"To think about nothing. Native creativity between material practices and representations in the Southern Andes"

GABRIELA SIRACUSANO

Los Angeles

Simposio; Indigenous Knowledge and the Making of Colonial Latin America; 2017

USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute

In the Udaondo Museum of Luján in the province of Buenos Aires -the biggest museological collection in Argentina-, there´s a small canvas with a portrait of Mary. On its back there lies a handwritten script: ?J. M. Habiyú, fecit, Itapúa, 1618?. Itapua was the place of one of the Jesuit reductions in the guaraní territories. The reductions were a certain kind of settlement for indigenous people in the Americas organized by the Jesuit Order since the very beginning of the evangelization process. To reduce native populations implicated the action of control over their activities and culture with diverse goals, being the main one exploitation while imparting the Christian faith over them. Within this circumstances and as a central strategy, the practices linked to the manufacture of images at the Jesuit province of Paracuaria, would contribute to the concretion of one of the purposes of the Company in the Americas: to create the Kingdom of God on Earth , in tune with the Royal plans. In this sense, the production of an imaginary that would follow and collaborate, through its didactics and its agency/efficacy to fix the discourse ? anchored in a Counter reform rhetoric ?, proved to be fundamental in order to counteract the actions of the ethnic groups reluctant to Colonial authority. Everything should point to the exaltation of the triumph of faith in pursuit of eternal salvation