Guillermo Gómez-PeñaAuthor(s): Luis CamnitzerSource: Art Journal, Vol. 51, No. 4, Latin American Art (Winter, 1992), p. 8Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777272 .

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Guillermo G6mez-Pei ia MEXICO

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Guillermo G6mez-Pefia, "The Torture of Cuauht6moc," from the performance trilogy "1992," Los Angeles, California, 1991.

. . AND THEY ARRIVED WITHOUT PAPERS (sound- bed of melancholic Tarahumara violins)

An important issue haunting our consciousness is the need to redefine the five-hundred-year celebration of the alleged "discovery of America," a blatant euphemism for the geno- cide that made Latin America into a subsidiary of Europe, and America into the United States. Regrettably, the ghost of the undocumented Columbus is still around. As the Native Americans say, Columbus Day (which in Mexico is known as El Dia de la Raza), must be renamed "the day of indigenous dignity," and the fall of Tenochtitlan, "the day of indigenous resistance." The term "quincentennial," which has a cele-

bratory connotation, must be exchanged for the purely de-

scriptive term "quincentenary." Inexact labels referring to

ethnicity and race, such as "Hispanic," "white," "black," and "Indian," should be replaced by terms those groups determine for themselves. The "discovery" marked the begin-

ning of a five-hundred-year era in which Europeans and North Americans assumed the right to name everyone else, and this must end. Before the Europeans arrived there were more than one thousand different cultures on this continent, each with a different name. Most of them are still alive. From Alaska to Patagonia, from Quito to Quebec, nonaligned artists and writers prepared for the countercelebration. To

propose more enlightened models of relationship between the Old and New Worlds (and therefore between North and Latin

America) is crucial to any group that doesn't wish to propa- gate the bloody European and North American legacy on this continent.

GUILLERMO GOMEZ-PENA, a performance artist, is co-

founder of the Border Arts Workshop. Recipient of a MacArthur

Fellowship, his latest work (with Coco Fusco) is "The Year of the White Bear."

WINTER 1992

8

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