The Latin American national state of the late nineteenth century organized public life by setting new forms of visibility. It assumed technologies as a look police that imposed modern rules on bodies, landscapes and cities. In this way the old functions of the baroque prince were assumed by a scopic governance that focused its efforts on nationalizing the masses, through images and educating them around signs of decency, control and order. A symbolic contract was established between the state bureaucracy and the optical devices, allowing photography and cinema to become the instruments of an aesthetic and a sovereign subjectivity.