Territorial imagination and visual culture in the centenary: the construction of the national landscape in Uruguay's Centenary Book (1926)

Abstract

The formation of a canonical landscape helps the state to consolidate the symbolic unification of diversity. Through the 1920s the notion of a distinctive national landscape is formed for the first time in Uruguay alongside the expansion of image reproduction technologies and new directions in geographic studies. This article examines the relationship between territorial identity and landscape within the framework of the commemorative celebrations of the first centenary of national independence, starting with photographs and paintings reproduced in the Libro del centenario uruguayo (Uruguay Centenary Book, 1926). Analyses of this graphic material account for two different, though not necessarily exclusive, ways of looking at a landscape: one which projects it toward the future and another which secures it in its historical value. These two perspectives correspond to rival political projects whose discrepancies remained echoed in dissimilar commemorative initiatives. This article will address the functions of landscape, its process of formation, meaning and representation in the graphic Uruguayan album from a multidisciplinary perspective that includes analytical theories derived mainly from art history and cultural geography.

Notes

 1 The delegates of the Eastern Province declared independence in an act carried out on August 25, 1825 by the Congreso de la Florida. It was not until August 27, 1828 after the signing of the Treaty of Montevideo, that Brazil and Argentina renounced their claims over the Eastern Province. The new republic signed its first Constitution on July 18, 1830.

 2 See for example the Album gráfico de la República Mexicana (México: Muller Hnos, 1910), the Album Gráfico de la República del Paraguay 1811–1911 (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos de la Compañía de Fósforos, 1911) and Gran panorama argentino en el primer centenario (Buenos Aires: Talleres Heleográficos de Ortega y Radaelli, 1910).

 3 The Libro del centenario uruguayo , edited by the writer and journalist Perfecto López Campaña and published by Raúl Castells Carafí (Montevideo: Agencia de publicidad Capurro & Compañía, 1926), is an official document thanks to a decree by the Consejo Nacional de Administración signed on April 18, 1923. In its nearly 1,100 pages, the Libro reproduces 3,500 photos and engravings, 40 maps and 150 diagrams. I would like to acknowledge the New York Public Library for granting permission for the reproduction of the images selected in this article.

 4 Dennis Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 26.

 5 Alberto Zum Felde cited by Gabriel Peluffo Linari, El paisaje a través del arte en el Uruguay (Montevideo: Edición Galería Latina, 1995), 73.

 6 Jaime Yaffé, ‘El batllismo y sus etapas’, Ideas, programa y política económica del batllismo. Uruguay 1911–1930 (Montevideo: Instituto de Economía. Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración. Universidad de la República, 2000), 63–8.

 7 Gerardo Caetano, Los uruguayos del centenario. Ciudadanía, nación, religión, educación (Montevideo: Taurus, 2000), 12.

 8 Gerardo Caetano, Los uruguayos del centenario. Ciudadanía, nación, religión, educación (Montevideo: Taurus, 2000), 13.

 9 Gerardo Caetano, Los uruguayos del centenario. Ciudadanía, nación, religión, educación (Montevideo: Taurus, 2000), 9.

10 Carlos Real de Azúa, ‘Política internacional e ideología en el Uruguay’, Marcha 966 (1959): 7–14.

11 W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘Space, Place, and Landscape’, Landscape and Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 1.

12 Joan Nogué, Nacionalismo y territorio (Lleida: Milenio, 1998), 68.

13 Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape.

14 Nogué, Nacionalismo y territorio, 32.

15 Dennis Cosgrove, ‘Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 10 (1985): 46.

16 Graciela Montaldo, Ficciones culturales y fábulas de identidad en América Latina (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 1999), 115.

17 Graciela Silvestri, ‘Cuadros de la naturaleza. Descripciones científicas, literarias y visuales del paisaje rioplatense (1853–1890)’, Theomai (2001), accessed 14 July 2011, http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve = 12400309.

18 Graciela Silvestri, ‘Cuadros de la naturaleza. Descripciones científicas, literarias y visuales del paisaje rioplatense (1853–1890)’, Theomai (2001), accessed 14 July 2011, http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve = 12400309

19 Graciela Silvestri, ‘Cuadros de la naturaleza. Descripciones científicas, literarias y visuales del paisaje rioplatense (1853–1890)’, Theomai (2001), accessed 14 July 2011, http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve = 12400309

20 Ildefonso Pereda Valdés, ‘El campo uruguayo a través de tres grandes novelistas: Acevedo Díaz, Javier de Viana y Carlos Reyles,’ Journal of Inter-American Studies 4 (1966): 540.

