| Abstract: | In this article, I examine the production of meaning in the veneration of La Negrita, the black Madonna and patroness of Costa Rica. Both an apparition and an icon, La Negrita is a 20-centimeter, dark-colored statue of the Virgin Mary that appeared to a mulata girl on the outskirts of the colonial city of Cartago in 1635. Throughout the ensuing 400 years, La Negrita has been remade in the image of hegemony, even as the experience of her perceived power has challenged that ideological and coercive project. Through an analysis of this historical progression, I argue for a theory of culture as an aesthetic system, where the egalitarianism of experience is always in conflict with the authoritarianism of meaning. |
