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Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World

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Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World S Y M P O S I U M A B S T R A C T S Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World _______________________________________________________________________________________ Cecelia F. Klein, University of California, Los Angeles Huitzilopochli’s magical birth and victory, and Suffer the Little Children: Contested Visions of Child the world-mountain of cosmic renewal. Such Sacrifice in the Americas contrasting, alternating themes, the subject that I explore here, were similarly expressed at other This talk will address the ways that artists over the sacred mountains in the Valley of Mexico. The centuries have depicted the sacrifice of children in juxtaposed celebrations of conquest and tributary the preconquest Americas, and what those images rulership, alternating with the call for world can tell us about the politics of visual representation regeneration, were complementary aims engaged in complex arenas where governments and social in the annual cycle, expressing the dynamic factions struggle to negotiate a more advantageous obligations of Aztec kings in maintaining the place for themselves. The focus will be on the formal integration of society and nature. differences between New and Old World representa- tions of Aztec and Inca child sacrifice and the ways in which western artistic conventions and tropes Carolyn Dean, University of California, Santa Cruz long used in Europe to visualize its “Others” were Inca Transubstantiation deployed in the making of images of Native American child sacrifice. Colonial and early modern images of In Pre-Hispanic times the Inca believed that the subject, it will be argued, were largely shaped, objects could host spiritual essences. Although not by the desire to record historical “truths” about rocks were the most common hosts, a wide child sacrifice among the Aztec and the Inca, but by variety of things (including living bodies) were their makers and patrons’ own ambitions at home, capable of housing sacred anima. Even though as well as the pressing concerns and understandings Roman Catholicism recognizes transubstan- of their times. tiation as dogma—albeit in highly circumscribed ways—early modern Christians were not inclined to acknowledge the practice in Andean religions. Richard Townsend, Art Institute of Chicago The inability to recognize Andean transubstanti- Aztec Sacred Mountains: A Cycle of Obligations ation increased the consternation of extirpators of idolatry and others who sought to identify and Rising in the center of the Aztec city-state, destroy idols, not understanding that sacred Tenochtitlan, a great dual pyramid was crowned by essences could be transferred readily to new hosts two temples. The first temple was dedicated to the once the old ones had been destroyed. This paper deified Aztec ancestral hero, Huitzilopochtli, and considers the inherent conflict between Spanish was the focus for royal coronations and the sacrifice and Inca perceptions of transubstantiation, with a of war prisoners; the second was dedicated to the particular interest in the ways the Inca deployed ancient rain-god Tlaloc, concerning regeneration embodiment to keep their ancestors physically and the abundance of crops, corresponding to the present once the mummified remains were summer rainy season. Likewise, the massive dual confiscated by Spanish authorities. body of the pyramid represented the conflation of two symbolic mountains: the mythic mountain of Stella Nair, University of California, Riverside Kevin Terraciano, University of California, Los Angeles Theaters of Power and Façades of Secrecy: Inca History in the Eye of the Beholder: Writing and Architecture under Imperial Inca and Spanish Rule Painting the Conquest of Mexico In this presentation I examine Inca architecture and This paper examines how Nahua writers and its transformation under Inca and Spanish rule. I artists remembered a pivotal event in the highlight the distinct ways in which these Imperial Conquest of Mexico, the Spanish massacre of states, as well as distinct individuals, manipulated unarmed Nahua elites in the ceremonial precinct Inca design and construction for highly theatrical of Tenochtitlan, and demonstrates how Spanish political and religious performances. In addition, writers and artists remembered the same event I show how Inca architecture served as dynamic differently, or not at all. In highlighting different façades that shielded the complexities of private accounts of this event, I argue that Spanish and life, both Spanish and Inca, during the violence of Nahua artists and writers advanced their own the colonial period. versions of the past in response to others’ competing claims. Finally, I consider the potential