Buen Gusto and Classicism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America, 1780-1910

4: Neoclassical Pompai in Early Twentieth-Century Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

72 Chapter Four Neoclassical Pompai in Early Twentieth-Century Cartagena de Indias, Colombia Carla Bocchetti This chapter addresses the use of antiquity in the shaping of identities in new Latin American republics in the early twentieth century. Specifically, it investigates the aesthetics of public neoclassical monuments within the politics of self-representation in Colombia. This study considers neoclassicism as a cosmopolitan element that allowed Latin American nations to imagine their participation in the Western project of modernity. The use of Greek and Roman classical references, however, could generate multiple meanings. Was neoclassicism only an elite import, an element of exclusion and imperialism, impervious to local Latin American identities? Or, on the contrary, was neoclassicism an alternative discourse to colonial identity in which different local identities could be expressed? I argue that the use of neoclassicism in early national Colombia became an attempt to give order to several local pasts, such as Indian, Creole, mestizo , and mulatto. It nevertheless did not erase the pre-Hispanic and/or colonial pasts or other forms of identity but instead was a global product that offered a legitimizing language to construct identity based on ideas of progress and cosmopolitanism. In this sense, neoclassicism supplied the support necessary to construct a new sense of the self, based on public performances and within the social dynamics of buen gusto (good taste). 73 Carla Bocchetti Neoclassicism came to express a new sense of the self in the centenary of independence celebration in Colombia by serving as a medium in which many different ways of belonging could took shape. This essay takes as its primary examples various neoclassical monuments built between 1909 and 1911 in Centenary Park in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, to celebrate the first one hundred years of independence. I argue that architecture and public performances, as integral parts of the urban expression of neoclassicism, became signs around which a sense of belonging to the nation could be built. The appropriation of antiquity in early twentieth-century Colombia did not serve so much to define a particular ethnic group as to create a new sense of identity based on progress. It was a consistent language designed to generate shared values, in the shape of white marble statues, columns, obelisks, and other architectural motifs selected from an antique repertoire. Neoclassical monuments were placed in public locations to represent both the achievements of the local past, mainly wars of independence, and future prospects for progress and social prosperity. The visions of neoclassical perfection that such monuments constructed are thrown into relief when considered against the realities of the failure of modernization, the lack of progress, and the limitations in using and producing technology and communications systems that characterized many emerging nations in Latin America at the time. In that sense, they became the material ruins portraying the failure of political and social accomplishments in modernity. In terms of buen gusto, neoclassical monuments in early twentieth-century Latin America exemplified the material forms in which cultural anxieties were expressed: the desire to belong to the international scene and the limits of cosmopolitanism. Architecture and Civic Identity In Latin America neoclassicism came to represent the rise of democracy, the formation of nation-states, and the promotion of capitalism. To celebrate the first hundred years of independence, most Latin American capital cities began major architectural works in order to give new shape to urban areas, stimulating urban revival. Optimism had accompanied the rise of democracy and communication systems. Religious identity, which so strongly characterized the colonial period, was overcome by a civic identity based on political freedom. 74 Chapter four Neoclassicism gave material form to democratic and capitalistic ideologies : columns, pediments, and elements of classical architecture were used in building banks, train stations, academies of art, public buildings for ministries , and governmental offices, with the purpose of bestowing legitimacy and authority on the new republican institutions. In this section, I address the monuments of Centenary Park, their relevance for studying the reception of the classical past, and their use in the expression of civic identities based on the notion of progress. Centenary Park is located immediately outside the city walls of Cartagena in the area of Gethsemane. In a public competition, the park commission was awarded to Felipe Jaspe and Pedro Malabet. The park was inaugurated on November 11, 1911, the day of Cartagena’s centenary, and was built to commemorate the patriots who signed the act of independence. The...