Visiting colonial era churches

Tuesday June 24

Today we took a very well organized and informative tour of several of the main colonial era churches in Quito including the basilica with a statue of John Paul II who visited Quito some years ago and was much beloved, as well as the colonial era Jesuit and Franciscan churches.  The number of stunning statues, paintings, vestments and other art pieces in these churches is overwhelming. The Jesuit church with its Baroque style has intricate decorations where ever it was possible to decorate and fill in space. The walls and ceiling are covered in gold leaf, about 50 kilos of gold in the church.  The first two very large painting the visitor sees walking in are respectively, paintings of the Last Judgment with sinners in one painting on the left and saints on the right.  It is interesting that there is far more detail in the painting depicting the damned and their sins.  In case the viewer does not quite get why they are punished as horribly as they are, the artist wrote “gluttony”, “pride” “usury” “faithlessness” among other sins next to their respective (literally) hellish punishments. Our guides made clear to us that the only native faces depicted are devilish faces while everyone else is white and European, principally Spanish and French.  One guide whispered to us that this art encodes racism everywhere you look. I wonder why he felt he had to whisper.

Somehow though I was in awe at the enormity of the artistry in these churches, I also felt very sad and angry leaving these churches.  As understandable as all this art is given the theology of the times and the thrill Europeans felt at "discovering" a large conquerable world, clearly Spanish artists used native artists to make Spanish style art while either ignoring native artistic styles or using native faces to represent devils or the damned. I felt the weight of the Spanish colonial legacy in ways I had not felt before. I can not imagine what it must be like for the Jesuits and Franciscans to live in a church like this.  For me, this heritage would be a burden to carry as well as an incentive to create a church that values indigeneous peoples, their ways of life and spirituality.