The Invention of the Colonial Time in the New Kingdom of Granada. The Contribution of Catechism of Fray Luis Zapata de Cardenas

Abstract

As inseparable dimensions of any reality, time and space have had a major impact on the emergence and establishment of the colonial society in Spanish America. However, the number of studies about the concept of time, its representation or its imposition in colonial areas is lower than the studies about territorial organization. For this reason, this paper focuses specifically on the imposition of Christian temporality in the Muiscas communities in the New Kingdom of Granada at the end of the sixteenth century. It is not an ontological study of time, but one to establish how your organization contributed to the maintenance of the colonial order and the construction of the identity of the colonial indigenous. To account for this, we analyze the Fray Luis Zapata de Cardenas discourse contained in the catechism published in 1576.