Track 1 / STONE 1 / 1st presentation
Stone, Technology, and Meaning; the Hybrid Use of Masonry in a Sixteenth-Century Indigenous Palace in Oaxaca, Mexico
Benjamin Ibarra-Sevilla,
The University of Texas at Austin
The sixteenth-century brought dramatic changes to Mexico, and the region known as “la Mixteca” in the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, was not an exception. New towns were laid out and constructed from scratch. Civic buildings, churches, monasteries, and plazas found all over the country are examples of this prolific period of building construction. The indigenous people carried out many of these construction endeavors under the directions of the newcomers from Spain. However, not all buildings in the new cities were built for the Spaniards. While new towns were erected and the communities reorganized, some buildings for indigenous rulers were included in the planning of the new establishments. Their inclusion was intended to make evident the alliances between the governments and the new aristocratic status of the indigenous rulers, also known as “caciques.”
These indigenous buildings in the Spanish settlements unveil how indigenous people, while attracted to new building technologies brought from Europe, they refused to give up many of their building methods and traditions. These pieces of architecture can be considered as “hybrids,” featuring both: indigenous and western construction methods for their components while including decorative motifs and elements that spoke directly to the indigenous people. These types of edifications included palaces, residences, smaller chapels, and other religious and civil constructions. Examples of these buildings are still standing, especially those of religious character and those built with long-lasting materials and techniques.
This presentation focuses on one of the very few civil buildings that still exist from the early sixteenth- century in the American continent. The building is an indigenous palace known as “Casa de la Cacica,” built in the town of San Pedro and San Pablo Teposcolula in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. The building, which is made with different types of stone from the area, used a mixture of Mexican indigenous building technologies and Spanish constructive solutions, creating a truly “hybrid” building that represents the intense exchange that occurred during early colonial times in this Mexican region. By analyzing the integration of both methods of stone-based construction, European and Mixteca, this presentation will show how the “Casa de la Cacica” was designed and how constructive methods were implemented. Furthermore, by identifying the relationships between the building materials and the architectural elements, the presentation questions how deliberated were the decisions to associate materials and spaces in the palace, and if those decisions are loaded with symbolic meanings.
The “Casa de la Cacica,” like many other buildings of the colonial period, is composed of four clustered structures forming a central courtyard. However, the configuration of the palace followed what seems to be a typical Meso-American building layout. In opposition to the Spanish colonial buildings that present a monolithic structure forming a courtyard, the indigenous palace’s is composed of isolated buildings in orthogonal disposition, leaving the corners open. The placement of the palace’s buildings is very similar to those found on the Zapotec buildings of Yagul and Lambityeco, among other pre-Hispanic sites of the Oaxaca region. On the other hand, the utilization of different materials within the palace’s walls suggests that there is a relationship space-material that might contain special meaning. Also, arches were new structural members brought from Spain; these structural members determined moments within the palace that show deliberate decisions during the construction process reinforcing the representations of the modern era to the indigenous populations.
The material used for this presentation is the result of first-hand information that includes detailed documentation of the building, and content created during a restoration project in which the author was involved. In addition to archival research, the analysis of the structure included the creation of drawings and models that genuinely reveal its “hybrid” nature. The presentation shows how tradition and culture mixed with crafts, tools, and building systems provide a “genetic code” that defines a particular expression of indigenous vernacular architecture in this region.
