Lines Underground: Exploring and Mapping Venezuela's Cave Environment

Abstract

How do the lines on a map come into being? What stories do they tell? These questions are examined in the context of cave exploration and mapping in Venezuela. Ethnographic analysis focuses on mapping in the field, the translation of notes into final maps, and discourses surrounding these practices. The lines that cave surveyors sketch in field books while traversing underground passages reveal a dialectic between cartographic and exploratory practices. Two key factors shape this dynamic: first, the experience of probing humans ''pushing passages'' with no obvious end in sight, and second, the coordinated and skilled use of tools by explorers working in teams. Here, humans define both the scale and perspective of cartographic representations. But bodies slithering along passages make lines, too. This paper simultaneously considers lines of lead on paper and traces of bodies in the earth as a way to think of exploration and mapping as emergent engagements. This case powerfully illustrates the ontogenic nature of maps, highlighting the (re)production of social relations that continually brings them into being along with the environment that engenders these engagements. Finally, cave exploration and mapping illustrate the limits of our vision and technologies to grasp and order nature. RÉSUMÉComment les lignes sur une carte voient-elles le jour? Quelles histoires racontent-elles? Dans l'article, on examinera ces questions dans le contexte de l'exploration spéléologique et de la représentation cartographique du Venezuela. Cette analyse ethnographique sera axée sur la cartographie sur le terrain, la transposition des notes sur les cartes finales et les discours entourant ces pratiques. Les lignes que les géomètres experts en spéléologie dessinent dans leurs carnets d'observations dans les passages souterrains révèlent une dialectique entre la cartographie et les pratiques d'exploration qui est formée par deux facteurs clés : premièrement, l'expérience des humains qui sondent les « passages » sans en voir la fin; et, deuxièmement, l'utilisation coordonnée d'outils spécialisés par les explorateurs qui travaillent en équipes. Ici, le mot humain définit à la fois l'échelle de grandeur et le point de vue des représentations cartographiques. Toutefois, les corps qui se faufilent dans les passages forment eux aussi des lignes. Dans l'article, on considère à la fois les lignes tracées au crayon sur du papier et les traces laissées par les corps dans la terre afin d'envisager l'exploration et la représentation cartographique comme des engagements naissants. Ce cas illustre superbement la nature ontogénique des cartes et met en relief la (re)production des relations sociales qui les font constamment naître, ainsi que l'environnement qui crée ces engagements. Enfin, l'exploration spéléologique et la cartographie illustrent les limites de notre vision et des technologies permettant de comprendre et d'ordonner la nature.

Filling the hole? On new geographies of the subsurface

“…This is particularly true when we add a variety of cultural formations to the realms of the political and economic outlined above. María Alejandra Pérez (2013Pérez ( , 2015Pérez ( , 2016Pérez ( , 2021 describes a variety of scientific endeavors, geopolitical relations, and mapping exercises emerging from caving societies and expeditions in Latin America. What makes this work especially compelling is an emphasis on attending to the social thickness or complexity of relations, which extends well beyond the surface/ subsurface distinction.…”

“…Today, an outpouring of articles, monographs, special issues, and edited volumes in geography and overlapping disciplines exists concerning vertical and voluminous subsurfaces (Bebbington and Bury, 2013; Billé, 2020; Kinchy et al, 2018; Marston and Himley, 2021; Nieuwenhuis and Nassar, 2020; Squire and Dodds, 2020; Woon and Dodds, 2021). Adding to literatures on urban undergrounds (Connor and McNeill, 2022; Graham and Hewitt, 2013; McNeill, 2020), geographers have extensively examined caves and cavers (Della Dora, 2011; Pérez, 2013, 2016, 2021), mines and miners (Bebbington, 2012; Lahiri-Dutt, 2022; Marston, 2019), tunnels and tunnelers (Melo Zurita, 2020; Slesinger, 2020), groundwater and its use (Ballestero, 2018; Bessire, 2022; Kroepsch, 2018), bunkers and defense (Klinke 2018; Garrett and Klinke 2019), burial practices (Byron, 2022; Clark and Hird, 2014; Kearnes and Rickards, 2017), and a variety of subsurface infrastructures (Barry and Gambino, 2020; Forman, 2020). 1 In the moment it takes to utter “deep time,” a “subterranean turn” has been declared (Squire and Dodds, 2020: 4).…”

Settling environmental citizenship: The presentation of self in conservation encounters

“…In accordance with the global context of incorporating communities into the conservation scope and the double conservation idea, environmental and cultural (Dumoulin, 2005), communities began to be considered in a participatory management with the state institutions. In Lanin National Park, comanagement regimes have resulted in both important recognition of their legitimate presence as well problematic homogenizing representations of the communities (Pérez, 2013; Tozzini, 2014; Trentini, 2016). By contrast, ANPRALE is characterized at the cultural level by a group of settlers, who have come to represent the cultural history of the area.…”

Touching with Light, or, How Texture Recasts the Sensing of Underground Water

“…Creating physical distance is thus as crucial as reducing it. All of these analytic decisions and forms of affective restraint are constitutive elements that are also irreducible to underground spaces (Pérez 2013). They depend on myriad epistemic and material infrastructures—including funding sources, organizational histories, and the charisma of leading figures—that sit above the surface and are integral to the process by which a cave becomes a geologic entity and an object of attention.…”