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Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean

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Gridded Worlds: An Urban Anthology

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Abstract

Plazas are often important spatial representations of society and social hierarchy. The grid-plan plazas built in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean under the direction of the Spanish have been interpreted as architectural representations of colonial control and oppression. Underlying these interpretations is the tacit assumption that plaza-centered gridded urban design was of solely European derivation, in spite of considerable evidence of pre-Columbian contributions. This chapter argues that the correspondence between indigenous forms and Spanish reconstruction—both modelled on the grid layout—is so well documented that the denial of its significance is startling. In fact, the ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence suggests that the colonial plaza evolved from both indigenous and Spanish influences and models that created a new urban design form. Consequently, cultural tensions of conquest and resistance are embedded in this urban design and accompanied architecture.

This chapter is an abridged version of Low, S. (1995). “Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean.” American Anthropologist, 97(4): 748–762. Copyright © 1995 by the American Anthropological Association. Reproduced with permission of American Anthropological Association.

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  1. City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Setha M. Low

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  1. University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Reuben Rose-Redwood

  2. Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel

    Liora Bigon

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Low, S.M. (2018). Indigenous Architecture and the Spanish American Plaza in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. In: Rose-Redwood, R., Bigon, L. (eds) Gridded Worlds: An Urban Anthology . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76490-0_9

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