When Don Santo talks about the creation of a new layer without deleting the current one, he is actually referring to what Baudrillard defines as the first order of Simulacra. Baudrillard mentions that during the 16th century, the ‘Jesuits’ and the Counter Reformation were the main makers of simulacra.[1] Evidence of this can be seen on the steps from 1 to 7 on the C.P. Software. The construction of churches, the replacement of deities, the creation of myths, etc. All with the purpose to replace the previous knowledge with a brand new one.
This is the reason why Don Santo is creating the C.P.software. If colonization is another form of simulacra then there is the possibility of reversing its power by attacking it, not from reality but directly from its own simulacra, to fool the legacy of colonization in its own terms, in its own world of fantasy. Baudrillard states that the use of simulacra is not something accidental or about progress. It is an issue of desire or necessity to control and to maintain the power.[2] In Don Santo’s case it is a necessity and desire to recover the power. As in the short tale “On Exactitude in Science” of Borges which Baudrillard uses to describe the Simulacrum. “…the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory…”[3] Perhaps, these cartographers were the colonizers, and the map they created was Catholicism, and its hyperreality is the legacy of colonization. Now the Colonial Photoshop comes to reverse this process one more time. Because it will create a new map that will end up covering the legacy of Colonization.
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