City at the Center of the World: Space, History, and Modernity in Quito

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Cityat the Center of theWorld Space, History, and Modernity in Quito Ernesto Capello latin american history / urban studies “City at the Center of the World explores the emergence of Quito, Ecuador, as a modern national capital. Capello’s elegantly written and well-organized study examines strategic moments in the city’s history in relation to their colonial past and regional contexts as city elites and indigenous communities worked to reshape ‘traditional’ historical discourses and city spaces to craft a modern capital to their respective advantage.” —Mark Overmyer-Velázquez, University of Connecticut “In this highly original book, Capello examines the city of Quito on both sides of the twentieth century. He reveals an evolving city and a city in crisis, a former colonial capital torn between alleged Hispanic traditions and long-suppressed indigenous aspirations, uncertain of its survival, yet proud of its past glory. Marshaling an astonishing array of written, visual, and architectonic sources, Capello traces Quito’s painful transition to modernity. This book will no doubt inspire new approaches to urban studies in the Americas and beyond.” —Kris Lane, Tulane University In the seventeenth century, local Jesuits and Franciscans imagined Quito as the “new Rome.” It was the origin of crusades into the wilderness and the purveyor of civilization to the entire region. By the early twentieth century, elites envisioned the city as the heart of a modern, advanced society—poised at the physical and metaphysical centers of the world. In this original cultural history, Ernesto Capello analyzes the formation of memory, myth, and modernity through the eyes of Quito’s diverse populations. By employing Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of chronotopes, Capello views the configuration of time and space in narratives that defined Quito’s identity and its place in the world. He explores the proliferation of these imaginings in architecture, museums, monuments, tourism, art, urban planning, literature, religion, indigenous rights, and politics. To Capello, these tropes began to crystallize at the end of the nineteenth century, serving as a tool for distinct groups who laid claim to history for economic or political gain during the upheavals of modernism. In the process of both destroying and renewing elements of the past, modern Quito thus emerged at the crux of Hispanism and Liberalism, as an independent global society struggling to keep the memory of its colonial and indigenous roots alive. Ernesto Capello is assistant professor of history at Macalester College. pitt latin american series University of Pittsburgh Press www.upress.pitt.edu Cover art: From Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, Plano de la ciudad de San Francisco de Quito (1748). Courtesy Library of Congress. Cover design: Ann Walston 9 7 8 0 8 2 2 9 6 1 6 6 6 ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6166-6 ISBN 10: 0-8229-6166-0 capello City at the Center of the World pittsburgh ...