[Untitled]

Southern Peruvian Railway

This image is of the Peruvian Southern Railway. This railway was one of the first in Latin America and was under construction between 1869-1893 ​​. It originally was built to span between the port of Mollendo and the southeastern city of Puno in Peru. The composition is vertical depicting a mountainous landscape. In the foreground, there is a railway bridge spanning a ravine. On both the right and left sides there are triangular supports extending up from off of the composition to near the middle of the bridge from below. They meet on either side of vertical support extending from the bottom of the ravine up to the bridge. This support section is made of rectangular subdivision. This bridge supports a locomotive with just two sections, the front car, and a storage car. The locomotive sits centrally on the bridge right about the rectangular supports. There is a figure to the left and in front of the locomotive standing on the bridge. This figure gives context to the scale of the components of the photograph. The workers included many nationalities including Peruvians but also Europeans including British engineers. Many viewed the construction of the railway as a tool that would bring the country into the modern world. The railway however was aiding in the expansion of the mining Industry. Since Colonial times, the mining industry in the Andean areas of Peru and Bolivia and specifically the Potosi mines used oppressive forced labor of enslaved Indigenous and Afro-Americans. While there isn’t much known about Villalba, the modernization of the region could be something that Villaba is criticizing through his photographic production as an extension of colonization and the exploitation of indigenous land and labor.

Ricardo Villalba

1860-1880

Photograph