Transcultured Architecture: Mudéjar’s Epic Journey Reinterpreted

The Mudéjar phenomenon is unparalleled in the history of architecture. This style of architecture and ornamentation originated with Arab craftsmen living in reconquered medieval Spain. Embraced by Spanish Christians, Mudéjar traveled over the course of the next four centuries, becoming part of the architectural history of Latin America, especially present-day Mexico and Peru. The style’s transmission across different religions and cultures attests to its ability to unify disparate groups of people under a common visual language. How, then, did mudejar managto gain popularity across reconquered Spain, so much so that it spread to the New World colonies? In this article, I argue that art and architecture move more fluidly than ideologies across boundaries, physical and political. The theory of transculturation makes it possible to understand how an architectural style such as Mudéjar can be generated from a cultural clash and move to an entirely different context. Developed in 1947 by Cuban scholar and theorist Fernando Ortíz, transculturation posited means by which cultures mix to create something entirely new. This process is often violent, the result of intense conflict and persecution, and one culture is almost always defeated in the process. The contributions of both societies, however, coexist in the final product, whether technological, artistic, or even agricultural. I argue that mudejar in Latin America is a product of two separate transculturations: the adoption of Arab design and ornamentation by Spanish Christians, and the subsequent transference of these forms to the New World through the work of indigenous laborers.


Ila Nicole Sheren
In Toledo, the intention of King Alfonso VI in his pact of 1085 was that the Muslims would remain in the city following the conquest, their rights to retain property and worship publicly in their mosques guaranteed. 4It is important to note, however, that these rights and religious freedoms were granted only after the perception of a Muslim threat had subsided.According to art historian David Raizman, Mudéjar "emerged not at the moment of conquest but more than a century later, when political and economic circumstances were more favorable to building, and when the incorporation or integration of Islamic forms could be seen as the visible counterpart to the image of a cosmopolitan Christian capital." 5 The term Mudéjar comes from the Arabic word mudayyan, literally "one permitted to remain."The mudayyan, comprised largely of wood-and stoneworkers, continued to exert their influence on the Gothic and Baroque styles under Spanish rule.
In Spain, the adoption of Mudéjar was a conscious display of power on the part of the ruling establishment.Only when power was secured was tolerance extended toward Muslims in the reconquered lands. 6Design elements such as muqarnas, Islamicized horseshoe arches and geometrically patterned ceilings were often paired with Baroque columns and Gothic altarpieces within the same building.The term Mudéjar began to be used, along with the terms "hispano-arabic art," "hispano-muslim art," and "Moorish art," to describe this style of ornamentation found in Spain. 7Coined in 1859 by the Spanish scholar José Amador de los Rios, Mudéjar replaced "Moor" and "Arab" only after the religious and cultural heterogeneity of the Islamic world became evident to those studying it.In 1990, the Spanish architectural historian José Maria Azcárate attempted to do away with the term "Mudéjar" altogether, coining the phrase "arquitectura cristiana islamizada" (Christianized Islamic architecture) to replace it. 8The phrase was never fully accepted, but the term's unwieldiness was not the only issue at hand; art historians argued that the new phrase served as a cultural reference while "Mudéjar" functions to describe the visual arts. 94 David Raizman, "The Church of Santa Cruz and the Beginnings of Mudéjar Architecture in Toledo," Gesta 38 (1999), 128-141.
