A conquista visual da América: imagens do Novo Mundo e os canibais americanos como meios de dominação colonial entre os séculos XVI e XVII
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: The travel diaries of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci offered the European public the first news about American cannibals, thus building the foundations of a stereotypical character who symbolically embodied the savagery and civilizational backwardness of the Americas and its original inhabitants. Different engravings, paintings and maps made between the 16th and 17th centuries represented the physiognomy, habitat, accessories, and customs of the cannibal indigenous as a means to legitimize the colonial rule that Europe exercised over the New World. Seen and portrayed by artists of the caliber of Theodor de Bry, Albert Eckhout, Petrus Plancius, Maerten de Vos, Adrian Collaert and Abraham Ortelius as bloodthirsty barbarians and nefarious sinners, the cannibals of the New World served as the ideal otherness to define the political and cultural hegemony of Europe over the world. In the process, cannibalism was the essential characteristic to which the entire American continent was reduced, which ultimately justified its occupation, evangelization, and submission. Analyzing and comparing the most important symbols and visual codes in this type of images will allow us to understand their pedagogical and propagandistic function within the visual conquest of America, while giving us the necessary tools to combat and eradicate such colonial discourses still present in Latin American thought.
Institution: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Language: Spanish
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7216851076