Thank You for Discovering Us, We Didn’t Know We Existed

Fountain in Biquinha de Anchieta, São Vicente

One of the many ways in which colonisers and imperialists legitimise and justify their criminal activities is through the creation of historical fictions that claim to be truthful. Art and sculpture play a crucial role in this process, representing invasion as civilisation and the destruction of existing cultures as progress. Heroic portraits of butcher mercenaries, marble sculptures of ecstatic natives, and etchings that show empty uninhabited landscapes. Such myth making is not restricted to grandiose spectacles such as the Placa de España in Seville, but can be found in more modest pieces of public art. Such is the case in São Vicente. A small seaside town that lies in the shadow of São Paulo it proudly claims to be the first European settlement in Brazil. This dubious event is celebrated in an ornate tiled fountain in the Praça de Biquinha that depicts the native Tupi and Guarani gratefully receiving the sacrament. In a delicately composed sepia panorama, the genocidal arrival of sword and cross is picturesquely transformed into a story of joyful discovery. What to do with these artistic fictions is one of the battlegrounds in which the struggle over historical narratives is fought. I am glad that Coulson the slave trader of Bristol was dumped into the water.

So, what to do with this offensive sculpture as the town approaches its five hundredth anniversary? Remove it? Replace it with a new narrative depicting the massacre of indigenous people? An explanatory plaque isn’t really enough although I can’t help thinking that delicately engraving Noam Chomsky’s phrase “Year 501 the conquest continues,” might be a good start.