Although Azcárate's term quickly faded into obscurity, the need for 5 Raizman, "The Church of Santa Cruz and the Beginnings of Mudéjar Architecture in Toledo," 138. 6Although Mudéjar ornamentation was originally attributed to Muslim craftsmen, it is now known that Christians, Muslims and Jews all worked on structures now considered to be Mudéjar. 7Leon R. Zahar, "Los Nombres del Arte del Islam," Artes de Mexico 55 (2001), 38."Arab," "Muslim," or "Moor" became inadequate to describe this category of Christianized Muslims, and the earlier terms were gradually replaced by "Mudéjar" in the scholarship.The result is that Mudéjar can be used to describe a style of architecture and the people who originated it.Today, "morisco/moor" and "Mudéjar" are often used interchangeably, but there is disagreement on this distinction or lack thereof. 8Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis, "Introducción," Arte Mudéjar (Zaragoza: UNESCO & Ibercaja, 1995), 19.This failed attempt to rename the style is also discussed in Borrás Gualis' chapter "El arte mudéjar: estado actual de la cuestion." in the book Mudéjar Iberoamericano: un expresión cultural de dos mundos (Ignacio Henares Cuellar and Rafael López Guzmán, eds). 9It may seem contradictory that an architectural historian proposed a cultural term to define an artistic style and thereby accrued criticism from the art and architectural history community.José Maria Azcárate, however, is an architectural historian specializing in the Spanish Gothic and does not consider Mudéjar an autonomous style.In any event, the attempt at changing the name did not succeed; "Mudéjar" is still the term used today by Spanish and Latin American scholars.structures built by and for non-Muslims, including the churches of the newly reconquered Spanish cities. Grabar, in an earlier work on Islamic art, outlined three themes common to all art labeled "Islamic": social meaning, abstract ornament, and the tension between unity and plurality. 13Mudéjar ornament engages the second two themes, albeit on a smaller scale than more traditional Islamic art.By "social meaning," however, Grabar refers to Islamic art and its tendency to monumentalize "more settings for social activities" than any other civilization since ancient Rome. 14This function is absent from most Mudéjar structures, which are primarily religious.Grabar himself is unable to decide on Mudéjar's status, citing the "paradoxical ethos in which intense identification of differences between groups and allegiances…coexisted with open-minded cohabitation and creative inventiveness" on the Spanish "frontier." 1510 Borrás Gualis, "Introducción," 16.Mudéjar architecture was originally considered to be the architecture (or crafts) of the moriscos, thus limited to a specific group of people.By the 1930s, however, ample evidence of Christian artisans involved with the production of Mudéjar works had been found in Spain, and the term came to designate the Moorish forms rather than the craftsmen themselves.For a fuller discussion of this, see David Raizman, "The Church of Santa Cruz and the Beginnings of Mudéjar Architecture in Toledo" in Gesta 38(2), 1999, pages 128-141.
In other words, Mudéjar is the product of two conflicting interests working together: Spanish Christians and conquered Muslim workers.This "creative inventiveness" found on the frontier is not entirely different from literary theorist Walter D. Mignolo's concept of "border thinking" -the specialized knowledge generated from the periphery or borderlands. 16ansculturation is the process most accurately used to describe this movement of art and design across cultures.This term was coined by the Cuban essayist, ethnomusicologist and scholar Fernando Ortíz, who dedicated his career to understanding all aspects of indigenous Cuban culture.
Although Mudéjar comes from the border zone of Islamic art and architecture, it contributes another layer of meaning to Islamic art as a whole.Mudéjar and its process of transmission across cultures demonstrates how certain key features of Islamic art transcend religion, culture and ideology.The resulting art belongs as much to the originating culture as it does the receiving one.Following this argument, one can conclude that Mudéjar may be claimed to be both Islamic and European art.other hand, is found all over the world, but European colonists optimized its growing conditions in Cuba, reapportioning large tracts of land for cultivation and relying on a large slave population for labor.The sugar-based economy on the island is a result of a three-way transculturation between Europeans, Africans, and native Cubans.Ortíz argued that in each of these cases, the end product belonged to no culture exclusively, but to all of them in part.The process he described is twofold: deculturation, the "loss or uprooting" of a previous culture, followed by neoculturation, the "consequent creation of new cultural phenomena." 23 return to the example of Mudéjar in Spain, transculturation began as an attempt to re-appropriate Islamic religious structures to Christian purposes.Rather than the wholesale destruction of mosques, the Spanish rulers encouraged conversion of the buildings to churches.Although the forms of worship taking place in mosques are vastly different from Christian religious ceremonies, the basic plans of the buildings were retained.
These "new phenomena" owe their existence to the original cultural conflict.

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As stated earlier, the Islamic design elements in Mudéjar are geometric and abstract ornament, surface patterning, and the concept of unity, but what were the Spanish contributions?The most visible contribution is that these Islamic design elements can coexist with Christian decoration and themes.Mudéjar structures also boast a greater number of carved inscriptions than do Christian buildings throughout the rest of Europe, a direct result of Islamic influence.On a much broader level, however, Spain is integral to the development of Mudéjar; similar architectural combinations failed to occur in other formerly Islamic regions, such as Sicily, the Balkans, or even Russia.
As a result, each reconquered city in Spain boasted several former mosques, as well as a number of secular buildings that provided a template for Islamic ornamentation and design.The process of transculturation begins when one considers the interaction between the Spanish and Islamic contributions, and how they work together to create a new style.

