Looking from above: saying and doing in the history museums of Latin America

Abstract

What functions might the history museum fulfill in the twenty-first century? How could this powerful ideological device, so closely linked in its origins to the nation-state and neo-colonial expansion, be changed into an instrument of multicultural citizenship? In some Latin American museums, new historical subjects and audio-visual media have been incorporated into the exhibits. But, is that enough? We do not believe so, because things are said in a museum, but things are also done while speaking: reality is ordered, evaluated and hierarchized, so that a certain way of conceiving and being in the world is conveyed. Therefore, making the museum suitable to the new needs of the community demands changes not only in what is said, but also in the way it is said. It serves little to incorporate new social subjects (the native peoples of Latin America, for example) if this inclusion results from a pejorative conception of these communities, which is just what happens in the Museum of America in Madrid, where the Spanish appear as masters of the word while the indigenous people are represented by ceramic vessels. If, in the accounts of the museums, the part continues to be taken for the whole by essentializing and naturalizing the difference, then those other social subjects must appear to be merely a historical afterthought. It seems to us that the performative dimension of the discourse in the museum is a very important aspect at the moment its function in the new global society is evaluated. We propose two objectives for new museums: serving the purposes of multicultural coexistence, and being spaces where the subjects may examine their social situation. In order to do this, we have analyzed the setup of three museums: a colonial museum (the Museum of America in Madrid), a national museum (the National Historical Museum in Buenos Aires), and an ethnic museum (the Mennonite Jacob Unger Museum in the Paraguayan Chaco).