The Colonial Spanish-American City: Urban Life in the Age of Atlantic Capitalism

Chapter 3: The Colonial City Ordained and Structured

chapter 3 The Colonial City Ordained and Structured G The title of this chapter conveys multiple meanings. First, it refers to the royal decrees during the first decades of the sixteenth century that delineated the physical structure of towns and cities to be founded in the Spanish Empire in America. Second, it refers to the ordination of a hierarchical socioeconomic structure acknowledged and sustained by the differential distribution of the initial physical assets of those towns and cities. The various decrees for urban organization were issued in concert with the Crown’s desire to institute systematic royal authority in the empire; and the grid plan, with its central core plaza anointing the locus of secular and religious authority, with the social elite standing nearby, suited this purpose perfectly. In fact Madrid itself, far removed from the ambiguities of imperial authority within the empire, did not have a governmental plaza similar to those across the Atlantic until the seventeenth century. By the time Philip II codified the existing urban decrees in 1573, the Italian Renaissance had taken hold in Spain, and Spanish humanists had become familiar with Roman urban organization. In the fifteenth century the Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti found and in 1485 published De Architectura , the seminal work of the Roman military architect Vitruvius. Almost immediately the ideas of both urban architects were known in Spain. The most important source for the Spaniards, however, was the guide to urban layout written by Vitruvius. De Architectura was translated into Spanish in 1526 as Medidas del romano. The influence of Vitruvius was palpable in the royal instructions to the early town builders in the empire but was even more so in the codification. 23 the colonial spanish-american city the urban template The Ordinances for the Discovery, New Settlement, and Pacification of the Indies of 1573 was a summary of previous royal instructions for urban planning in the empire and would be the prescriptive guide, notwithstanding royal emendation, until subsequent decrees were incorporated in the Recopilaci ón de las leyes de las Indias of 1680 (Libro IV, 7.1). An early article of the Ordenanzas conveys a central tension within the logic of the Spanish imperium : how to guarantee a sufficient labor force for the colonial economy and yet protect as well as Christianize the native population. Article 5: ‘‘Look carefully at the places and ports where it might be possible to build Spanish settlements without damage to the Indian population.’’1 Beyond that we see a direct derivation from the Roman Vitruvius (for a comparison of clauses from the Ordenanzas and from Vitruvius, see the Appendix). The Ordenanzas directed the colonists to select sites for towns very carefully , preferably in an elevated but not too elevated place. ‘‘If it be on the coast, care should be taken that it be a good harbor and that the sea should be neither to the south nor to the west; if this is not possible, do not place it near lagoons or swamps in which are poisonous animals and polluted air and water’’ (Article 111).2 Meticulous attention was paid also to the town’s main plaza, and again the provenance was the Roman Empire through Vitruvius. The Ordenanzas ordered that ‘‘[t]he four corners of the plaza face to the four principal winds, because in this way the streets leaving the plaza are not exposed to the principal winds, which would be of great inconvenience’’ (Article 114). Emanating from the plaza should be four principal streets, one from the middle of each side as well as two from each corner (for a total of twelve). This injunction was not routinely followed, since it would have limited the size of government and religious buildings at the main plaza. ‘‘The plaza should be a rectangle, prolonged so that the length is at least half again as long as the width, because this form is best for celebrations with horses, and for any others that are to take place’’ (Article 112). The plaza should not be less than two hundred feet in width and three hundred feet in length. A good proportion would be six hundred feet in length and four hundred in width. If the town were situated on the coast the plaza should be located near the port and if inland at the center of the town. Thus, the general shape, proportion, and place of the much remarked upon Spanish-American plaza . . . and in its Roman origin...