The Colonial City

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.A. BRADING
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Clear Vision ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Looking Back

This chapter demonstrates that while Spain had a clear vision of what the conquered Aztec city should be, the city of the conquistadors was relatively short for it was soon transformed by its Creole inhabitants who made their own identity pronounced on its building and culture. For 300 years, the city of Mexico was the capital of viceroyalty. It was the capital of New Spain and was the seat of the metropolitan archbishopric of Mexico. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, a generation of young Creoles entered the secular priesthood and the religious orders. They challenged the predominance of European Spaniards, affirmed their talents and identity, and started looking back to the glorious past the conquistadors had destroyed. However, the development of the city was constrained and limited by the city’s status as the viceregal capital of New Spain. Its status hence meant that the city depended on the political decisions and cultural influences emanating from the Spanish. Out of this tension, a creative process of change emerged in which different ethnic groups and cultures intermingled and conflicted to ensure that the social composition and character of Mexico City would be different from the other cities in Spanish America. However, these changes were not brought without due loss. Due to the conquest and the Old World diseases the Mexico population fell to the near brink of oblivion. These epidemics and natural calamities continued to afflict the city throughout the colonial period.

scholarly journals CDMX Resilient Code: Water Commons in Mexico City

ZARCH ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 138-153
Author(s):  
Lorena Bello Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Environmental Risks ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
Common Goal ◽  
The Social ◽  
Strategic Program ◽  
The Government ◽  
The City

Using Mexico City (CDMX) as a paradigmatic example of seriously unbalanced water regimes, our project Resilient Code helps strengthen and communicate CDMX’s government efforts toward risk reduction and water resilience in marginal communities. Our project does so by bridging otherwise separate agents in the government towards a common goal: equitable resilience. Resilient Code provides design solutions that link the social infrastructure of PILARES (a network of 300 vocational schools distributed throughout the city) to CDMX’s environmental and risk reduction initiatives, including their Risk Atlas. This strategic program of design-based solutions began with “water resilience” as a Pilot to repurpose public space throughout underserviced barrios as a network of “water-commons”. Resilient Code helps partners in CDMX implement projects to reduce environmental risks and complement socio-economic programs, fostering growth of the “water-commons”. Resilient Code is socialized through a participatory game-based workshop, and through an online Atlas of Risk Reduction.

The Modern City

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shifting Balance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City ◽  
Rich History

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.

Out of Tlatelolco’s Ruins: Patronage, Devotion, and Natural Disaster at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, 1745–1781

2013 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ramírez ◽  
William B. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
City Center ◽  
The Social ◽  
Promotional Efforts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
Disease Epidemics ◽  
The City

Abstract Colonial inhabitants of Mexico City were accustomed to coping with natural disasters, including disease epidemics, droughts, floods, and earthquakes, which menaced rich and poor alike and stirred fervent devotion to miraculous images and their shrines. This article revisits the late colonial history of the shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, an image preserved miraculously on an adobe wall in the Indian quarter of Santiago Tlatelolco. The assumption has been that archiepiscopal authorities aiming to deflect public worship toward a more austere, interior spirituality suppressed activities there after 1745 because they saw the devotion as excessively Indian and Baroque. The shrine has served as a barometer of eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms even though its story has not been fully told. This article explores the politics of patronage in the years after the shrine’s closure and in the decades prior to the arrival on the scene of a new Spanish patron in 1776, revealing that Indian caretakers kept the faith well beyond the official intervention, with some help from well-placed Spanish devotees and officials. The efforts of the new patron, a Spanish tailor from the city center, to renovate the building and image and secure the necessary permissions and privileges helped transform the site into one of the most famous in the capital. Attention to earlier patterns of patronage and to the social response to a series of tremors that coincided with his promotional efforts helps to explain why a devotion so carefully managed for enlightened audiences was nevertheless cut from old cloth.

scholarly journals Filantropía secular. La ayuda interesada de los fundadores del Asilo de Mendigos en la Ciudad de México, 1879-1902.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Dolores Lorenzo Río
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Social Question ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

En este artículo exploramos las “buenas intenciones” de un grupo de filántropos, empresarios liberales, seculares y reformistas que, con el argumento de impulsar la modernización urbana, propusieron desplazar a los limosneros de las calles centrales de la Ciudad de México para contenerlos en el Asilo Particular para Mendigos, fundado en 1879 y ubicado en la periferia urbana. Si bien las obras de la filantropía suelen estudiarse como formas de financiamiento del arte y la cultura o bien como respuesta para la educación y la higiene de los pobres, en este artículo nos centramos en el interés de los filántropos por fomentar el comercio y el ordenamiento urbano, a través de un proyecto asistencial. Asimismo, proponemos una definición acotada de la filantropía secular y sus características que pueden estudiarse a partir del caso específico del Asilo Particular de Mendigos y de las prácticas filantrópicas que le dieron sentido al interés público a finales del siglo XIX. Para sustentar este trabajo consultamos los informes de la Junta de Beneficencia Pública y los informes de las Actas del Consejo del Asilo, prensa periódica y otras fuentes, destacamos de éstas un documento peculiar sobre un estudio de las rutas que los mendigos recorrieron por la ciudad y que le dieron el sustento razonado a esta forma de filantropía en la Ciudad de México. Modern philanthropy used public interest as an argument for intervention in “social question”. The critical point of this text argue how "disinterested" were the "good intentions" of a group of philanthropists, liberals, secularists and reformists who, under the argument of urban modernization, sought to displace beggars from the streets to contain them in the Asilo Particular para Mendigos, founded in Mexico City in 1879. We show the social composition of the founding group and the many meanings on their social actions. We explore a peculiar research elaborated on the routes the beggars traveled through the city, that gave the reasoned support to the foundation. Using the “well-intentioned” argument of helping the poor, philanthropists exerted their influence on urban planning provisions, in addition to mitigating social tensions.

