Poniendo a trabajar el oro precolombino: el caso de Tomás Herrán y el Smithsonian en los teatros de la construcción de naciones y la cultura global

Les Field

Authors

Les Field Department of Anthropology University of New Mexico https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2537-4995

Keywords:

Precolumbian gold, Tomás Herrán, Smithsonian, nation-building, global culture.

Abstract

Pre-Columbian gold artifacts from what is now Colombia have been decontextualized and recontextualized in notable ways. On the one hand, they have been stripped of their archaeological content and their sociocultural meaning by the practices of illicit excavation (guaquería) and colonialism. On the other hand, they have been put to work building a national narrative and also in the service of the discourse of global heritage and world culture. These factors shaped the actions of Tomás Herrán (1843-1904), a 19th century Colombian oligarch who made it possible for the Smithsonian Institution to acquire a collection of pre-Columbian gold objects in the early 1890s. Herrán was educated at Georgetown University, and in 1902 as chargé d’affaires in the US, he negotiated the first Panama Canal treaty, the Hay-Herrán Treaty of 1903. This article narrates the strands of Herrán’s relationship with the Smithsonian, in light of his later diplomatic work, and the appearance of pre-Columbian gold artifacts on national and international stages. I ask whether such charismatic artifacts might be recontextualized once again by processes of indigenous reappropriation in Colombia.

Author Biography

Les Field, Department of Anthropology University of New Mexico

Full professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, where he has taught since 1994. He obtained his doctorate at Duke University in 1987. His thesis research, financed by the National Science Foundation, was centered around groups of Nicaraguan artisans whose daily lives and aspirations were transformed. for the revolutionary social process. His first book, “The grimace of Macho Ratón: artisans, identity and nation in late twentieth century western Nicaragua” (Duke University Press, 1999), was based on his work in that country during the 1980s and 1990s. From 1989 to 1991 he carried out postdoctoral research with indigenous farmers in Colombia and Ecuador financed by the Fundación Rockefeller. After his return from South America, he began working with unrecognized American indigenous tribes in California who had been fighting to obtain federal recognition. This investigation, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Wenner-Gren Fund, resulted in the publication of “Abalone tales: collaborative explorations of California Indian sovereignty and identity” (Duke University Press, 2008). His latest research in Colombia, centered on pre-Colombian gold artifacts, archaeology, illicit excavations, indigenous communities and museums, was financed by a Fulbright scholarship and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This investigation takes place in the volume Challenging the dichotomy: the licit and the illicit in archaeological and heritage discourses with Cristobal Gnecco and Joe Watkins (University of Arizona Press, 2016). The current book project focuses on human relationships and communities that are understood in different ways as utopias, dystopias, anti-utopias and indigenous futurisms. The jointly authored chapters offer specific scenes in real time and space in Nicaragua, Colombia, native California and Jewish historical places where this type of relationship has been developed, elucidated, transformed, rejected, discarded and ignored.

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Archivos consultados

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1891 Abril 28

1892 Febrero 11

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1891 Número de registro 23661

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