Maps of the Captaincy-General of Guatemala

Maps of the Captaincy-General of Guatemala

The three closely related yet completely different maps of Central America give an exciting glimpse into the development of the Spanish colonies in the 18th century. The 1716 depiction of the province of Nicaragua (MP-Guatemala 17) presents a part of the modern Central American country. The “lagoons and rivers” of the province are presented, and so modern Lake Nicaragua, from which the Rio San Juan flows into the Caribbean. The region was mainly settled by the indigenous Miskito and enslaved Africans and belongs to the coastal strip now known as the Miskito Coast, which later became an English protectorate. At the time the map was created, the local population was already collaborating with the English to free themselves from Spanish colonial rule. However, the English crown was primarily concerned with expanding its own colonial supremacy. The watercolor pen-and-ink drawing is a testament to these tensions and was created by Sebastián de Arancibia y Sasi, the Spanish governor of Nicaragua at the time. It is a fine drawing by a skilled hand, beautifully painted in watercolors in shades of blue and green.

Rivers in Costa Rica

The second piece in the compendium is a map showing the course of the Rio Matina from 1738. It presents the course of the river and its mouth in a depiction that includes the surrounding regions and the coast. The Rio Matina is a river in the center of Costa Rica, which borders Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south. The colorful map is particularly captivating due to its magnificent depiction of countless green trees and palms, blue rivers, and two schematic mountain chains. The map was extended to the unusually long format of 35 × 65 cm due to a ground plan for a fort to be built at the mouth of the river. Thus, the map is not only an artistic geographical representation of the region, but also testifies to the Spanish efforts to consolidate their colonial rule.

A Central American Mountain Range

The third map presents the provinces around Cordillera de Talamanca, Costa Rica's largest and highest mountain chain. Created in 1781 by surveyor Josef de Rivera Gálvez, the map shows a subtly colored geographical representation of the mountains and occasionally indicates settlements and rivers. The bordering sea is depicted geographically correctly to the left and right of the landmass, the mar del norte and the mar al sur respectively, but it is actually the Pacific and Caribbean that border the land to the west and east.

Geographic Voyages of Discovery

The three maps from the 18th century, which are housed today in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, give a wonderful overview of this region of today's Central American states of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. They bear witness to the progress and intertwining of Spanish and English colonization in the 18th century, but also to the resistance of the colonized and enslaved. Studying them provides fascinating insights into this formative period in Central American history.