arms of Bourbon Spain with palms and laurel branches and a lower oval with the Coat of Arms of the Order of San Francisco.The north is indicated with the lis needle, located to the East of the Big Island. The town of Castro in the center, appears hierarchical with a tower and a farmhouse; the ports are marked by an anchor: the toponyms of the chapels are shown in a small circle, the fortresses are small circle with four stems and a banderole; the shoals are dotted and the reefs marked with crosses. Small shaded lines indicate the topography of the land, the forests are represented by trees and the elevations of the terrestrial relief by hills shaded to the south; such as the Guanaca Volcano (today Calbuco,) and the hills of the Cordillera de la Costa called the Cucao Tits.

8. The Cartographer and Map No. 5

The first map of Chiloé that González de Agüero developed contains the 
entire Province and the Archipelago, he drew it according to the observations
made on the islands and their populations during his residence in that place.
He did the observation work downton the city of Castro, located in the middle
of the Big Island and from that place he took the directions of all the islands
and towns. Resident on the Island of Quenac, from there, he observed the
situations of the the islands Meullín, Quenac, Quinchao, Linlin, Linao, Las
Chauques islands; those of Alao, Apiao and Cahulinéc: Later, by order of the
Viceroy of Lima, he became the Royal Chaplain of the Port
of Plaza de San Carlos, taking charge of the Port and Fort of Chacao. In his
four years of residence, he studied the conditions of the Port of San Carlos
and its entire coast, including the Teque and Aguí fortresses. He also visited 

Carelmapu and the Maullín Fort, located on the mainland.

He traveled by sea with the Governor from San Carlos to the city of Castro,
Chonchi; taking notes of the coasts and the islands of Lemuy, Chelín, Quegüi
and Imelec; He also traveled to all the islands and towns of the Partido de
Calbuco to the North of Castro: and with all this information he drew Map No.
5; later, consulted the pilot Francisco Machado, it was included in the general
maps of South America, and in
particular, on the map that Francisco Noriega drew from Callao to Chiloé in
1779; "I placed the islands in their respective directions, according to
the compass rose with the needle placed in the city of Castro, giving variation
to the Northeast", he says. Then he arrived at the Court, drew two Maps of
the Archipelago, sent them for consultation to the franciscan priests José
Tortosa and Narciso Villar, who had been in Chiloé and knew the entire
Archipelago and its populations, while exercising their ministry in the
circular mission. The responses of the priests proved that the map represented
what they saw and observed there (Izaguirre, 1923).

 

Fig. 3 Fray Pedro González de Agüeros: "Mapa de la provincia y archipiélago de Chiloé, en el Reino de Chile, Obispado de la Concepción, de la Orden de San Francisco, ex-Guardián del Colegio de Ocopa, en el Perú, Arzobispado de Lima, dedicado a nuestro Católico Monarca Don Carlos IV"

9. Viscissitudes

In 1971 Agüeros obtains from the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies 

and the Court, the license to print his Historical Description of Chiloé.

He had previously submitted his manuscript to the Royal Academy of History

 by order of the Monarch. The academics made slight recommendations about

 his work, but authorized its publication, "to clarify to a large extent 

the geography of a little-known Country and whose well-observed products 

will contribute to the promotion of our construction and commerce” 

(Vásquez de Acuña, 1988: 22).

Once the authorization was obtained, Pedro González de Agüeros again requested authorization to add an extract from a Franciscan expedition to Tahiti. Once the permission was obtained, it also included the Diary of the pilot Francisco Machado's expedition to the Guaitecas and Guayaneco Archipelagos; which caused a serious incident for the circulation of the book. This, due to the fact that Machado's story had not circumvented the censorship of the Royal Academy of History, nor of other competent authorities. What had happened? As soon as the books were published by the famous Benito Cano´s  publishing house , Agüeros sent some copies to members of the royal family and ministers of State. In the Court an intemperate alarm was unleashed by the fear that the English would find out about the few and simple news that the Spanish sailor declared. The Supreme Board of State, as in a reverse of irony for the Inquisitor of Books, ordered to suspend the publication and sale of the Historical Description; apart from asking the author for the number of copies published and to whom they had been distributed. Gozález de Agüeros presented a protection appeal, in which he demonstrates the little importance of Machado's document, realizing that the cited data were widely known by the enemies of Spain; and that they had even better and more exact directions on the coasts of southern Chiloé. Therefore, in a new analysis, the ban was lifted.

