Abstract

ASENJO, Dario Arce. The Charrua Mirror: Otherness as a Reflection. Rev. urug. Antropología y Etnografía [online]. 2017, vol.2, n.2, pp.97-117. ISSN 2393-7068.  https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.29112/2.2.7.

It’s already well known Paul Rivet’s “Last Charrúas” story and we have described its trajectory while adding some new facts in a previous article (Arce Asenjo, 2007). Now I will propose some fragments translated from unpublished in Uruguay sources, vintage articles, chronicles that we’ll use to focus on how their Paris exhibition was shown and how it may by a pretext (Bouysse-Cassagne, 1984) to issue opinions on the French society at that time. This advance is part of a research aimed to publish a revised edition on Paul Rivet’s work, yet unpublished in France but its “memory” was published in 1930 by the Uruguayan Archaeology Friends Society.

The appearance of those four Charrúas didn’t pass unnoticed at Paris. Of course, some time before, in 1827, six Osages came to The City of Light to visit the authorities and claim at the French Court their people’s problems, up there before it came to be Canada.

They were victims to some Delaunay’s cunning (he exploited their presence as a show) and ended being an object of curiosity by the Parisian public, therefore becoming a precedent for François de Curel idea to take the Charrúas to Paris.

Keywords : last Charrúas; otherness; Paul Rivet; François de Curel; Prosper Mérimée.

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