Pre-Conquest History

During the late 19th century, much of the pre-conquest past incorporated elite concepts such as artifacts of national heritage across Spanish America. Many elites stressed the importance of not disconnecting the pre-conquest past with contemporary indigenous people, but trying to connect one and another (Earle). In believing this concept, it is important to have some sort of connection to the past with artifacts that are visible rather than melted for gold or silver. Thus the study of pre-conquest archaeology played a tremendous role in the appreciation of Indians. Later, in the early 20th century, the creation of novels and poems gave Latin America a sort of realism through artistic creation. I would argue that, why is it that Latin America needed such fictional novels or poems to help exploit their past and …show more content…
Anderson’s idea about the nation being imagined was based on his claim that a nation was imagined as a sovereign, as limited, and as a community. His idea about community was more like a brotherhood that was willing to die for limited imaginings. In contrast the novels of Cecilia Valdes and Sab are more about romance, slavery, prejudices and religion. The writers do this by focusing on the different social inequalities of the elite (white) and the lower class (colored). In one instance in the novel Cecilea, it describes a large group of colored people as being dirty, ragged and barefooted (Villaverde). Note only did the two writers of these novels show the disparity in nationalism during their time but they also experienced it by the nation itself exiling them for have written such novels. Both Anderson and the novels demonstrate the many challenges in nation-building but as described above, they’re told from two different points of