Today I went to the monestary in Arequipa to get my church and museum quotient all in at once. While I balked at the S35 price (more than a night in a fairly expensive hostel?!) I decided that if the guide book recommended it with two full pages of info, I should probably go. The tour was S20, so I turned that down, and read from lonely planet and the well translated placards. They encouraged you to take as long as you liked, and as I had to kill a lot of time today, that sounded like a nice plan. It turned out to be a great idea.
First off, it was absolutely beautiful. Built back in the 1600's of the white volcanic stone that is so abundant in Arequipa, many of the walls had been painted brightly in oranges, reds, and blues creating drastic contrasts and staggering vignettes. It really is a city inside the city, taking up a full city block, if not more space, and having different cloisters for the novices and full nuns, street names, and many plazas and gathering places. There was an air of absolute silence about the place, and as I wandered around I felt so calm, aside from the big group of teenage girls who were being teenage girls... It was nice to feel safe and quiet in a city where I definitely keep a hand on my purse, so I found a bench and read my book for a few hours. It was nice to feel some relaxation for a bit on a not-so-relaxing trip.
However, the art and saint representations down here are disturbing. They are particularly gruesome, graphic, and morbid, as well as being exorbitantly ornate. While I realize that the culture is different than mine, I can't help but feel a little weirded out by the conquering religion and it's icons, especially when there is no mention of indigenous people in the entire monastery, and even more because this monastery housed only really wealthy, spanish women, many of the cells having private kitchens and servants (slaves?) quarters. The finery of some of the furniture from the 1800's, and the ornateness of some musical instruments definitely didn't suggest a vow of poverty.
This was a continuation of the semi-anger I felt when looking at the ornate churches and statues in some of the Colca valley towns. Evidently the spaniards made the people move from their individual homes throughout the valley to the towns so it would be easier to evangelize them. Then you see these people living in states of abject poverty while the church is covered in gold leaf. It is an odd dichotomy, but I can only hope that the people find hope in their churches. They definitely live in a beautiful place and have an interesting and fully functioning historical culture, even if it does seem to be a bit of a "show" for the tourists.
Sometimes it's trains of thought like this that take a nice afternoon and turn it into a day fraud with moral dilemmas. Hopefully my tourist dollars and soles are helping in some way, even as the presence of my tourism impacts the land and the towns I visit.
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