Elizabeth H. Boone, Tulane University effect of these different visions on their intended audiences, the beholders of History. Ideology in Translation: The Graphic Presentation of Catholicism in Sixteenth-Century Mexico Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs, Université Charles This paper focuses on the confluence, in sixteenth- de Gaulle Lille 3 century Mexico, of two broad categories of Apropiaciones cruzadas: las mascapaychas de los European and Mexican cultural production: conquistadores y las coronas de los incas religious thought and praxis, and graphic notation. Much has been written about the confrontation La necesidad de apoderarse de las figuras políticas between sixteenth-century Catholicism, especially indígenas pasó por el doble proceso de apropiación as it was defined and practiced by the mendicants, de atributos de poder local y de su traducción en and the deep tradition of Aztec religious thought términos hispanos. Estos “descubrimiento y and action. It is increasingly clear that Catholicism conquista” simbólicos, cargados de una fuerte became Mexicanized in the environment of the dosis de invención, se sirvieron ampliamente de mendicant schools for indigenous youth and representaciones plásticas y no fueron proyectos through the translation of religious texts into y acciones unilateralmente hispanas. En estos juegos indigenous languages. Almost all of this scholar- no sólo se equipararon, sustituyeron o fusionaron ship, however, has concerned itself with how mascapaycha y corona en una suerte de sincretismo concepts and tenets were verbally configured in político. La corona es el emblema por antonomasia texts recorded alphabetically. This paper will del poder del rey y de la cabeza política de un estado, instead analyze the impact of indigenous picto- pero las identificaciones no fueron ni tan generales, graphic writing and graphic expression on early ni tan simples y evidentes como podríamos creer. colonial Catholicism by looking at the graphic Esta ponencia se propone hacer una filiación de las reproduction of Catholic doctrine, especially in fuentes utilizadas para la representación de las the form of catechisms presented in symbols and coronas de los incas como una forma de acercarse figures rather than in letters and words. a la historia de la constitución de las relaciones coloniales de poder en la temprana sociedad peruana. Amy Buono, Southern Methodist University Thomas B. F. Cummins, Harvard University Fuzzy Caps, Tiny Tunics and the Materiality The Materials of Conversion: Sand, Gold, Resin, of Featherwork in the Americas and Feathers and the Arts of Colonial America Featherworking as an art form was widely This talk will look at the various instances in practiced across the ancient and colonial which the Pre-Columbian materials of artistic Americas for millennia, a result of the sacredness production were reformed to become the conferred by many cultures on birds and their materials of the artistic expression of conversion. feathers. The methods and manner of fabrication, In some instances, such as featherwork in and the materiality of the resulting artifacts, Mexico, this transformation seems rather however, vary widely. In this presentation, I will obvious and feather-workers as well as tlacuiloque explore technical aspects of featherworking in (painters /scribes) were retrained to produce new the ancient Andes and in colonial Brazil, with types of images. In other instances, however, particular attention to critical characteristics the transformation required destruction and of texture, scale and color. As I will show, these annihilation in order to create anew. Or new aesthetic choices provide insight into the ritual categories, such as spolia, were introduced to and social significance of these brilliantly colored re-orient the value and meaning of materials artifacts and the complicated ways in which these and the images they carried. The materials of objects negotiated between the corporeal and Pre-Columbian America were addressed through spiritual worlds of humans and birds. Ultimately, a dialectical process that took different concrete these qualities of feathered objects also speak to forms according to the arts of the different the socio-politics of imperial power and colonial cultures that the Europeans encountered. rupture. Jeanette Favrot Peterson, University of California, Elena Phipps, Independent scholar, formerly Santa Barbara Metropolitan Museum of Art Metonymy, Metaphor, and the Matter of the Sacred Materials, Materiality, and Transformation in Andean Colonial Textile Traditions There is no greater conundrum for many religious traditions than the matter of the sacred, or when Textile traditions in the Andes combine value matter becomes the sacred. The debate quickened systems that imbue the quality of materials with in light of the sixteenth-century
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