ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the explicit and the unspoken yet unhidden images of Ecuadoran Indians represented in the documents and at the Madrid exhibition. It argues that the narrative and visual images of the Indians became incorporated as important elements in the political rhetoric of an emerging nationalist ideology. The chapter attempts to contextualize the images by providing the socioeconomic and political characterization of the period in Ecuadoran history when those representations were made and “used.” As the “ethnic master fiction” in the official ideology of nationalism, mestizaje remained unchallenged until the 1970s. The chapter also argues that the three world’s fairs of the nineteenth century in which Ecuador participated provided the dominant elite with a stage to “invent a new tradition” about the past, the present and the future of the country. In this imagined community, the images of the Indians were suitably accommodated to fit the main ideological of the period and to serve the interests of the imagemakers.
