The Map Is The Territory After All
Nov. 8th, 2010 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauFrom The Telegraph:
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Nicaragua has used an error on Google's Internet maps system to justify an invasion of Costa Rica.
Last week, Nicaraguan troops crossed the San Juan river, which divides the two countries near the Caribbean coast, and planted a flag on Costa Rica's Calero Island. They were led by Eden Pastora, a former Sandinista guerrilla commander, who said they had been dredging the Nicaraguan side of the river and decided to set up camp.
The island sits in a border region whose sovereignty has long been fiercely contested but has been recognized as part of Costa Rica since 1897. Google Maps, however, placed it in Nicaragua. After an inquiry, the company admitted that it had wrongly handed a 1.7-mile stretch to Nicaragua.
"See the satellite photo on Google and there you see the border," Mr Pastora told a Costa Rican newspaper.
Costa Rica, which does not have an army, sent security forces to the border to back up 150 agents who have been there since tensions rose last month. Laura Chinchilla, the Costa Rican president, asked the Organization of American States (OAS) to investigate the incursion and threatened to take the dispute to the UN Security Council. "Costa Rica is seeing its dignity smeared," she said. Her government also pleaded with Google to change the border on its maps.
A Google spokesman said that while it strived to make its maps accurate, "by no means should they be used as a reference to decide military actions between two countries".
Charlie Hale, a geopolicy analyst for Google, blamed the U.S. State Department for providing bad data and wrote in a blogpost: "We are now working to update our maps. Cartography is a complex undertaking, and borders are always changing."
However, Samuel Santos, the Nicaraguan foreign minister, has also written to Google to say that its original map was "absolutely correct" and has rejected the Costa Rican demands.
Embarrassingly for Google, Bing Maps, a rival service created by Microsoft, had drawn the border in line with the usually accepted boundary.
© Copyright (c) The Daily Telegraph
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They got it half right - Eden Pastora was a Sandinista guerrilla commander, then he broke with the leaders of the regime after the revolution and formed ARDE, a contra organization operating out of Costa Rica, with the nom de guerre of Comandante Cero. The Sandinista government tried to kill him with a bomb at a press conference in 1984 (it was thought at first the CIA did it, because Pastora would not knuckle under to the direction of the US-backed FDN contra organization, but it has since been established that it was the Sandinistas).
According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but I only have a couple of minutes to look this up), Pastora has been operating a shark-fishing business on the San Juan river.
***
Nicaragua has used an error on Google's Internet maps system to justify an invasion of Costa Rica.
Last week, Nicaraguan troops crossed the San Juan river, which divides the two countries near the Caribbean coast, and planted a flag on Costa Rica's Calero Island. They were led by Eden Pastora, a former Sandinista guerrilla commander, who said they had been dredging the Nicaraguan side of the river and decided to set up camp.
The island sits in a border region whose sovereignty has long been fiercely contested but has been recognized as part of Costa Rica since 1897. Google Maps, however, placed it in Nicaragua. After an inquiry, the company admitted that it had wrongly handed a 1.7-mile stretch to Nicaragua.
"See the satellite photo on Google and there you see the border," Mr Pastora told a Costa Rican newspaper.
Costa Rica, which does not have an army, sent security forces to the border to back up 150 agents who have been there since tensions rose last month. Laura Chinchilla, the Costa Rican president, asked the Organization of American States (OAS) to investigate the incursion and threatened to take the dispute to the UN Security Council. "Costa Rica is seeing its dignity smeared," she said. Her government also pleaded with Google to change the border on its maps.
A Google spokesman said that while it strived to make its maps accurate, "by no means should they be used as a reference to decide military actions between two countries".
Charlie Hale, a geopolicy analyst for Google, blamed the U.S. State Department for providing bad data and wrote in a blogpost: "We are now working to update our maps. Cartography is a complex undertaking, and borders are always changing."
However, Samuel Santos, the Nicaraguan foreign minister, has also written to Google to say that its original map was "absolutely correct" and has rejected the Costa Rican demands.
Embarrassingly for Google, Bing Maps, a rival service created by Microsoft, had drawn the border in line with the usually accepted boundary.
© Copyright (c) The Daily Telegraph
***
They got it half right - Eden Pastora was a Sandinista guerrilla commander, then he broke with the leaders of the regime after the revolution and formed ARDE, a contra organization operating out of Costa Rica, with the nom de guerre of Comandante Cero. The Sandinista government tried to kill him with a bomb at a press conference in 1984 (it was thought at first the CIA did it, because Pastora would not knuckle under to the direction of the US-backed FDN contra organization, but it has since been established that it was the Sandinistas).
According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know, but I only have a couple of minutes to look this up), Pastora has been operating a shark-fishing business on the San Juan river.
