Strange Maps

Sao Paulo is the only one of Brazil’s 26 states to include a map of the entire country on its flag; the Paulista state motto exhorts its citizens to Let great things be done for Brazil. And yet, Sao Paulo State historically harboured a more persistent regionalist, and even separatist sentiment than any other Brazilian state.

Sao Paulo is the richest, most populous state of the Brazilian federation. It is also the West’s most populous sub-national entity (*). At over 42 million inhabitants, Sao Paulo would rank 31st out of the world’s 223 independent countries, just behind Tanzania and right in front of Argentina. It would be the fifth most populous nation of the Americas (after the US, what would be left of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia). According to some reckonings (**), the eponymous state capital with its 11 million inhabitants is the biggest city in the Western world.

Population size isn’t the only thing that matters, though. Even back in 1842, when still very sparsely populated, Sao Paulo demonstrated the go-it-alone streak in its character by rebelling against the Emperor. The Paulistas expressed this streak politically by their adherence to the PRP (Partido Republicano Paulista), founded in 1873 to advocate the overthrow of the Empire in favour of a republican system.

When the republic of Brazil was eventually proclaimed in 1889, the PRP got its hands firmly glued to the levers of Brazil-wide power, which it shared with the PRM, from neighbouring Minas Gerais state. The arrangement saw the PRP and the PRM divvy up the presidency and political influence in the capital Rio de Janeiro. It was a cohabitation known as cafe com leite (‘coffee with milk’), as Sao Paulo’s economy was based on the former, Minas Gerais’ on the latter commodity.

This map celebrates Sao Paulo’s separateness from the rest of Brazil by portraying it anthropomorphically. The unnamed lady – let’s call her Paula – thus serves as Sao Paulo’s very own version of France’s Marianne or the UK’s Britannia: a symbolic female as allegory of the state’s unique history, territorial homogeneity and separate future. One could say it does so better than the French or British figureheads, as ‘Paula’ actually coincides with the borders of her state.

The emblematic female wears the state flag in her hair, but the slogan is not the one referred to earlier. It reads Everything for Sao Paulo. It would be interesting to learn how the PRP managed to balance the inherent separatism of its regionalist agenda with the demands – and the benefits – of its share in federal governance. Or maybe it didn’t, in the long run. For the PRP/PRM cohabitational system collapsed in the early 1930s, with the power-grab of Getulio Vargas, who abolished both parties and went on to establish a populist, authoritarian Estado Novo. The more regionally inclined elements in Sao Paulo State opposed this evolution. Incipient rebellion turned to inchoative secession in 1932, but the so-called Paulista War was crushed by federal troops in a few months’ time.

Many thanks to Vinicius Morello – definitely Brazilian and possibly Paulistano – for sending in this map.
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(*) and not the world’s, as reported earlier (see comments). And only if one excludes England, the grounds for which are somewhat debatable (i.e. England’s historic and demographic importance for the UK is such that it is more than a mere ‘sub-nation’).

(**) the ones that exclude the suburbs.

Between 1934 and 1959, The Three Stooges produced 190 short films for Columbia Pictures. While all exhibited the Stooges’ trademark slapstick humour, gaining them a cult following, only one of the zany troupe’s shorts is of interest to the admittedly rather narrow field of curious cartography.
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Malice in the Palace (1949) is set in a fictionalised, funnified Middle East, where Moe, Shemp and Larry run the Cafe Casbah Bah. Two of their customers, Gin-A Rummy and Hassan ben Sober, are plotting to steal a giant diamond from the tomb of Rootentooten. However, when they discover the diamond is already in the possession of the Emir of Schmow, they start yammering and are kicked out of the Cafe. The Stooges then decide to retrieve the diamond themselves, using a map left behind by the unsuccessful plotters.
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MOE to SHEMP and LARRY: “Now, here, study this map closely!”
(Moe is now showing Shemp and Larry the route they are going to take to get to the castle as Moe is using a knife to lay out their travel route.)
MOE to SHEMP and LARRY:  ”We start here at Jerkola, down the Insane River, over the Giva Dam, through Pushover, across Shmowland, to the stronghold of Shmow.”

