WHEN SHE was young, Constanza de Luxán moved from Biscay in northern Spain to Peru, where in 1668 she married a colonial official. She later had her portrait painted in black with Spanish lace strawberries. But she is kneeling on a luxurious rug with geometric patterns in bright colors from pre-Columbian Peruvian culture. The painting is on display in “Tornaviaje” (Return Journey), a stimulating exhibition at the Prado Museum in Madrid, the subject of which is art produced in Spanish America from the 16th to the 18th century. He argues that this art, in the words of an 18th-century Spanish monk, exhibited “Spanish forms dressed in American clothing” and thus formed part of a culture of mestizo (mixed).

The exhibition comes as the Spanish colonization of the Americas sparked political controversy. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is still brooding after Spain rejected its request in 2019 for its king to apologize for the conquest 500 years ago. Conservative Spanish politicians have stoked resentment. The conquest “brought civilization and freedom to the American continent,” Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Madrid region, said in September. This neglects the sophisticated civilizations of pre-Columbian Peru and Mexico, the fact that conquest meant death by disease for millions of Native Americans, and that “freedom” would come only after independence from Spain, three centuries ago. later.

“Tornaviaje” offers a more subtle view. Its content is the art that the descendants of the conquistadors sent home. The curators scoured convents and private collections. It lights up a blind spot. Most Spaniards don’t know that their ancestors lived with more artefacts from the Americas than from Flanders or Italy, or that many of the Christs behind whom they parade in Easter processions or the chalices of their churches were made in America, writes Miguel Falomir, director of the museum. .

Like all migrants, the Spaniards wanted to tell people back home about their success. The exhibition includes paintings and maps of new cities, such as Mexico City and Potosí, as well as portraits of the colonial elite dressed in Spanish finery. He does not hide the fact of racial inequality: the daughter of a viceroy pats the head of a native servant. But it also celebrates the emergence of a metis (Métis) society and artistic culture. An 18th century painting of a Mexican family bears the caption “qualities of the mixture of Spaniards, Blacks and Indians”.

“American clothing” involved indigenous techniques and materials, such as silver, feathers, dyes, and antlers, and skilled artists. Spanish America developed a visual culture that continues to this day, characterized by popular religiosity (especially the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who revealed herself to an indigenous shepherd), ostentatious public exposure and jubilation in the fiesta, and a celebration of the earth’s abundance. This distinct cultural tradition eventually took political form in the movement for independence from Spain.

None of this obscures the subordination of the indigenous population, the cause of the chronic inequality in Latin America which intensified after independence. In another, smaller exhibition in Madrid, Sandra Gamarra, a contemporary Peruvian artist, takes images of this visual tradition and turns them upside down. His works seek to show the persistence of colonial trauma and the invisibility of Indigenous cultures and metis variations in Latin America today. Nineteenth-century paintings celebrating independence are blurred with a red wash. A large triangle of triangles recalls the shape of the Virgin of the Silver Mountain of Potosí and contains 350 smaller images of the Virgin painted by artists who sell to tourists in Cusco. Copies of European academic paintings she bought at flea markets are placed face down in the shape of a chakana, an Inca cross which symbolizes the interdependence of everything.

Ms. Gamarra’s work emphasizes that the official account of mestizo fails by failing to recognize the persistence of racial discrimination, although it can be argued that Latin American culture is increasingly demotic and metis. “Tornaviaje” presents historical evidence that mestizo was at the heart of colonial art and culture. But the cure for sustainable racial stratification is not identity-based politics, but rather equity. The historic task of Latin American democracy continues to be to give equal value to all citizens, regardless of their race.

This article appeared in the Americas section of the print edition under the title “Images at two exhibitions”