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The story of Mudéjar is further complicated by its adoption in Latin America.As stated earlier, José Amador de los Rios originally defined Mudéjar as limited to the architectural elements first developed by Christianized Muslims living in Spain after the Reconquista.
For Mudéjar to develop, the Spanish had to be particularly receptive to outside influence.The prevailing Christian architectural style at the time, the Gothic, stressed height, light, and abstracted figuration.While Spain adopted the Gothic immediately following the reconquest, the recently converted mosques did not lend themselves to this style.With the abundance of pre-existing structures and workers trained in Islamic ornamentation, the Spanish were able to adopt the new forms once their power had been consolidated.The end product of this transculturation process is Mudéjar -built by Muslims, Christians and Jews for religious and secular purposes alike -a true hybrid architecture.This fact is noteworthy because Mudéjar was identified only in relation to the bodies of the workers who executed the work, rather than geographic location or patronage.In the 24 The Spanish constructed entirely new buildings in the Gothic style for the cathedral in each city.
Reconverted mosques were used primarily as subsidiary or parish churches.discussion of Latin American Mudéjar, the workers' bodies (this time indigenous) once again define the style.With the capture of Grenada in 1492, the reconquest of Spain was complete, coinciding with Columbus' first voyage across the Atlantic.At the same time that Mudéjar emerged in Europe, Spain spread its influence to the New World.In its colonies in the Americas, the Spanish Empire began a vast building program that included the construction of new cities.Mudéjar, then gaining traction in Spain, was one of the major styles exported to the colonies.With the addition of Latin America to the story of Mudéjar, new questions arise -how is Latin American Mudéjar related to the original in Spain?How does it fit under the greater umbrella of "Islamic" art and architecture?
The Church of San Miguel in Sucre, Bolivia, provides an example of Latin American Mudéjar in situ.The open floor plan of this chapel is derived from Spanish mosques and typical of Mudéjar in Latin America.Its octagonal form and patterned wooden ceiling, or cubierta (covering) reflect the Islamic preoccupation with geometry. 27ny scholars, equating Latin American Mudéjar with that of Spain, choose to use the same term when describing both regions.This terminological similarity fails to distinguish the Islamic elements present in Spain that differ from those appearing in the architecture of its former colonies.To differentiate the two phenomena, Borrás Gualis uses the term "pervivencias Mudéjares," (Mudéjar survivals) stating that "it is impossible to apply the definition of Mudéjar to the New World and other Spanish territories." The undersides of the supporting arches are carved with a vegetal motif that recalls the arabesque.Around the octagonal dome are more wooden ceiling panels, each carved with a larger version of the dome's cubierta.The expansion and multiplication of an initial pattern is a theme found throughout Islamic art and architecture; San Miguel is a direct inheritor of this tradition.These Mudéjar elements are situated within a larger Baroque framework.Plain white stucco walls stand in direct contrast to the highly decorative woodwork, while the elaborate gilded altarpiece seems to provide a visual counterpoint.Mudéjar and Baroque coexist uneasily within the structure; white space and undulating masses compete with the intricate patterning, while the overall spectacle defies easy classification.28 This discrepancy raises the issue of whether the story of Mudéjar's transplantation across the Atlantic is one of artistic survival or of cultural memory.At stake here is a reinterpretation of the narrative of conquest, this time envisioned through the context of architectural style.Although the words "reminiscences" and "survival" refer to the same phenomenon -the presence of Mudéjar decorative elements in Latin American architecturethey imply fundamentally different processes of change, one passive, the other active, one dominated by the conquerors, the other by the conquered.
