Memory’s Trot: The Equestrian Statue of Charles IV, El Caballito, and the Experience of Time

Abstract

In order to identify current experiences of time, this article considers the debate concerning the equestrian statue of Charles IV, better known as El Caballito, in the aftermath of its 2013 disastrous attempt at restoration. The classification of heritage values, as proposed by Alois Riegl, serves as a tool to understand a conflict that involved different conceptions of tradition and identity. I claim that the different ways in which the statue was preserved and restored during a few key moments in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first Centuries reveals central features of our relation to time and the transformations that lead to today’s regime of historicity.