50 The Americas The Economist December 4th 2021
W
hen shewas young, Constanza de
Luxán moved from Vizcaya in
northern Spain to Peru, where in 1668 she
married a colonial official. Later she had
her portrait painted dressed in black with
Spanish lace ruffs. But she is kneeling on
a luxurious carpet of brightly coloured
geometric design derived from pre
Columbian Peruvian culture. The paint
ing hangs in “Tornaviaje” (Return Jour
ney), a thoughtprovoking exhibition at
the Prado museum in Madrid, whose
subject is the art produced in Spanish
America from the 16th to the 18th centu
ries. It argues that this art, in the words
of an 18thcentury Spanish friar, featured
“Spanish forms dressed in American
clothing” and thus formed part of a
culture of mestizaje(mixing).
The exhibition comes as Spain’s
colonisation of the Americas is generat
ing political polemic. Mexico’s president,
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is still
smouldering after Spain rebuffed his
request in 2019 that its king should apol
ogise for the conquest 500 years ago.
Conservative Spanish politicians have
stoked resentment. The conquest
“brought civilisation and freedom to the
American continent”, said Isabel Díaz
Ayuso, the Madrid regional president, in
September. This overlooks the sophisti
cated civilisations of preColumbian
Peru and Mexico, the fact that the con
quest meant death by disease for mil
lions of native Americans and that “free
dom” would come only after indepen
dence from Spain three centuries later.
“Tornaviaje” offers a more subtle
view. Its contents are the art the de
scendants of the conquistadors sent back
home. The curators scoured convents
and private collections. It illuminates a
blind spot. Most Spaniards are unaware
that their forebears lived with moreobjects from the Americas than from
Flanders or Italy, or that many of the
Christs they parade behind in Easter pro
cessions or the chalices in their churches
were made in America, writes Miguel
Falomir, the museum’s director.
Like all migrants, Spaniards wanted to
tell the folks back home of their success.
The show includes paintings and maps of
new cities, such as Mexico and Potosí, as
well as portraits of the colonial elite
dressed in Spanish finery. It does not
conceal the fact of racial inequality: the
daughter of a viceroy pats an indigenous
servant on the head. But it also celebrates
the emergence of a mestizo(mixedrace)
society and artistic culture. An 18thcentu
ry painting of a Mexican family bears the
legend “qualities of the mixture of Span
iards, blacks and Indians”.
The “American clothing” involved
native techniques and materials, such as
silver, feathers, dyes and woods, and
skilled artists. Spanish America developed
a visual culture that lasts to this day, fea
turing popular religiosity (especially the
cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who revealed herself to an indigenous shep
herd), ostentatious public display and
jubilation in the fiesta, and a celebration
of the abundance of the land. This dis
tinct cultural tradition eventually as
sumed political form in the movement
for independence from Spain.
None of this obscures the subordina
tion of the indigenous population, a
cause of Latin America’s chronic in
equality which intensified after in
dependence. In another, smaller, exhibi
tion in Madrid Sandra Gamarra, a con
temporary Peruvian artist, takes images
from that visual tradition and turns them
on their heads. Her artworks seek to
show the persistence of colonial trauma
and the invisibility of native cultures and
mestizovariations in Latin America
today. Nineteenthcentury paintings
celebrating independence are blurred by
a red wash. A large triangle of triangles
recalls the form of the Virgin of the silver
mountain of Potosí and contains 350
smaller images of the virgin painted by
artists who sell to tourists in Cusco.
Copies of European academic paintings
she bought in flea markets are placed
face down on the floor in the form of a
chakana, an Inca cross which symbolises
the interdependence of everything.
Ms Gamarra’s work highlights that the
official narrative of mestizajefalls short
by not acknowledging continuing racial
discrimination, though arguably Latin
American culture is ever more demotic
and mestizo. “Tornaviaje” presents his
torical evidence that mestizaje was at the
heart of colonial art and culture. But the
remedy for enduring stratification by
race is not politics focused on identity,
but rather fairness. The historic task of
Latin American democracy continues to
be to give equal value to all citizens,
whatever their race.The culture war over Latin America’s colonial pastBelloPictures at two exhibitions
businesses, particularly as Ms Castro has
pledged to cut fuel duty and not raise other
taxes. Public debt is expected to reach
nearly 60% of gdpthis year.
Her clout will also depend on the final
makeup of Congress and her ability to
build relationships with the civil service,
which is stuffed with National Party allies,
and the army, which ousted her husband.
Both are uncertain. Mr Hernández may al
so use his final month in office to appoint
loyalists to key positions.
But if Ms Castro can achieve some of
what she has promised, it would be a welcome change in a region that has been
plagued by democratic backsliding. In
deed, she appears slightly more pragmatic
than when she first ran for president, in- She toned down recent investor
spooking campaign pledges, such as to
boost stateowned enterprises. She has al
so been less vocal about ending recogni
tion of Taiwan in favour of China.
Concerns that Ms Castro is a front for
her husband and will model Honduras on
Venezuela are overblown, thinks Mr Breda.
Her husband had a close relationship with
Hugo Chávez and Libre is part of an alli
ance with other regional leftist groups, in
cluding Cuba’s Communist Party. But al
though she responded to congratulations
from Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s current
despot, she ignored those from Daniel Or
tega, the despot in nextdoor Nicaragua.
To build trust with the United States, Ms
Castro will have to play up her pragmatism.
President Joe Biden’s administration,
which has been struggling to find partners
in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to
tackle migration, hassaidit hopes to work
with Ms Castro. Bothcountries need good
allies at the moment.n