Dos veces América: Oswaldo Guayasamín y Jaime Suarez

A conference about the history of Puerto Rican pottery by Professor Daniel Exposito Sanchez.

Two projects came to question the spirit of harmony driven by the Spanish government following the so-called “Fifth Anniversary of the Discovery of America” in 1992. One of them never happened to paper and model; the other would become the symbol of a country.

Oswaldo Guayasamín was responsible for the design for the memorial to the victims of the European invasion of 1492, commissioned by José Antonio Barroso, mayor of Puerto Real, to be installed in the Plaza del Mar in this Cadiz municipality.

Jaime Suárez, meanwhile, would be the winner of the contest to erect a commemorative sculpture called Encounter of two Worlds in San Juan de Puerto Rico. And both, curiously, share a similar speech: the “Discovery” actually meant a hostile charged shock, which amounted to erase the memory of those native civilizations centuries ago had already discovered the continent.