Journal Entry: Museum

This is recopy of some notes I took on Sun the 17th.

Today was tourist day for my mother. We two tourist oriented places: La Mansion del Fundador (The Founders Mansion), and a place where people can go horseback riding .In the first location we visited, I found the coloring fascinating. The Founders Mansion was originally owned by the founder of Arequipa in the 16th century. It was passed hands many times and is now a museum. According to the tour guide, there are three colors typical and representative of Old Arequipa. Azulacho (Light Blue), Amarillo (Yellow), and Ochre (which is the same in English). These colors represent things. Blue signifies a private area. In the case of the Monesterio de Santa Catalina in Arequipa (Another old place previously mentioned for wedding photos), the places where the public weren’t supposed to go were blue. Public areas, such as the chapel part of the Founders house, were painted ochre.
Something interesting about the artwork in the house was that some of it was the “Cuzco style”. I saw this also in the “Coricancha” and “Chinchero”, two sites in Cuzco where the Spanish Conquistadores constructed chapels over the bases of Incan temples. The interesting thing about this style is that there are representations of Christ, the Virgin, etc, but with lots of subtle Incan things snuck in. For example, in a painting of Christ in Chinchero, there is a perfect painting of “Sacsayhuaman” (A bunch of big ruins right outside of Cuzco), hidden in what appears to be the coast in the painting. Also, there are lakes, rivers, and ocean in the painting where there is really no need, which was the way the Incan artists could express their devotion to the elements and Incan construction without getting killed. This was all explained to me by the tour guides, but also my father in law, who likes history. His name is Edwar Santos. Other fascinating artifacts in the house of the founder were the really old couches, suits of armor, old mirrors, and other artifacts that have been preserved for display. One of my favorite things was the hand drawn picture (in what appeared to be charcoal) of a Chilean soldier. My Chilean mother and I enjoyed the description of the war (Peru, Bolivia, and Chile had a tiff back in the day) and it’s portrayal of events. The slang for Chileans here is “roto” which means “broke” or “broken”. There are a few theories as to why, but like the word gringo, there is no way to be sure as to where the term originated and why, only some reasonable sounding explanations. Well, Chile won the war, so of course, the fact that at one time Chile was in possession of this house isn’t something the average Arequipan enjoys to recall.
At the place where folks can ride horses, we didn’t. I am not a huge fan of riding animals. But that’s neither here nor there. At this place, we saw the Andenes (Terraced Fields for agriculture). That’s about all we saw. So, Consuelo, (my mother) enjoyed her day out and took lots of pictures.