From Emancipation to Independence: New Spain/Mexico, 1808–1821

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Breña
Keyword(s):  
New Spain ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish Empire ◽  
Independence Movement ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Nation

The Viceroyalty of New Spain went from being the richest of the American territories of the Spanish Crown to becoming Mexico, one of the new countries that emerged from the crumbling of the Spanish empire in America. It was a very complex process. It did not start as an independence movement, it was extremely violent in its first phase and, paradoxically, the new nation obtained independence in a consensual way and with a document containing an article that offered the crown to Fernando VII, the Spanish King. This process also evinced significant differences regarding other processes for independence in Spanish America. Besides dealing with all these aspects, a final section is devoted to historiographic issues that are important to understand the aforementioned complexities and which are still present in contemporary debates on the social, political, and military processes that gave birth to Mexico.

The Vestal Virgins

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghan J. DiLuzio
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
Vestal Virgins ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses on the Vestal Virgins. The six Vestal Virgins belonged to the pontifical college (collegium pontificum), the largest and one of Rome's most prestigious religious orders. Chosen for their role between the ages of six and ten, they were committed to serve the cult of Vesta for a minimum of thirty years. They were synonymous with the continued welfare of the city and inseparable from the Roman's view of themselves. In addition to guaranteeing Rome's future, the Vestal priesthood was cherished as one of the most ancient religious institutions in the city. The chapter then considers the social profile of prospective priestesses and explains how they were chosen for their extraordinary role in Roman society. It also outlines their legal status, which set them apart from ordinary Romans, and the privileges they were granted in exchange for their service to the state.

Saintly Biography and the Cult of San Felipe de Jesús in Mexico City, 1597-1697

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelius Conover
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Stable Form ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
City Center ◽  
Social Interests ◽  
The City

By the late seventeenth century, the cult of San Felipe de Jesús (ca. 1572-97), native of Mexico City and martyr in Japan, had taken a stable form in Mexico City, where he was born. Each year on February 5, the dignitaries of the viceregal capital gathered for a procession through the city center and a liturgical ceremony in the cathedral to praise the saint and his city, but for the rest of the year, residents largely ignored him. A multitude of social interests had led to this less-than-wholehearted embrace, among them rivalry between religious orders, civic self-promotion, and religious beliefs.

La Entrada Angelopolitana: Ritual and Myth in the Viceregal Entry in Puebla de Los Angeles

1996 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy H. Fee
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
New Spain ◽  
Puebla De Los Angeles ◽  
Hernan Cortes ◽  
The City

The celebration of the entry of the viceroy was the most lavish, costly civic ritual in seventeenth-century Puebla de los Angeles. Staged by Puebla elites to honor the viceroy, this ritual event was orchestrated to assert and display the religiosity and superiority of Angelópolis (the literary title for Puebla). Invoking the journey of Hernán Cortés, the routing of the viceregal entry through Puebla prior to Mexico City heightened the competitive spirit of the Puebla Cabildo. The Puebla Cathedral, erected on the main plaza largely under the influence of Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza from 1640-49, functioned as the centerpiece and scenographie backdrop of this civic spectacle. Ephemeral, triumphal arches featuring allegorical, political emblems framed and gated the ritual entry. Designed by members of the oldest builders’ guild in New Spain, some of these arches were placed within the main portal of the Cathedral marking its role as the sanctum sanctorum of the city.

scholarly journals Looking Back on the Space of a Boom: (Re)developing Spatial Matrices in the City of London

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
M Pryke
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Economic Agents ◽  
The Social ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
Looking Back ◽  
The Way

This paper is focused on the (re)development of the global financial space of the City of London during the mid-1980s. Although the financing of this process is the chief concern, the influence of the social space through which this funding was taking place is not ignored. Therefore, an interpretation is provided of, first, the ways in which a range of economic agents within a ‘structure of building provision’ interact with given sets of spatial practices to capitalise an established social space. And, second, the way in which these agents then realign to develop around newly emerging sociospatial relations is examined. The underlying influence of changes in the wider economic ‘setting’ of these agents is highlighted, with particular reference to how their economic calculations are mapped onto social space and the overall consequences of these processes.

Saintly Biography and the Cult of San Felipe de Jesús in Mexico City, 1597-1697

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (04) ◽  
pp. 441-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelius Conover
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Stable Form ◽  
Religious Orders ◽  
City Center ◽  
Social Interests ◽  
The City

By the late seventeenth century, the cult of San Felipe de Jesús (ca. 1572-97), native of Mexico City and martyr in Japan, had taken a stable form in Mexico City, where he was born. Each year on February 5, the dignitaries of the viceregal capital gathered for a procession through the city center and a liturgical ceremony in the cathedral to praise the saint and his city, but for the rest of the year, residents largely ignored him. A multitude of social interests had led to this less-than-wholehearted embrace, among them rivalry between religious orders, civic self-promotion, and religious beliefs.

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