This paper explores the architecture of orientalism in Argentina through an analysis of the theme park Tierra Santa [Holy Land], a popular theme park in Buenos Aires hosting multiple daily performances of belly dancing. Claiming that it “transports visitors back 2000 years to the ancient Jerusalem,” the Tierra Santa theme park replicates the architectural style, including arches and minarets, represented in 19th century orientalist photographs and exhibitions of the Holy Land. At the same time, the belly dance performances at the theme park could be considered as a creative re-appropriation of the orientalist tradition. In this paper, I use the rubric of “the ruins” to analyze how the architecture of orientalism in Argentina adopts the frameworks of 19th and 20th century colonialism, and I use the rubric of conquest to look at how these same cultural aspects of the Middle East have shifted toward appropriation and identification as symbols of resistance in South America in the 21stcentury. If Christopher Columbus can be regarded as “the first Orientalist of the Americas” (Shohat 2013, 50) insofar as the discovery doctrine had already orientalized indigenous peoples as los indios, belly dancing symbolizes these two major legacies of orientalism. Through its organic connection in structure – if not form – to flamenco (Morocco 2011), belly dancing bridges to Andalusia, and the (1492) origin of the conquest of the Americas. At the same time, belly dancing arrived in the Americas by way of the 19th century World’s Fairs and their colonialist exhibits of authentic cultural formations; its popularity in these colonialist venues ensured its enduring image as an orientalist icon in US popular culture (Jarmakani 2008). Following scholarship on the Moorish Atlantic, which brings Spanish Andalusia and the conquest of the Americas in conversation with postcolonial studies (Aidi 2006; Shohat 2013), I explore the sites, structures, and enactments of belly dancing in Argentina as a grounded example of orientalism that both reinforces and unsettles traditional notions of colonialism.