Peter Daniel Bernal

Baptism

THEME: ORIGINS

Baptism

THEME: ORIGINS

Peter Daniel

Bernal

the artist's inspiration

When you look to discover and understand your roots, you better discover yourself and who you truly are. As it’s true for a person, it’s also true for our country, which consists of all our stories. And in the origins of the United States, Baptism is an essential but often overlooked story.

I am an American. I am a Mestizo – mixed Indigenous and European. I am descended from the Coahuiltecan, an indigenous people from what is now called South Texas. I also have Spanish blood from the European settlers whose conquest of the Americas led to the destruction of the Coahuiltecan and many like them.

Baptism represents the first encounter between these two peoples in an abstract way and asks us to consider how its consequences have rippled through the founding of the United States through to today.

In the painting you see three representations of La Malinche - the ‘mother of the first Mestizo’. A Nahua, she was one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519 and chosen by the conquistador Hernán Cortés as his consort. She later gave birth to his first son Martín - the first Mestizo. La Malinche is both a powerful icon and a polarizing figure. Some imply that her mixing with the Spanish was consensual and she was a traitor to indigenous people in allying with Cortés. Or was her life a reflection of a reality of conquest in which women were often forced to give birth to Mestizo children? Was she a hero to her people who did what it took to survive?

In the painting, La Malinche for me represents both what was taken in conquest and what has survived.

Her life - from enslavement to enforced birth of the first Mestizo was part of a broader program of ethnic cleansing by the Catholic Spanish that essentially wiped out the culture of the Coahuiltecan - through disease, genocide, gender-based violence and forced religious conversion. To such an extent, very little is known about the Coahuiltecan culture that I have used adjacent Aztec and other native symbols in the red paint, feathers and robes to identify her.

CAPITOL PARK, detroit

june 2024

In the painting, La Malinche is surrounded by the symbols of conquest - and ultimately my Spanish blood. These include:

Spanish Caravel ships, painted with red crosses. They symbolize the erasure of a culture through religious conversion, with enforced baptism en masse.
A tempest of an ocean - a metaphor for the brute force of colonization. Overwhelmed by the ocean, what choice did the women really have?

But the painting also honors what survives. The faces of La Malinche are paintings of my aunts when they were young. My grandfather had been a sharecropper and my aunts were cotton pickers as children. Their poor existence showed that we are not far removed from this history. Their features strongly carried our Coahuiltecan ancestry. I really respect my aunts very much - their dignity and strength. My ancestors have laid a path for me to have opportunity.

That has been important to me personally. As a person of mixed heritage, especially when part of that is an indigenous culture that has been largely erased, you fall between clear identities.

At school I was called Mexican (before Latino and Hispanic became normalized terms), but people more recently from Mexico would slight me as I didn’t speak Spanish. I’m called an immigrant, yet my ancestors have been on this land longer than anyone. If I embraced indigenousness, there would be no official tribal Federal roll or record possible. I didn’t belong, so reached into this complex past to discover and understand.

I take great pride in being a descendant of the Coahuiltecan. I recognize that I am the product and embodiment of a complex history, but that I have to understand it to be able to make sense of it and to build from it. Baptism invites you to think about what these first encounters mean for the story of what is now our country - and what lessons we take for the future of it.

the artist's inspiration

When you look to discover and understand your roots, you better discover yourself and who you truly are. As it’s true for a person, it’s also true for our country, which consists of all our stories. And in the origins of the United States, Baptism is an essential but often overlooked story.

I am an American. I am a Mestizo – mixed Indigenous and European. I am descended from the Coahuiltecan, an indigenous people from what is now called South Texas. I also have Spanish blood from the European settlers whose conquest of the Americas led to the destruction of the Coahuiltecan and many like them.

Baptism represents the first encounter between these two peoples in an abstract way and asks us to consider how its consequences have rippled through the founding of the United States through to today.