Indigenous people changing the ancient Occident: the vindictive uchronies of history

Abstract

What would have happened if the civilizations originating from America had discovered and colonized Europe? This question, however fantastic, is pierced by the intention of looking back at indigenous cultures not with a romantic perspective, but with one that inquires into the positions of many social groups that reaffirm their Westernism. Thus, uchronic science fiction proposes different forms of response and shows another way of telling the “story,” probably reclaiming or criticizing Western reason. This article aims to show how, from this rationality, certain writers and artists try to rethink the other side of History, that of those who should have a voice and active presence and even a political presence that establishes a new ethos. Thus, from the studies of comparative literature, we expose and try to find links and tensions in the discourses of the artistic installation and the book-album of Eduardo Villacís, The art of smoking mirror: el espejo humeante, crónicas (Ecuador, 2003) and the novels of Federico Andahazi, El conquistador (Argentina, 2006) and Lauren Binet, Civilizaciones (France, 2020). Such works advance a thesis that probably has to do with current indigenous emergencies: What would happen if the government of the contemporary world were indeed in the hands of indigenous nationalities? Latin American and European science fiction seems to discuss this idea from a critical fictional horizon of notable interest.