Hecho museal y representación del pasado: La experiencia Peruana y Ecuatoriana en la exposición histórico-Americana de Madrid de 1892

This article analyses the staging of the national showcases of Peru and Ecuador during the Exposición Histórico-Americana in Madrid in 1892. Our interest is to explore the ways in which the past was represented through the combination of the pre-Columbian objects and the museographical displays that told the story of the Spanish conquest and colonization. Through the analysis of devices such as Lorenzo Roselló’s sculpture set, a representation made for the Peruvian delegation, or the wooden sculpture of the “wild” Indian and a historical model of the Ecuadorian delegation’s monument, we reveal the ways in which the artifacts of the past were used in the construction of a pan-Hispanic, masculine and colonial gaze that shaped a sense of the past of historical subjects, as well as their absences. In short, this proposal attempts to delineate a view of these phenomena in the Andean region and to investigate the historical density of these exhibition experiences in the construction of national stories in a transatlantic key.