As Agüeros had witnessed some negative practices of the Chiloé´s administration, he sent the King several files with reserved documentation, in which he expressed the monarch information that had not been published in the Description, because he did not want it to be of public knowledge. "A real patriot", as Vázquez de Acuña says.

 10. Final Comments

 Thanks to the work of González de Agüero, the cartographic work of 

the Franciscans in Chiloé has been fruitful. Since, through the 

publication of his Historical Description and the printed Maps he

 attached, Chiloé began to come out of anonymity, as well as, they 

left an important legacy of great historical value.

References

1.-  GONZÁLEZ DE AGÜEROS, Pedro (1791): Descripción historial de la provincia y archipiélago de Chiloé, en el reyno de Chile,
       y obispado de la Concepción. Madrid: Imprenta de Don Benito Cano 

2.- GUARDA, Gabriel y MORENO Jeria, Rodrigo (2008): Monumenta Cartographica Chiloensia: Misión, territorio y defensa
1596-1826 Santiago de Chile. Corporación Amigos del Patrimonio Cultural de Chile. 2008

3.-  IZAGUIRRE, Bernardino O. F. M (1923): Historia de las Misiones franciscanas en el oriente del Perú Tomo Quinto 1782-1792. Lima
       Talleres Tipográficos de la Penitenciarìa. 

4.-  MORENO Jeria, Rodrigo (2013): “Los franciscanos de propaganda fide en Chiloé colonial” : Revista Archivum Año X Nº 11 p. 307-316

5.-  MONTANER, Carme (2019): “Dibujos figurativos en los mapas de los franciscanos de Ocopa (Perú) de la segunda
mitad del siglo XVIII”:  Geocrítica. Revista Bibliográfica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales Universitat de Barcelona  
         Vol XXIV N° 1264 Recovered from http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/revis.htm

6.-  REX Galindo, David (2020): “Imperio desde los márgenes: Un estudio de la obra de fray Pedro González de Agüeros y sus planes
       reformistas de las fronteras del sur de la América meridional a finales del siglo XVIII”. IN: Anuario de Historia de América Latina 
       N° 57 pp. 153-189

7.- TAMPE, Eduardo (1981): Tres siglos de misiones en Chiloé. Santiago Editorial Salesiana 

8.- URBINA B., Rodolfo (1990): Las misiones franciscanas de Chiloé a fines del siglo XVIII: 1771-1800 Valparaíso 

9.- VAZQUEZ DE ACUÑA, Isidoro (1988): González de Agüeros, Pedro: Descripción Historial de Chiloé. Introducción y notas de
Isidoro Vásquez de Acuña Santiago Instituto de Investigaciones del Patrimonio Territorial de Chile. 

Notes

[1] Translated by Jeannette V. Ortíz 
[2] The "Cuarto de Indias"  Headquarters of the General Commissioner of the Indies of the Franciscan 
Order of the Convent of San Francisco el Grande in Madrid.
[3] Don Isidoro Vazquez de Acuña was the biographer and editor  of Fray Gonzàlez de Agüeros in the
 publication of the facsimile´s re-issue containing a documentary appendix of the Historical Description
 carried out by the Chilean Territorial Heritage Research Institute. Santiago 1988
     [4] Insert in: History of the Franciscan Mission in Eastern, Peru - Volume V 1782-1792 (1923)

[5] National Library of Chile