Depictions and Colonialism

 

The first exhibit at the Museo de America is a collection of drawings and renderings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that purportedly depict what people who lived in South America looked like to Europeans. Various depictions are grotesque and disturbing; others are comical and challenges us to wonder if the depictions were believed by Europeans who saw them. European conquerors went out into the world and found people who were different from them and believed themselves superior. Drawings and accounts exaggerated customs, beliefs, and practices. In some instances, especially in tropical regions, they found people who wore very little clothing, which was weather appropriate. But concepts like nakedness, sin, and guilt did not always translate in the same way across cultures.

If you think local people are not quite human, it removes the psychological barrier to harm or murder them. Renderings and information, even if erroneous, helped to justify some of these cognitive barriers. Hence, the interaction with Inca or Aztec, or other indigenous cultures, did not go well (to say the least). The land, people, and riches of South America were open for discovery, conquest, and appropriation. It is easy to dismiss what happened in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a byproduct of an ancient age. Yet, into the twentieth century the exoticization of South America continued. Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, published in 1912, led the reader to believe that there were prehistoric and fantastical creatures that inhabited the far reaches of the Amazon basin. The British explorers who discover the “lost world,” tout their racial superiority and greater intelligence throughout the novel, justifying some of the more provocative actions. 

Headless of Guyana (published Nuremberg, 1599)

The Museo de America contains a collection of artifacts primarily from the colonial period. Away from the center of Madrid, it is not one of the more popular museums in the capital. Many museums have begun to return cultural items to former colonies, and some of my students suggested that the Museo de America should do the same. A nice thought, I contend, but so many indigenous peoples have been so thoroughly decimated, I reply to the students, “to whom do you return these items to?” 

The New World (1621)

A Conversation about Life and Death in Ancient Egypt

At a special exhibit on ancient Egyptian burials at the National Museum of Scotland, I was looking at the sarcophagus of the priest Nehemsumut, circa 840-815 BC. There was a group of grade one children, on a class outing, in the same area. I was pressed by the assignment sheets they were using as a lesson examining burial practices and using impressive vocabulary words. A little boy, with blond hair, wearing his school uniform blue jumper, engaged me in an earnest conversation:

Boy: That's a mummy.

Me: Yes. It is very cool, isn't it?

Boy: You know the mummy in there is still alive!

Me: Are you sure?

Boy: Yes. He’s really alive!

Boy’s friend: (with analytical skepticism) I think he’s dead.

Me: (nodding, earnestly) I think he is dead too.