Other scholars, including Mexican art historian Manuel Toussaint, have pushed for usage of the term "reminisencias Mudéjares" (Mudéjar reminiscences) instead.It is not an accident that these two phrases have been chosen to describe the style.From a survey of the written material on Latin American Mudéjar, two distinct trajectories emerge from separate disciplinary foundations. 29The main focus of these narratives is the transmission of architectural forms from one culture to another.In the case of this style, origins and identity are inextricably linked to the methods of transmission between cultures.The first approach, typical of art historians, deals with the visual forms of Mudéjar and the question of whether or not it constitutes an autonomous architectural style in Latin America.The confusion of Mudéjar's origins and status in Spain were only compounded by the journey across the Atlantic.In general, art and architectural historians refer to Mudéjar as it applies to the art forms, not the culture or the people that produced it.This school of thought is the one that deals most thoroughly with building types, materials, and classification of ornament. 30t historians also seek to contextualize Latin American Mudéjar within the established canon.The periods and dates involved are those specific to Latin America, for the transmission of styles across the Atlantic could take as long as fifty years to accomplish. 31In Spain, Mudéjar coincided with the Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque, and Mudéjar elements are found on buildings from each of these styles.Officially, Mudéjar ended with the expulsion of converted Muslim craftsmen in the seventeenth century.In Latin America, the style can be categorized as coexisting with the Baroque, 32 which generally falls into the Colonial Period (1492-1820), but because it was not tied to a particular ethnic group Mudéjar has lasted well past the 18 th century, even turning up in some present-day buildings as "neo-Mudéjar." 33he Baroque was the main architectural style exported from Spain at the height of its conquest, and consequently the majority of architecture and urban space fits into this period.The question remains, however, as to whether Latin American Mudéjar is a subcategory of the Islamic art, European Baroque or whether it constitutes a style of its own.With Latin 30 At this early point in the study of Latin American Mudéjar, however, the writing on this subject consists mainly of monographs rather than more theoretical works.Art historians dealing with Latin American Mudéjar are still surveying the available material and attempting to catalogue and ultimately characterize the style.
32 1600-1720 are the generally accepted dates for European Baroque; Latin American Baroque continued well into the 19 th century, until the time of the major independence movements.
33 Neo-Mudéjar is both an extension of the Mudéjar style in Latin America and also a product of the revival movement that began in the late 19 th century.It is telling that Mudéjar was by then so accepted into local architectural history that it was considered among the "national" styles to be revived. 34Art historians developed the term "baroco-mudéjar" to describe the hybrid style.American Mudéjar, I would argue that rather than a single style, Mudéjar of this region represents a hybrid of European, Islamic and indigenous art.
Aside from the art historical debate as to the stylistic nature and categorization of Mudéjar, cultural anthropologists and historians alike have dealt with the narrative of its origins in Latin America.This narrative of Mudéjar's journey across the Atlantic characterizes the cultural clash rather than simply describing the style's visual qualities.The major Latin American cultural contact theories of the twentieth century play a significant role, specifically Fernando Ortíz' theory of transculturation and Néstor García Canclini's work on hybrid cultures.These contact theories have helped to recast the story of Mudéjar within the larger sphere of cultural contact and the transmission of ideas.Transculturation looks at two sides: Spain's role as agent of artistic transmission and the style's reception by indigenous peoples.The unique cultural interactions form the second step in the movement of Islamic design elements and ornamentation to Spanish architecture and, after conquest, to its colonies.
In 1995, the theory of transculturation was updated to reflect the status of Latin America as engendering a new kind of postmodernity.That year, Néstor García Canclini, in his influential study Hybrid Cultures, embraced the combinations of European and indigenous elements found in late twentieth-century Latin American culture. 35at same year, Ramon Gutiérrez of the Instituto de Investigaciones Geohistoricas de Resistencia in Argentina, in an article written for UNESCO, applied the transculturation theory to the origins of Mudéjar.He described a process by which certain elements of the dominant culture are transferred to the occupied one.
According to García Canclini, the end result of transculturation is cultural hybridity, with disparate elements coexisting and uniting to form a distinct society.Although this theory is a product of latetwentieth century postmodern thinking, it is a logical extension of Ortíz' transculturation, which was based on nineteenth-century observations.It is therefore not a stretch to apply the theory of transculturation to the transmission of Mudéjar to Latin America and even construe the early Spanish colonial period as a precursor to the "hybrid cultures" model that exists today.an integral part of the culture, as if they had always been a part of it. 39e case of carpentry provides a concrete example of how this theory deals with Mudéjar.Carpentry was the most prominent medium for the style in Latin America, for the vast majority of ceiling-and balcony-work was made of wood.
