Abstract
The late colonial mapping of frontiers in the eastern Andes of Charcas (colonial Bolivia) has been neglected both in scholarship on frontier mapping, which overlooks this region, and historical studies of frontier formation in Charcas, which pay little attention to cartography. This article examines a set of maps made by a midlevel colonial official in 1797 amid efforts to open a road from Chulumani district in the Intendancy of La Paz to the Franciscan mission of Mosetenes. The article advances understandings of the material and imaginative interconnectedness of frontiers in Charcas by highlighting regional rivalries in frontier colonization and demonstrating how the piedmont regions were given meaning in relation to other, more distant lowland frontiers. Additionally, by comparing the 1797 maps with a map of Chulumani district made by the same individual in 1810, the essay demonstrates how the Mosetenes frontier was resignified in the wake of the 1809 political upheavals.
