Cahiers des Amériques Latines (Jan 2001)

La cartographie, ça sert aussi à faire la guérilla : représentations stratégiques du territoire nicaraguayen (années 1970-1980)

  • Alain Musset

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/cal.6586
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 36
pp. 93 – 125

Abstract

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Without official maps (reserved for the regular army and the National Guard), the Sandinist guerilla troops, who at the end of the seventies were fighting the forces faithful to the Somoza family, had to draw artisanal maps of the national territory in order to prepare their attacks, choose their targets or simply find their way back in areas they did not know. In the same way, in 1980, the young students sent to the rural districts to teach the Nicaraguan country people and preserve the memory of these years of war, drew numerous maps of the district to which they had been posted. The strategic, economic or cultural information of these documents are essential to understand the functioning of the Nicaraguan society at a turning point of its history.