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Space and Place in the Mexican Landscape: The Evolution of a Colonial City

2009; Duke University Press; Volume: 89; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2008-069

1527-1900

Richard Warren,

Mexican Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics

The relationships among metaphysics, the built environment, and Mexican history form the putative subject matter of this thin volume. The authors, all faculty members at the Querétaro campus of the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM), employ methodologies derived from literary studies, cultural anthropology, and geography to analyze the ways in which Mexico’s urban spaces manifest deep meanings about Mexican identity. In the first chapter, which comprises nearly half the text, Fernando Núñez offers a series of assertions about the abiding principles of mexicanidad, forged of indigenous and Spanish colonial elements. These principles, including a belief in cyclicity, the need for protection, centralism, attachment to the land, and religiosity, supposedly all came to be reflected in the built environment of Mexico. The subsequent chapters move from global assertions to local manifestations, with a primary focus on the city of Querétaro.Carlos Arvizu surveys the evolution of Querétaro from its foundation in 1531 to the 1910 Revolution in the book’s second chapter. During the colonial era, Querétaro evolved as an important provincial city that connected the viceregal capital of Mexico City to the northern mining districts. After independence, the city served as an important crossroads in the political upheavals that characterized the next century. Replete with 27 maps, the chapter barrels through almost four hundred years of urban development in 32 pages. Arvizu and Ramón Abonce complete the historical trajectory of Querétaro’s development at a more languid pace in chapter 3, as they devote approximately 50 pages to a summary of the city’s physical transformation from the revolution through the dawn of the twenty-first century. Most of this chapter chronicles the growth of the city’s boundaries and changes to infrastructure wrought by the industrialization process.This is a profoundly disappointing book, which does justice neither to the topic nor to the authors’ talents, which emerge periodically throughout the text when interesting questions are raised or provocative assertions made. However, there is little unity between the grand theory of the first chapter and the nitty-gritty of the following two. The gap between thesis and evidence is too rarely bridged and the entire project screams for stronger editorial oversight. Historical errors pepper the text, as the authors claim, for example, that none of the liberal agenda of the mid-nineteenth century found a home in Mexico and that Venustiano Carranza was the only revolutionary leader still alive in 1915. More troubling are the unsubstantiated pronouncements about Mexican habits and identity asserted within the authors’ own areas of expertise. One reads here that Mexicans do not like to build with Sheetrock because it does not bind them to the land, and that Mexicans prefer narrow streets to broad ones because they have a need to feel protected. These observations are not backed up by even the softest of qualitative methods. Instead, the reader is offered a “chilaquiles” version of an immutable Mexican identity: strips of leftover Octavio Paz, a dollop of the Popol Vuh, a soupçon of human sacrifice, garnished with a Frida Kahlo reference. What could have been a tasty and provocative reconsideration of fundamental elements is just stale leftovers here. The topic deserves better and one hopes that the authors continue to explore the issues they raise in a more rigorous fashion in the future.