Abstract
This contribution addresses the mural paintings that cover the walls of parish church of San Miguel Arcángel, a former Augustinian monastery, which was built in the 16th century in order to evangelize and acculturate the indigenous population of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535-1821). Ixmiquilpan (Hidalgo State) lies on the northern border of Central Mexico and, in the past, it constituted a frontier region that separated northern nomadic indigenous populations from the settled Mesoamerican civilizations.
The contribution discusses the problem of representation and at the same time construction of the "image" of "otherness", putting particular emphasis on stereotypes (auto- and hetero-stereotypes) hidden behind it. It examines how these categories are displayed and how they were understood and transmitted taking into the consideration the contemporary written and visual evidence.
In terms of method, it is interdisciplinary, it combines the classical historical (e.g. study of written sources, source criticism, etc.) and art historical (e.g. iconographical description and iconological analysis) procedures with sociological and anthropological concepts procedures (e.g. theory of identity, symbolic anthropology). The text concludes that the Ixmiquilpan murals were meant as an intentional attempt of an intersemiotic translation, a dialogue between several cultures being included into the process of christianization and acculturation, whose goal was to make up a new (colonial) identity of local inhabitants of Ixmiquilpan and so within the Augustinian theology and Spanish imperial ethos.