In the case of architecture, specifically, there is no way to predict which elements will survive the process of transculturation.To complicate matters further, Mudéjar's transculturation in Latin America was already its second time passing through the mechanism.Initially, Islamic art and architecture had undergone the same process during the Reconquista with the forced conversion of Muslims and the adoption of Islamic art into Christian structures. 40Historian Enrique Capablanca traced the specific situation in Cuba, where indigenous architecture was "practically naked" -a blank slate for Spanish influence. 41Mudéjar ceilings had already undergone the transculturation process from Islamic architecture to that of Spain.When the Spanish settled in Cuba their religious structures necessitated the kind of ornamentation and detail that, according to Capablanca, was ill-suited to the austere nature of the indigenous structures. 42The dominant Spanish culture stepped in to fill this void in the occupied culture.The natural abundance of wood in the Caribbean, along with the suitability of Mudéjar forms to this medium, allowed for the development of elaborate wooden ceilings.Over time, the wooden ceilings "lost all the ideology carried with [them] from Spain." 43 The previous narrative centered on the Spanish side of transculturation, but there exists another approach -an indigenous-centered theory of the origins and transference of this building style.In other words, what did the native craftsmen in the Americas add to Latin American Mudéjar?The most prominent theorist from this perspective, Rafael López Guzmán, a prominent Spanish historian at the University of Granada, writes of the "medieval syncretism between Islam and Hispanoamerica." This claim by Capablanca addresses the Cuban appropriation of these previously Spanish forms, although in reality the patterned ceilings have never lost the connotation with either Spain or the Islamic world.The ceilings are inextricably linked to the story of their transmission -the intricate ornamentation carries its history in the details.44 39 Gutiérrez, "Transferencia y presencia de la cultura islamica en America Latina a traves de la Peninsula Iberica," 156-7.
He and other scholars writing along these lines portray the indigenous craftsmen as the driving force behind the development of 40 Rafael López Guzmán, "Mudéjar Iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos," Mudéjar Iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, eds.Ignacio Henares Cuellar and Rafael López Guzmán, (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993), 191.For a detailed treatment of Mudéjar carpentry see Enrique Nuere's article "La carpinteria en España y America a traves de los tratados," Mudéjar Iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, eds.Ignacio Henares Cuellar and Rafael López Guzmán (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993).Nuere stresses the importance of carpentry for the Mudéjar while trying (and failing) to discover a link between the medium itself and the Muslim religion.
41 Enrique Capablanca, "La carpinteria mudéjar en Cuba."Mudéjar Iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, eds.Ignacio Henares Cuellar and Rafael López Guzmán (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993), 233.Here, the phrase "practically naked" (practicamente desnuda) is used to refer to the undecorated character of indigenous architecture and not as a derogatory comment on its quality. 42Ibid, 233.These structures were also impermanent, lavishing such ephemeral buildings with excessive detail would have been impractical at best. 43Ibid, 246.Carpentry became not just a profession for white Spaniards, but also a form of expression for native Cubans.Mudéjar in this region.Instead of focusing primarily on the continuance between Spain and the New World, this approach deals with the stylistic changes that took place and the distinctions that separate Latin American Mudéjar from that of Spain.According to López Guzmán, the process of artistic transference was a two-way street, rather than the simple imposition of Spanish art and culture on a receptive native people.As he states, "the indigenous craftsmen did not only dominate a series of techniques that were adapted to the necessities of the Spaniards, but also knew perfectly the distinct species of trees and their construction possibilities." 45In the case of this scholarly approach, specified knowledge grants agency to the occupied culture, not the conquering one.If knowledge is power, then the traditional roles become reversed, with the conquered craftsmen holding the keys to successful building in their environment, rather than having a building style imposed completely upon them. 46 the example of carpentry, the indigenous-centered approach would treat the same observation -the prevalence of wooden ceiling covers in Mudéjar buildings -from an entirely different perspective.It would argue that the Spaniards arrived in their colonies with certain ideas about architectural aesthetics, derived from their native architecture.When faced with the specifics of Latin American climate and available building materials, the Spanish had to access that specialized knowledge in order to build successfully.Mudéjar ceilings were, as a result, constructed of wood, leading carpentry to become synonymous with Latin American Mudéjar.The problem is best stated by Enrique Nuere, professor of the history of construction at the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura in Madrid.He writes "carpentry may appear to be obviously Mudéjar, but there is no apparent link to the environment of Islam."Basically, carpentry's association with Islam in Latin America is purely a function of its presence in Mudéjar structures, rather than any inherent religious attributions to the properties of wood. 47entification of the indigenous contribution to Latin American Mudéjar began as early as 1948 with Alfred Neumeyer's attempts to define a true "mestizo" style.
