The map as a political tool

Recently I decided to go to the north of Argentina, to the province of Jujuy, where a meeting will be held this weekend for the Union of Civic Assemblies (UAC). It is the 10th meeting and close to 500 people are expected to show up. The meeting is hold under the theme “Against the looting of our natural goods and contamination, and for food sovereignty and life”. First of all it is important to notice that they are not only “against” issues, but also “for”, suggesting paths for the future. In the invitation it says that: “UAC was born with the purpose to articulate and promote the different struggles which have emerged during the last years within the country and in Latin America to repudiate the systematic development of the exportation of agricultural and mining products, represented by the destructive undertakings of the grand mining business which is done under open skies, and the advancement of the agro-business.” What I find specifically interesting with the meeting, apart from the phenomenon in itself, is that there will be a workshop that focuses on the construction of a map. The map will contain the knowledge that different participants share about their experiences of environmental problems. The result will be an illustration/visualization that will be useful for further reflection not only on geographical issues, but also on connections between social, cultural, and economic matters. Finally, the map is expected to be able to contribute to a collective transformation of the situation.

I find it curious that the meeting will have this specific workshop right now, since I performed an interview last week with a representative and founder of a neighbourhood organization called “Vecinos contra la Contaminación [Neighbours against contamination]”. When we met she handed me a map of all the cases of cancer in her neighbourhood, including people who had died and who were ill in 2005. During the interview I reflected on the usefulness of this illustration and visualization of the effects of an environmental problem, in their case, of electromagnetic contamination. The construction of the map had been done by some of the concerned neighbours who started the organization, and it now serves as an object, or rather a political tool, in their struggle. This is one among several tools in the repertoire that I am getting accounts of through my project. If the representatives had not been challenging the current knowledge society, intellectual property rights and the capitalist system, I would have advised them to Trademark ™ their method. Just out of curiosity I checked the directives for what and who can be patented, and at the United States Patent and Trademark Office it says that any person who “invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent”. Since a collective map of socio-environmental problems can be considered to be useful, it should be possible to patent it, but I am not sure that this is the way “usefulness” is defined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Source: the United States Patent and Trademark Office at http://www.uspto.gov/go/pac/doc/general/#whatpat