La creación del primer paisaje colonial español en las Américas, Santo Domingo, 1492-1548

• Main Author: Rosa Elena Carrasquillo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá) 2019-06-01
• Series: Antípoda: Revista de Antropología y Arqueología
• Subjects: Caribbean; Empire; landscape; imagery; slavery; Spain
• Online Access: https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/doi/full/10.7440/antipoda36.2019.04

This article documents the violent, imperfect and bloody process that naturalized the blueprint of Spanish imperial imagery in Santo Domingo as from 1492, and that was then exported to the rest of America. It refers to how space is reconstructed: with its processes of destruction and construction, population displacement and the racialization of space or racial infrastructures at the basis of Spanish imperial imagery. In doing so, the landscape is de-naturalized. Methodology: Through a thorough reading of primary sources dating from 1492 to 1548, including the chronicles of conquest, travel itineraries, ordinances, and letters from the Crown to its representatives in the Caribbean, this article reconstructs the creation of a Spanish landscape in Santo Domingo. It conceptualizes the landscape simultaneously as ideology and practice, and then approaches the city as a colonial weapon and, from here, the development of the plantation. Conclusions: The Spanish imperial imagery destroys the indigenous world and builds the Spanish city. The study of this imagery allows us to dissect the destructive process in the construction of the city and re-evaluate the counter-imagery developed by the indigenous and African Maroons. It also emphasizes the importance of methodology, as the study of imperial imagery destabilizes the spontaneity of the landscape and highlights the still-present destruction, violence and racism of the colonial landscape. Originality: The article centers the Caribbean within European modernity and favors the study of imperial imagery to re-establish the work and resistance of Arawakos and Africans to imperial visual culture.