Un trópico para el universo. Reflexiones sobre un grabado de trajes de Colombia de 1837

• Main Author: Carolina Vanegas Carrasco
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherches sur les Mondes Américains 2017-12-01
• Series: Nuevo mundo - Mundos Nuevos
• Subjects: Types and costumes; Colombia; Armchair travelers; Racism
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/71732

Costumes / Colombie, an apparently insignificant engraving although enigmatic in its iconography, was collected and exhibited in Colombia as an image of the “types and customs” genre. The development and improvement of reproduction methods in the nineteenth century led to the rise of this type of images as well as their reproduction beyond their authors. In this context, the engraving studied is singular given that it was the result of a juxtaposition of sources whose study was conditioned by a nationalist logic. This article reveals the process of identifying the sources of which it is composed and the book to which it belongs, at the same time that a reflection is proposed on the theoretical-methodological transformations that made this identification possible. Additionally, it is proposed that both the engraving and the text that it illustrated condensed an idea of the American tropic and contributed to the naturalization of the differentiated place that the racial cataloging of the world prefigured for each “type”.