It has been argued that local woodcarvers in Latin America, with their knowledge of native trees, would have adapted their indigenous woodworking techniques to the specific requests of the Spaniards. 48According to Neumeyer, its roots were not to be sought primarily "in an adaptation of Islamic-Spanish Mudéjar, or any other art style, but in that psychological situation created by the meeting of European Christianity with Indian paganism that must lead to specific visual concepts." 4945 Ibid, 455.Indigenous people had access to information about the terrain and climate as well, factors that drastically affected the architectural outcome.
46 This is not a complete reversal of the power structure, since the style is still imported through the conquering culture, but it does grant the indigenous craftsmen a degree of agency not traditionally allotted to them in the other transmission theories.
47 Enrique Nuere, "La carpinteria en España y America a traves de los tratados."Mudéjar Iberoamericano: una expresión cultural de dos mundos, ed.Ignacio Henares Cuellar and Rafael López Guzmán (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1993), 173.Meaning there is nothing specifically "Islamic" about carpentry.This is neither new nor groundbreaking.There are few, if any, architectural forms or elements that are considered to be fundamentally "Islamic."For the canonical work on this subject, see Oleg Grabar's detailed analysis, The Formation of Islamic Art (Yale University Press, 1978).
48 Alfred Neumeyer, "The Indian Contribution to Architectural Decoration in Spanish Colonial America," The Art Bulletin 30 (1948), 104-121.See José Vasconcelos' La Raza Cosmica (1925) for the original theory and definition of mestizaje, or the idea that all races would eventually blend into a single cosmic race to be located in Latin America.Indigenous workers could relate to Spanish-Islamic Mudéjar ornament, as their own cultures had made use of geometric and abstract patterning.In many cases, such as the church of San Miguel mentioned earlier, the woodcarving is flatter than similar patterns found in Spain.The difference is in the execution of the forms and the aesthetic preferences of the workers themselves.Vegetal ornament, such as flowers and leaves, also resembles its more abstract counterparts on indigenous temples and other building complexes. 50early, the issue here is one of agency; this indigenous-centered approach deals with questions of identity, both national and cultural.What are the relative roles of Muslim, Spanish, and indigenous workers, and how has it been possible for Mudéjar to belong to all three cultures?More problematically, the separation of these distinct cultural identities is a shift away from the Latin American ideological tendency to view the region as an undifferentiated mix of previously distinct cultures.It is now necessary to contend with these distinct identities, assessing the contributions of each when related to the whole of a style or movement.
Applying these approaches to the terminological confusion -reminisencias Mudéjares versus pervivencias Mudéjares -it is possible to examine how each of these labels can function as an appropriate characterization.The basic forms of Islamic ornamentation survive the process of transculturation not once, but twice in order to exist in their Latin American forms.Reminiscencia (reminiscence) implies a passive process, while pervivencia (survival) refers to something more active.The word survival is a charged term, implying a struggle between cultures and, ultimately, the superiority of those artistic elements that remain.Mudéjar is then the allegory of conquest played out in architectural forms.In this case, the Mudéjar elements are reminders of the Spanish past reinterpreted by indigenous builders and craftsmen through the agency of memory.For reminiscencia, however, the case could be argued instead that the fragments that survive are part of an inherited Spanish cultural memory interpreted through the work of the indigenous culture.Although reminiscence connotes a mostly passive process, it is the physical work of the indigenous craftsmen that remains, granting greater agency to the occupied culture.For the larger realm of art history, both terms seem too abstracted for the task at hand.In both casessurvival and reminiscence -the descriptive terms are more suited to a cultural understanding rather than a purely visual/art historical one.
