The City of Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain, and its symbolic dimension 2

The research work for my PhD candidacy revolves around the city of Puebla, in New Spain, present-day Mexico. The project is divided into two parts: in the first part I’m interested in studying its foundation origins, and particularly the symbolic dimension of its urban traits, such as the grid layout, the symbolic association to the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to the Via Dolorosa, otherwise known as the Way of the Cross, (embodied in the city of Puebla in a series of chapels running along the nearby hill of Bethlehem). I’m interested in finding out how all these elements articulate a mythological narrative, how this mythology is created and to what end.

In the second part of my project I pretend to look into the transformation of Puebla from this ideal experiment in the late Renaissance, into a Baroque city a century later. I pretend to focus on the bishopric of Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza during the mid-17th century, and on his endeavors to transform Puebla into what I call a Reformist city, one that is politically loyal to Spain, while at the same time tries to accommodate the now diverse population of the city. Palafox was known for his architectural and artistic patronages. He progressed many architectural works, including the building of the cathedral of Puebla, which he consecrated even before Mexico City’s in 1649. My wager is that Palafox used architecture and art as a social and moral tool and tried to use it to make of Puebla a city in tune with the political, religious, and social reality of New Spain in the 17th century.

The way my work relates to the ‘Early Modern Cities as Theatres of Conversion’ project, is that throughout my research, I look into the operational dynamics of how European and particularly Spanish religious and social world-views are projected and set into motion in the New World in an urban and architectural setting. The foundation of the city of Puebla obeyed a series of aspirations of an eschatological nature which were Medieval in origin. How they arrived to Mexico, took root, and became architecture and urbanism is of great interest to me. The other seminal part of my research is the Baroque era of Puebla and how the city changes its symbolic dimension. I’m interested in studying its urbanism and how it operates in favor of representing the interests of the Spanish Crown and of the criollo and indigenous populations.

Throughout my work, the thread becomes architectural works and urban spaces acting out symbolical purposes. These purposes are directly related to the expectations of what the role of the American continent and its peoples was going to be in the new world order. As I see it, this is a characteristic of the Early Modern era. Furthermore, it’s relevant to mention that these expectations were anything but timid. The ‘discovery’ of the New World signified a major change in the European mindset. They also represented the opportunity of acting out new paradigms, of experimenting in a new and altogether different manner, presenting us with a new breed of European and indigenous mix, which evidently fed and enriched the Western tradition.

Examining the urban experiment of Puebla, its intentionality, and analyzing its transformation into a prosperous Baroque city, positions me close to understanding how the urban and architectural spaces of the Early Modern period operated as theaters of conversion.