City at the Center of the World

Cover

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Title Page, Copyright

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Contents

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pp. v-vi

Illustrations

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pp. vii-viii

Acknowledgments

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pp. ix-xii

This book owes much to the suggestions, advice, and support of numerous people, each of whom deserves recognition. I have been fortunate to have been mentored by extraordinary teachers, beginning at Academia Cotopaxi in Quito, where Arthur Pontes and Eric Little first awoke my interest in history ...

Prelude

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pp. xiii-xx

On the afternoon of Friday, December 6, 2002, at the Plaza de Toros on Quito’s upper-class north side, approximately eighty people gathered to protest bullfights celebrating the anniversary of the Spanish founding of the city. ¹ The carnivalesque spectacle, dubbed “Kito Anti-Taurino,” ...

1. The Politics and Poetics of Regionalism

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pp. 1-23

In 1935, as part of an early attempt to develop a tourist economy in Ecuador, the Dirección General de Propaganda y Turismo issued a series of picture postcards designed to advertise the country’s charms to the world at large. Printed in Italy by the Instituto Geográfico de Agostini, the series was available in sepia, blue, or green and sold as sets as well as individually. ...

2. Mapping the Center of the World

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pp. 24-60

Between 1903 and 1909, four new maps of Quito appeared, a small number, to be sure, but one that equaled the number of city plans drawn over the course of the previous century. This period marked the onset of a pronounced expansion in local cartographic projections designed to facilitate urban planning, conduct censuses, or promote tourist vistas. ...

3. Hispanismo: Site, Heritage, Memory

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pp. 61-84

Visitors to Quito in the 1920s and 1930s increasingly commented on the city’s majestic colonial architecture. This represented a marked change from nineteenth-century accounts, which often decried the city’s insularity or stressed the physical prowess of its indigenous population or the lack of basic services.¹ ...

4. Governance and the Sovereign Cabildo

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pp. 85-114

In September 1895, the day after his victorious entry into Quito, the new president, Eloy Alfaro, penned a letter to Carlos Freile, the newly appointed governor of Pichincha, bemoaning the capital’s lack of basic services. Bristling at the city’s underdevelopment, he declared his immediate intention to authorize up to fifty thousand sucres for the construction of a central market. ...

5. The Durini Cosmopolis: Crafting a Hyphenated Vernacular Architecture

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pp. 115-146

In an undated photograph, attributed only to “Pazmiño” (fig. 5.1), a mustachioed man attired in a dark suit and straw boater, brandishing a cane, poses in profile, gazing past two similarly clad figures deep in conversation a few feet ahead of him. In his hands is a small parcel, wrapped in white paper, which suggests that he has just emerged from the great arcade beyond. ,,,

6. A Phantasmagoric Dystopia

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pp. 147-178

Eloy Alfaro’s 1895 arrival in Quito as leader of the triumphant Liberal Revolution inspired the relocation of scores of partisan journalists, intellectuals, and politicians clamoring to build a new society. The migrants included a young satirist from Cuenca named Manuel J. Calle, known for his lampooning portraits of conservative ideologues.¹ ...

7. Santa Clara de San Millán: The Politics of Indigenous Genealogy

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pp. 179-210

In July 1940, a group of indigenous comuneros from the town of Santa Clara de San Millán on Quito’s outskirts petitioned Ecuador’s minister of social welfare to form an alternate cabildo. This communiqué criticized the current leadership, charging that the body constituted an elite oligarchy, or gamonal, ...

Postscript

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pp. 211-218

Notes

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pp. 219-262

Selected Bibliography

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pp. 263-282

Index

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pp. 283-290

Back Cover

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