Another major question arises when considering Mudéjar as a process of transculturation, namely, the application of this ostensibly Cuban theory to completely different cultures.Some theorists have argued that transculturation was never intended to move beyond the Cuban context, and that it must be continually redefined in order to apply to other situations.Such a narrow definition of transculturation, however, ignores Ortíz' original purpose with his theory -a more accurate description of the dynamics of cultural contact.The previous acculturation model granted no agency to the conquered or defeated culture, assuming that the conqueror completely absorbs the conquered.Transculturation added much-need nuance to the field, and allowed an explanation for the new knowledge produced from the clash of cultures.When redefined for the current context -the transmission of architectural forms across different cultures and religions -this model accounts for the initial development of Mudéjar and its transmission to the colonies.At this stage in the discourse a certain degree of fragmentation is inevitable.Mudéjar, although a subject of serious study for well over a century, has only become a subject of importance in Latin America over the last thirty years.This is in contrast to Spain, where a serious discussion of Mudéjar has been in place since the nineteenth century.The origins of Mudéjar in Spain open up the political and cultural issues pertaining to the Reconquista and the forced conversion of Muslims.Research into its origins focuses on the Moorish presence, the politics of conquest, and the assimilation of Islamic subjects into Spanish society. 52In the case of Spain, Mudéjar has been equated with the Moorish craftsmen themselves; their presence within Christian Spain parallels the persistence of Islamic design elements in the built environment.According to historians of Mudéjar in Spain, the resulting Mudéjar style was more a product of political maneuvering than a mix of two cultures.The decision to allow the conquered Muslims to remain in the country, coupled with reliance upon them for crafts and design, resulted in the mix of Islamic and Christian design forms.The bodies of the laborers are granted agency, as if the physical presence of Muslim workers guarantees that the resulting structure is indeed "Islamic."Confusing the subject further is the addition of Christians and Jews to the story of Spanish Mudéjar.Only after the signatures of non-Muslim artisans were discovered on Mudéjar woodcarvings was the term broadened to its present extent. 53 the case of the relationship between Spain and its former colonies, Mudéjar has had to navigate postcolonial discourses as well as the various approaches that have served Islamic art history and Spanish national history.Theories of cultural contact have arisen to explain the architectural forms that developed in the wake of the conquest.Transculturation, the complex intermingling of disparate cultural elements, has had a significant impact on the way that Mudéjar's journey from post-Muslim Spain to Latin America has been reinterpreted.The words that have come to describe the distinct approaches, survival and reminiscence, reflect the end products of these processes.The fundamental question raised by the terminological distinction is more than the traditional one of agency -either of the conquering culture or the occupied one.It is also one of origins and the artistic nature of the Mudéjar fragments themselves.Mudéjar can be read as a record of the interactions between different cultures and a model for how cultural conflict can generate new knowledge.
If the body of the worker determines the culture of an architectural style, then what culture can claim Mudéjar?After the term was expanded past the strictly religious definition, it was possible for it to be recognized in Latin America, where all Mudéjar structures were built by non-Muslims.This new knowledge, generated from the border, frontier, or periphery, illustrates how visual language -ornamentation and design -can be transmitted from one culture to another.The end result of such a journey is a connection between otherwise entirely disparate groups of people.In this case, Mudéjar connects the architecture of the Islamic world with that of Latin America, two cultures that have little else in common.Ortíz' theory of transculturation allows for an understanding of how a style of art and architecture could adapt in the face of cultural conflict.Islamic design and ornamentation survived religious persecution in Europe and mass extinction in the New World colonies, becoming the style known throughout the Spanish-speaking world as Mudéjar.Although it is possible to misuse the term transculturation, especially as it was originated to describe a specific Cuban context, I would argue that the process is at the root of any extended clash of cultures.The result of transculturation is a hybrid product -tobacco and sugar in the case of Cuba -that retains something of the originals.The give-and-take process that transformed agriculture on the Caribbean island is fundamentally the same as that which produced Mudéjar architecture in Spain and Latin America.Transculturation is, in a sense, a precursor to late twentieth-century globalization.By understanding how this process worked historically, it is possible for us to gain new insight into the transcultural dynamics in progress today.

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Ortíz, Cuban Counterpoint, 102-3.The complexity of his argument is opposed to the simplicity of the dominant term at the time, acculturation, which referred to the complete submission of one culture to another.In his example, Ortíz claimed that the acculturation model completely ignores the contributions of Africans and Cuban natives, not to mention the island of Cuba itself.

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See David Raizman's "The Church of Santa Cruz and the Beginnings of Mudéjar Architecture in Toledo" (Gesta, 1999) and Katrin Kogman-Appel's "Hebrew Manuscript Painting in Late Medieval Spain: Signs of a Culture in Transition" (The Art Bulletin, 2002) for two good analyses of the origins of Islamic design in Spain. 53Raizman, "The Church of Santa Cruz and the Beginnings of Mudéjar Architecture in Toledo," 137.Contemporaneity: Historical Presence in Visual Culture http://contemporaneity.pitt.eduVol 1 (2011) | ISSN 2155-1162 (online) | DOI 10.5195/contemp.2011.5