CALCULO DEL NÚMERO ESTRUCTURAL

The values that body painting was given while being described in the written sources greatly varied according to the authors, but mostly according to the time and context in which they were written. I will focus here on the presentation and brief characterisation o f these different trends. Due to lack o f space, the several quotations that evidence such different perspectives are presented and analysed in appendix E.

Body painting appears in many o f the written sources, particularly in the earlier ones, associated with the skin colour o f the aborigines, and with their lack o f clothing. This is not unexpected, since body painting creation requires painting the skin (and the hair o f the head, in some occasions), and its viewing implies at least a certain degree o f nakedness. It is almost obvious that, within the encounter o f the Europeans with the Fuegian aborigines, skin colour and clothing (or the lack o f it) would become fundamental points o f reference for the definition o f ‘the others’. Body painting was also a visible feature which contributed to this definition, and was also the subject o f a series o f very interesting observations, comments and speculations, which unveil the frame o f mind and perspective from which the records were made.

The texts o f Walbeeck (1634 in Gusinde 1986: 51), Forster (1777), Weddell (1825), and Nodal (1621 in Gusinde 1982: 26-27) are examples o f this trend. The two latter also show a mixed perspective, involving very ethnocentric statements and at the same time attempts to understand the ‘exotic’ habit o f body painting within the aboriginal cultural context, and also within the broader history o f humanity. Such ambivalent vision can also be found in the texts by FitzRoy (1839b) and especially Darwin (1839, 1845), who combined various deeply ethnocentric and contemptuous comments with attempts at systematic descriptions o f their observations. FitzRoy shows in his text a much more dynamic and contextual attempt to understand the practice of body painting, even linking it to the British ancestors, while Darwin did not develop such understanding o f the habit, which he clearly associated with dirt and lack o f civilisation.

The written records show, in some cases, the active and intentional interference o f the Europeans either to interrupt or to foster this habit, which helps in uncovering the reasons underneath these attitudes, and suggests factors o f foreign influence on aboriginal body painting practices. Most o f these influences came from the^^g

missionaries, who openly wanted to change the Fuegian custom o f painting the body, since it was considered dirty, untidy, and possibly ‘indecent’, given that it sometimes involved exposing body portions that from a Western perspective should remain covered. The texts written by Webster (1834), Ross (1847), Despard (1859) show their interest in making the Yâmana abandon the body painting habit, and the strategies they developed to pursue such goal. Later in time, a more positive approach to body painting was shown by L. Bridges (1951), who fostered such custom in the Selk’nam. Yet his reasons for doing so are not without an ethnocentric burden, since he considered it a ‘clean’ habit, because it involved rubbing off the paint when erasing it.

Finally, from the late XIX century, an ‘ethnographic’ interest in recording the different habits o f the Fuegians was developed. This included body painting as one o f the desirable features that should be included in the visual records o f the ethnographers. The ‘exotic’ and ‘inappropriate’ habit then became the fascinating and culturally different custom that was interesting to document (Martial (1888), Hyades (1884, 1885, 1887), Hyades and Deniker’s (1891), Gusinde 1982 and 1986, Koppers 1991, De Agostini 1924, 1941 and film). Moreover, body painting came, like its producers, under the threat o f extinction, making it even more crucial to record its existence before it would disappear forever. But in doing so, some ethnographers clearly had to convince the aborigines to paint themselves (e.g. Dabbene 1911, possibly reporting on Barclay’s photographs, Gusinde 1922). On the one hand, some photographs were re-constructed by retouching and cutting fragments published afterwards as separate illustrations without acknowledging it (Gallardo 1910, e.g. S89, see appendix B). On the other hand, the ethnographers intentionally influenced some o f the ‘ethnographic’ features to be recorded. This is the case o f De Agostini, who preferred to photograph Yâmana individuals with ‘aboriginal’ clothes, even if these were typically Selk’nam (see Y45), or Gusinde, who published a photo o f Lola wearing facial paintings (S68) with the caption “quotidian painting” (Gusinde 1989: 661), which Lola later explained had been “applied for the photographer” (Chapman 1982: 148). Body painting had become an interesting characteristic o f the overall ‘aboriginal picture’ that was to be captured in photographs, even if faking it. Yet such biased records were neither playing on an empty field, nor documenting a neutral subject, and the aborigines’ own intentions, interests and visual traditions played also an active role in constructing them. It is for this reason that the study o f the photographs provides relevant data about the two groups o f agents involved in producing, displaying and recording body painting.