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Fray Andrés de Guinea: A portrait of Chilean slavery, by Celia Cussen (University of Chile)

The portrait of the young convent servant, Fray Andrés de Guinea (1792), the first representation of an African produced in Chile, is tucked away in a corner of the nearly abandoned Recoleta Franciscana in Santiago's La Chimba neighborhood, north of the Mapocho River. In our study, Javiera Carmona and I attempt to situate the painting in a series of seasons of the Franciscan Order: the reported period of Fray Andrés' life (17C); the production of the portrait (late 18C); its displacement during the renewal of the convent (18C); and the current season of abandonment. We are attempting to analyze the painting in part from the theoretical perspective of heritage studies as an object of devotion that aided a community to remember what was once important, but which has been forgotten, its relevance lost and even its meanings altered.

Professor Celia Cussen, Professor of History, and the University of Chile, is in residence during January as a Visiting Researcher through an Academic Exchange Agreement between UCI Latin American Studies and the University of Chile, Santiago.

Professor Cussen is the author of the superb monograph, Black Saint of the Americas: The Life and Afterlife of Martín de Porres (Cambridge, 2014), and the editor of El libro de la Cofradía de la Candelaria. Una hermandad de mulatos y naturales, Santiago, Chile, siglo XVII" (Editorial Universitaria and Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, forthcoming).