Artist Lecture Series: Jennifer Baez

Pierre Charles-Baquoy, «Battle of Santiago or Mr. De Cussy Defeats the Spaniards », in François Xavier de Charlevoix,
Histoire de l’Isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue, 1730.

Assembling a chorographic survey on the formation of the French-Spanish border in the island of Hispaniola (today Haiti and the Dominican Republic) requires we consider the politics of piety in the Age of Revolution (1764-1898). Topographical maps were produced to stabilize geographic space, but what about the images, objects, and stories of Marian miracles that transformed the Spanish side of the island into a contained geopolitical territory? Ritualized and visceral connections between blood, soil, and the Virgin Mary characterize border-making in the Spanish colonies, exposing the contradictions inherent to the production of territorial identity, as well as the precarious nature of archiving the wondrous.

In this talk, I focus on a key nation-building myth for the Dominican Republic, based on a miracle attributed to the Virgin of Altagracia in the colonial period. According to the myth, the Virgin helped the Spanish creoles (or island-born) defeat the French at the Battle of La Limonade in 1691. My point of departure is a bloodied machete, now disappeared, that was pilgrimaged to the Virgin’s sanctuary directly from the battlefield. This broader archive surveys an emerging territorial consciousness and calibrates our vision of fiction in the midst of becoming fact.