The map, shown briefly in the film, is of a continentful of countries with strange names and odd shapes, clearly designed to look and sound ‘foreign’. What does this ‘Map of Starvania’, designed merely for the purpose of unsophisticated comedy, unconsciously reveal of mid-20th-century America’s attitudes towards the exotic, the un-American?
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Firstly, the name: Starvania. It continues the tradition of using vaguely latinate toponyms as shorthand for exotism. Previous examples include Ruritania, others are Syldavia and Borduria (all mentioned in #461). Intriguingly, by referring to ‘starvation’, this toponym may demonstrate a mental equation made by Americans between distance from their Land of Plenty and the incidence of famine (the greater the former, the likelier the latter). Considering that the Second World War had only recently ended, this might have indeed been a prevalent attitude in the US at the time.
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Secondly, the shapes: The Great Mitten floating around to the left of the main continent is of course a reference to Michigan’s lower peninsula (see also #454). Maybe not foreign, but at least a funny shape. The main continent is a profile facing left, attached to the bottom is an Italy-shaped boot called Hot Foot. Italy being the Old Country of so many Americans must have figured prominently in any brain-storming session on ‘foreignness’.
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Some of the foreign-looking names actually sound quite familiar; these are wordplays such as Isle Asker (“I’ll ask her”), Rubid-Din (“rub it in”), Cant Sea (“can’t see”) and the aforementioned Giva Dam (“give a damn”). Other plays on words, sounding less foreign, are Bay of Window (“bay window”), Corkscrew Strai(gh)ts (a corkscrew being the opposite of straight), and Hot Sea and Tot Sea (“hotsie totsie”, for something or someone pretty).
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Other names are extended riffs on actual foreign toponyms: I-ran, He-ran, She-ran, They-ran and  Also-ran. Another set consists of Egypt, You-gypt and We-gypt (on the left, partly outside this image). The first set works a bit better than the second one, but both reflect an unfamiliarity with these foreign placenames.
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A further set of names reflect directly negative references, sometimes with the flavour of contemporary street vernacular: the Vulgar River (just north of Double-Crossea, on the right), the Insane River (running through Staywayoff, at the centre of the map), Jerkola, Slap-Happia, Hangover, Pushover.
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Least but not last, there are a few names that seem to reflect nothing much more than map-filling noise: Woo-Woo and Oomphola. Or the rudimentariness of these names might be understood to reflect on the lack of sophistication of the places they denote.
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A clever play on words is Mikey Finlen, referring both to Finland and to a ‘Mickey Finn’ – slang for a drink spiked to incapactiate its imbiber (hence “to slip a mickey”). Less clever: Lake of Lamb (“Leg of Lamb”, supposedly). Other names are self-explanatory, inexplainable or unreadable due to low image quality.
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Many thanks to William Angiolillo for sending in this map.

Every disaster is always bigger than the last one. Newspapers and tv anchors have to say that, don’t they? Otherwise it wouldn’t be news. But those slick-covered birds look the same every time. A bit distressing, but what’s a pelican for, at the end of the day? To be honest, this disaster is getting a bit boring. Haven’t they capped that well yet?

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (1) is the worst environmental disaster in US history. But it’s a catastrophe of the creeping, cumulative kind, composed of images familiar from earlier ecocides. How to get a grip on its width and breadth? Obviously: a map. Ingeniously: a map of the area affected by the oil spill transposed on your geographic location of choice – your home, for optimum shock effect.

This simple act of teleportation, by the almost appropriately named website www.ifitwasmyhome.com (2) , puts a stark perspective on the disaster’s geographic impact, now stretching from the coast of Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. The immediate, visual result is immensely more powerful than crude statistics (3):

Since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20 (killing 11 crew), over 1 million US gallons have been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every day, by now adding up to almost 50 million gallons. A recent study by the University of Miami puts the surface of the oil spill at about 10,000 square miles (almost 26,000 square km), or triple its size on May 1st. This means the affected area is rapidly approaching that oft-cited (4) unit of large-surface measurement, the size of Belgium (11,787 sq mi, or 30,528 km2).

The spill’s size is less abstract (and more ominous) if transported from its aquatic domain to a land-based vantage point. Centred on London (placing the gushing wellhead somewhere below Westminster), the area affected by the spill covers most of southern England, almost touching Swansea in Wales and nearly spilling over onto the French coast at Dunkirk. The area does look a lot larger than Belgium, to the spill’s east. One assumes that the calculations of Miami U refer to the darker-shaded areas within the total affected region.

You too can centre the spillage on your hometown. Go to the website (cf. sup.) See how far you would have  to travel to stay clear of the oily mess. Then zoom out to see how large it is on a global scale (spoiler: quite large!) Maybe not the most uplifting of pastimes, but an intelligent way to impress the scale of this disaster on our minds, saturated as they are by superlatives.

Many thanks to Stannous Flouride for sending in this link.

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(1) Or the BP oil spill, if you insist on naming, shaming and/or blaming the guilty.

(2) If it were my home, indeed. There is no need to compound ecocide with grammaticrime.

(3) excusez le pun.

(4) an entire website is dedicated to the recurrence of this rather unusual unit of surface.