21 Ángel Kalenberg, ‘El paisaje en el arte uruguayo: entre realidad y memoria’, Dossier 17 (2009), accessed 14 July 2011, http://www.revistadossier.com.uy/content/view/403/64/.

22 Gabriel Peluffo Linari, Historia de la pintura en el Uruguay. El imaginario nacional-regional 1830–1930 (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, 2009), 65.

23 This same group of artists had participated, in representing of Uruguayan national painting, in the International Centenary Exhibition of Art organised in Argentina in 1910.

24 Peluffo Linari, El paisaje, 123.

25 Raúl Montero Bustamante, ‘La pintura uruguaya’, Libro del centenario, 601.

26 Dennis Cosgrove, ‘Observando la naturaleza: El paisaje y el sentido europeo de la vista’, Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles 34 (2002): 72.

27 Dennis Cosgrove, ‘Observando la naturaleza: El paisaje y el sentido europeo de la vista’, Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles 34 (2002): 72

28 Libro, 600.

29 Libro, 217.

30 Peluffo Linari, El paisaje, 49.

31 Fernando Pesce Guarnaschelli, ‘Contenidos conceptuales y estrategias didácticas en la enseñanza de la geografía’, Concejo de Educación Primaria, accessed July 14, 2011, www.cep.edu.uy/archivos/Practica/EN_GEO.pdf.

32 Libro, 6.

33 Silvestri, ‘Cuadros de la naturaleza’.

34 Friedrich Hegel, Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire (Paris: Plon, 1965), 221.

35 This is also the time in which Uruguayans ‘discovered’ the coast. Ramblas (waterfront promenades) began to be planned and constructed (inaugurated in 1935), the first seaside resorts were developed (Piriápolis occupies a privileged place in the Libro del Centenario del Uruguay, 1008–1011), national parks were created (Santa Teresa National Park and St Michael's Fort in 1928) and holiday camps were built.

36 Libro del Centenario del Uruguay, 219. Perfecto López Campaña, editor of the Libro del Centenario del Uruguay and director of the Uruguayan Social Touring Club Magazine, organized the first National Congress of Tourism in Montevideo in 1927 in order to research ways of stimulating tourism. In 1930 the National Tourism Commission was created.

37 Victor Pérez Petit cited in the Libro del Centenario del Uruguay, 218.

38 Libro del Centenario del Uruguay, 1006.

39 Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape.

40 Michel de Certeau, La invención de lo cotidiano (México: Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México), 127.

41 Jens Andermann, ‘Into the Heart of the State. The Planalto Expedition’, The Optic of the State: Visuality and Power in Argentina and Brazil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), 133–59.

42 Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 56.

43 María Laura Reali, ‘Usos políticos del pasado. Dos discursos históricos para un proyecto político en Uruguay, en la primera mitad del siglo XX’, in Estudios sobre América: siglos XVI-XX, eds. Antonio Gutiérrez Escudero and María Luisa Laviana Cuetos (Sevilla: Asociación Española de Americanistas, 2005), 1684.

44 The debate, which was never resolved, on the fixing of an official date for the Uruguayan Centenary was a consequence of the conflict between tradition and renovation. In Uruguay, the dates used to mark the Centenaries have been linked to political parties. Traditionally, the National Party has promoted August 25, 1825 and the Colorado party has promoted July 18, 1830, the year in which the first Constitution of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay was signed. The Frente Amplio, a coalition of centre-left parties in power since 2005, proposed the year 1811 as a commemorative date. See Carlos Demasi, La lucha por el pasado. Historia y nación en Uruguay (1920–1930) (Montevideo: Trilce, 2004) and Carolina Porley, ‘Los líos sobre qué celebrar’, Brecha, March 10, 2011, accessed May 10, 2011, http://www.brecha.com.uy/inicio/item/8090-los-lios-sobre-que-celebrar-?pop = 1&tmpl = component&print = 1.

