Friday, February 3, 2017

7:\> OVERWRITTING THE SYSTEM.EXE
[ So far the process of Colonization was meant to attract viewers into the illusion of painting, churches, and myths. This last step does the opposite, it was meant to repel the local from their identity by associating the locals’ culture with what was considered the visual representation of evil. The colonizers expected to erase the locals’ identity from their culture, distorting their self. Ramon Mujica Pinilla argues that the depiction of hell in the Andes eliminated the local identity of the locals, because it matched their Inca qualities and customs with depictions containing demons and fire, making the locals’ culture look like a sin. “…There is a symbolic correlation between the indigenous military tradition of undressing defeated enemies and the Christian representation of the damned portrayed naked in hell. Devoid of clothes, Andeans lost all sense of identity, lineage, and social, political and religious affiliation. Since pre Hispanic times and throughout the colonial period, wounded and dead soldiers were dressed and undressed in the battlefield. In hell, the damned, without clothes, were similarly outcast from the religious order.”[1] Another example of silencing the locals’ identity through association can be found in the drawing of Luis Antonio de Oviedo y Herrera y Rueda “The image alludes to the seventh chant of the Poema Heroyco, which argued that the devil had transferred his center of operations to Peru for fear that he would lose the austral lands with the birth in the Americas of Saint Rose of Lima. The south was the last stronghold of his decadent monarchy that the Inca in Peru and Moctezuma in Mexico had faithfully defended and preserved for him.”[2] This was a perfect technique for the colonizers purposes because it used the local’s visual iconography as a way to access their minds and to corrupt their beliefs.]



[1] Ibid., 201.
[2] Katzew, Ilona, and Luisa Elena Alcalá. 2011. Contested visions in the Spanish colonial world. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 179.




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