Reflections of Guatemala

The beautifully illustrated Reflections of Guatemala: Costume and Life in the 19th Century emerged from the recent discovery of four nineteenth-century sketchbooks in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Produced by French diplomat to Guatemala Léonce Angrand, the books contain watercolors and pencil sketches of Guatemalan daily life and dress in the 1850s, particularly of laboring Mayans and ladinos (those of mixed-race descent) as well as maps and drawings of Mayan archaeological sites. As authors Coryn Greatorex-Bell and Christopher Lutz explain, Angrand's illustrations referenced and built on British ex-patriot Juan Galindo's earlier sketches and watercolors from the 1830s. Greatorex-Bell and Lutz valuably connect these nineteenth-century figures and reproduce their illustrations for the first time alongside other recently discovered early nineteenth-century watercolors and formerly unpublished late nineteenth-century photographs.This volume is a most welcome contribution for those interested in nineteenth-century Guatemala, particularly given the scarcity of archival sources for this time and place. As Christopher Lutz points out in his introduction to part 2, the first decades after Guatemala's independence left relatively few archival records, mostly because, as he puts it, the “minimalist” Guatemalan government was uninterested in producing and maintaining documentary records (p. 278). Meager archival resources led to a “scarcity of serious historical research for the early national period” (p. 278). In this context, Lutz rightly stresses the value and importance of written and visual accounts left by nineteenth-century travelers, diplomats, and explorers such as Angrand and Galindo.Greatorex-Bell begins part 1 by situating Angrand and Galindo within the context of nineteenth-century European travelers and diplomats who pursued the study of Latin American indigenous histories, culture, and antiquities. Her descriptive account of the intertwined stories of Galindo and Angrand will be of interest to scholars exploring nineteenth-century intellectual and cultural history, early transatlantic networks of ethnographic research, and European constructions of race and exoticism. Greatorex-Bell also provides extensive background information on early Guatemalan textiles, including production, materials, tribute requirements, and the decline of the local textile industry in the early nineteenth century amid cheaper foreign imports. She also offers detailed descriptions of indigenous men's and women's daily dress and ceremonial attire. Part 1’s final chapters provide full- and half-page reproductions of dozens of nineteenth-century watercolors and sketches. Greatorex-Bell's contextualization of the images and her discussion of nineteenth-century Guatemalan dress highlight the intersections between Guatemalan clothing and the textile industry, the tribute system, domestic and international trade, gendered labor, ethnic and racial identity, daily life, material and visual culture, and religious beliefs and practices.Part 2, authored by Lutz, introduces the historiographical context of nineteenth-century Guatemala before shifting attention to microhistories of 30 towns, villages, and cities portrayed in Angrand's and Galindo's watercolors and sketches. In sweeping summaries, Lutz provides demographic, economic, ethnic, and social data about these towns from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Read as a whole, these chapters highlight the diversity of local contexts, particularly the varied nature and effects of tribute and repartimiento (labor draft) demands, church obligations, trade, migration, shifting ethnic identities, and the incorporation of conquering and enslaved native peoples from different parts of New Spain.Reflections of Guatemala is designed to be accessible to a broad and popular audience, including scholars interested in diverse aspects of nineteenth-century cultural and intellectual history, as well as nonscholars and travelers interested in Guatemalan culture past and present. I would make one substantive critique with regard to Greatorex-Bell's discussion of Angrand and Galindo and their broader intellectual context. Given the nature of the topic, this reader expected to see at least some consideration of the tensions inherent in any story about nineteenth-century European travelers and researchers in Latin America. For example, Greatorex-Bell paints an overwhelmingly positive portrait of Angrand as “a man deeply motivated by an intellectual curiosity to study, record, and to deepen and disseminate his knowledge of the peoples, customs, and archaeology of the countries he visited in the Americas” (p. 8). But she never considers how Angrand and Galindo were operating within a context of nineteenth-century ethnography, archaeology, and European expositions that systematically supported Europe's claims to racial superiority by depicting Latin Americans and other non-Europeans as inferior, exotic, and other. Nor does she discuss the problematic historical nature of Angrand's and Galindo's participation in antiquities markets that expropriated and exploited the cultural artifacts of Latin America and other regions around the world. Nevertheless, Reflections of Guatemala lays an important foundation for future research and provides students, scholars, and nonscholars alike with valuable access to nineteenth-century archival images

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Context (archaeology) · Independence (probability theory) · Late 19th century · Period (music) · Scarcity · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Migration, Health, Geopolitics, Historical Geography

• The Chinese cotton contest

  Scott Doebler•Colonial Latin American Review•2021

  Add to list