45 Gerardo Caetano, ‘Lo privado desde lo público. Ciudadanía, nación y vida privada en el Centenario’, in Historias de la vida privada en el Uruguay. Volume III, eds. José P. Barrán, Gerardo Caetano and Teresa Porzecanski (Montevideo:Taurus, 1998).

46 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 136.

47 Emilio Irigoyen, La patria en escena. Estética y verticalismo en Uruguay (Montevideo: Trilce, 2000).

48 Peluffo Linari, Historia, 65.

49 Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations, analyses how the nation is converted into an object of veneration by creating a new secular religion with its own symbols of veneration and adoration.

50 Nogué, Nacionalismo y territorio, 74.

51 Peluffo Linari, Historia, 78.

52 Germán Rama, La democracia en Uruguay (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Latinoamericano. Cuadernos el Rial, 1987).

53 Raúl Jacob, ‘El ‘Uruguay feliz’, ¿realidad o utopía’, in Vida y cultura en el Río de la Plata. Vol. 1, (Montevideo: Universidad de la República, 1987), 37–48.

54 Ley N° 18.677, accessed May 11, 2011. The ‘Process of Emancipation’ includes a series of events that occurred in 1811, such as ‘the “Grito de Asencio” (…) (February 28), the Proclamation of José Artigas to his Compatriots, from the General Quarters in Mercedes (April 11), the Battle of Las Piedras (May 18) which resulted in the siege of Montevideo, the Assembly of the Quinta de la Paraguaya in which José Artigas was elected as leader of the Orientales (October 10–23) and its culmination in the “Éxodo” between October 23 and the first weeks of December when the Orientales finally crossed the Uruguay River to install themselves in Ayuí’, accessed May 1, 2011, http://www.bicentenario.gub.uy/bicentenario-uruguay/que-se-conmemora/.

55 The collection of audiovisual testaments entitled ‘200 years of people’ proposes celebrating ‘the sum of the years lived by each Uruguan from 1811 up until the present’. 200 years of people, accessed June 1, 2011, http://www.bicentenario.gub.uy/bicentenario-tv/200-a%C3%B1os-de-gente/.

56 ‘Tradicionalización’ responds jointly to the invention of a native tradition (a ‘frenteamplista’ identity) and to the search for referents in common with the traditional political parties. Rosario Queirolo, ‘La “Tradicionalización” del Frente Amplio: la conflictividad del proceso de cambio’, in Los partidos políticos uruguayos en Montevideo: Tiempos de cambio (Montevideo: Fundación de Cultura Universitaria, Fundación Bank of Boston, Universidad Católica, 1999), 54–73.

57 Larissa Perdomo, ‘Uruguay Natural: Nuestra imagen país’, Uruguay XXI, accessed October 16, 2011, http://www.uruguayxxi.gub.uy/innovaportal/v/452/1/wap/editorial_de_octubre.html.

58 ‘Avistamiento.’ Uruguay Natural, accessed July 1, 2011, http://www.turismo.gub.uy/ecoturismo/ecoturismo.

59 http://www.turismo.gub.uy/operadores/v360.html.

60 Panoramic views had functioned as a'showcase of consumption' since the nineteenth century. Popularized by the universal exhibitions, panoramas projected urban views, natural landscapes and historical events onto circular walls for a large audience. See Beatriz González-Stephan, ‘Showcases of Consumption: Historical Panoramas and Universal Expositions’, in Beyond Imagined Communities, eds. S. Castro- Klarén and J.C. Chasteen, (Washington DC, Baltimore and London: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 225–38.

61 Cosgrove, ‘Observando la naturaleza’, 82.

62 Some of the cases to have attracted most attention from public opinion in the last ten years have lead contamination in marginal suburbs in Montevideo, the environmental effects of the installation of cellulose production plants in the Uruguay River, open-cast mining in the country's interior and the possible construction of a sports centre in the Franklin D. Roosevelt national park. See Daniel Renfrew, ‘In the Margins of Contamination: Lead Poisoning and The Production of Neoliberal Nature in Uruguay’, Journal of Political Ecology 16 (2009): 87–103.

63 Arturo Escobar, ‘Constructing Nature: Elements for a Poststructural Political Ecology’, in Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, eds. R. Peet and M. Watts (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 46–68.