Latin American Architecture

I

Introduction

Latin American Architecture, architecture created in colonial settlements of the Americas after the arrival of Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) conquerors around 1500, also called Ibero-American architecture. The first settlements built by Iberian colonists were in the Caribbean islands; those in Mexico, Central America, and South America followed. Latin American architecture also includes the buildings of Spanish colonists in North America, especially in Florida, California, and Texas.

The term Ibero-American architecture is useful for distinguishing the Iberian-influenced traditions of Central and South America from the predominantly English and northern European architectural traditions of North America. Yet the term misleadingly suggests that there is a single shared building style or unified architectural history in Latin America. In reality, tremendous variations in culture, geography, and climate within this vast region counteract the unifying influences of Iberian colonial culture. Latin America encompasses the primitive Native American settlements of the tropical Amazon River basin; the advanced Andean mountain cultures of the Inca Empire in Peru; the quaint, Alpine-style towns of German settlers in southern Brazil; and the formal English grandeur of Spanish Town, Jamaica. The terms Ibero-American and Latin American architecture also fail to account for the significant differences between the Spanish and the Portuguese cultures in Latin America. The Portuguese, who began to colonize Brazil in the 1530s, produced an architecture that generally followed European styles more closely than did Spanish colonial architecture.

The architecture of Latin America documents the European conquest of the region and the domination of the native peoples. Although the conquest destroyed much that was native, the colonial culture that subsequently developed in Latin America also absorbed some native elements. Colonial architecture reflects a rich mixture of European styles with the traditions of Native Americans and of Africans who were imported as slaves. In its modern form, Latin American architecture involves a search for a unique cultural identity. In theory this identity rejects colonial and even modern European traditions, but in practice it builds upon them, transforms them, or adapts them to the special requirements of Latin American places, climates, and attitudes.

II

Architecture and Conquest

The use of architecture and urban planning as tools of European conquest is a recurrent theme in Latin American history. King Philip II of Spain ordered town planners to use a grid or checkerboard plan for the layout of new towns and cities in his “Laws of the Indies” (1573). This series of guidelines and planning rules was intended to impose rational order and European administrative control on the new settlements. The plan featured a plaza major, or central square, with the main church, government buildings, and residences of the authorities facing the square. In port cities straight streets connected the plaza major to the warehouses and docks of the port and to the imposing fortresses that protected them. Early colonial ports of this design include those in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Havana, Cuba; Cartagena, Colombia; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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Most early colonial architects working in Latin American cities were actually military engineers. The Italian engineer J. B. Antonelli, for example, designed many major Spanish forts along the Caribbean coast. As a result, many early colonial buildings, both civic and religious, resemble fortresses. These massive stone structures, unadorned and stern, announce the severity of Spanish priorities in the colonies: the extraction of raw materials and the protection of trade at all costs. Examples of the heaviness and simplicity of the early colonial style are the Palace of Diego Colón (1510) in Santo Domingo, and the Cathedral of Mérida (1571-1598, Mérida, Mexico), which was designed by fortifications experts.

III

Colonial Church Design

Another priority of the Iberian conquerors was the mass conversion of native people to Christianity. For this purpose they created a new architectural type: a large, open-air sanctuary called an atrio. Atrio complexes of the 16th century, such as those built for Franciscan missionaries in Mexico, consist of a huge, square courtyard with a large stone pavilion, or posa, at each of the four corners. Native Americans were first forced to erect the atrios and were then brought into them for religious conversion by the thousands. The posas at the mission at Huejotzingo (1540s) in Mexico reflect a mixture of Spanish sternness and native craftsmanship typical of this period in rural areas.

In major cities the early colonial architecture of the Spaniards and Portuguese adheres more strictly to Iberian styles. The first cathedral in the Americas was the Cathedral of Santo Domingo (1512-1541), designed by Spanish architect Rodrigo de Liendo. The cathedral facade features classical archways combined with elaborate ornamentation. It closely follows the plateresque style then popular in Spain, which combined the classical structure of Italian Renaissance architecture with the detailed carving of late gothic decoration. In Mexico City, the much larger , along with the adjacent Sagrario Chapel, reflects several centuries of Spanish styles. The two structures include elements of the austere, unornamented Herreran style, named for the 16th-century Spanish architect Juan de Herrera; the ornate baroque Churrigueresque style of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, named for Spanish architect José Benito Churriguera; and the simple dignity of the 19th-century neoclassical style. Construction of the cathedral began in the 1560s and ended in 1813. More typical of Mexico are styles that mix folk and baroque influences and appear in the Soledad Church in Oaxaca and the Tepalcingo Church in Morelos, both from about 1700. These churches feature densely sculpted facades resembling the ornate altarpieces characteristic of Latin American church interiors.

In early colonial Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Jesuit and Benedictine religious orders built monastic complexes and fortress-churches in what was known as the Portuguese plain style. The style was named for the unadorned exteriors and simple, rectilinear whitewashed facades that characterize it. Portuguese builders and their patrons used this stern style as a means of imposing a sense of discipline and European order on the colony. Unlike in Mexico, builders in colonial Brazil generally reserved extravagant decoration for church interiors, which featured richly carved and gilded wooden altarpieces and colorful blue-and-white azulejos (traditional Portuguese ceramic tiles). Azulejo decorations are found in Nossa Senhora da Glória do Outeiro (Our Lady of Glory on the Hillock) in Rio de Janeiro, an early 18th-century church attributed to Portuguese engineer José Cardoso Romalho. Like most colonial Brazilian buildings, the church exterior is of whitewashed masonry with brown stone trim. Whitewashing exteriors, an Iberian tradition inherited from North Africa, was a practical way of adapting to the hot local climate: The heat of the tropical sun reflects off the white surface rather than penetrating to the interior of the building.

IV

Aleijadinho

The church designs of Brazilian sculptor and architect Antônio Francisco Lisbôa (better known as Aleijadinho, meaning “little cripple”) provide some of the finest examples of the process of cultural mixing in Latin American architecture. In the Church of São Francisco de Assís (1764-1774) in Ouro Prêto, Brazil, Aleijadinho adapted traditional Portuguese themes and materials, including whitewashed finishes and dark stone trim, into an expressive and sensuous architecture of flowing curves and gracefully decorated interiors. The son of a Portuguese architect and an African slave woman, Aleijadinho exemplifies the racial and cultural mixture that gave Ouro Prêto and the surrounding mining region of Minas Gerais their uniquely Brazilian flavor. As a social outcast (on account of his mixed race and the disease that deformed his arms and legs), Aleijadinho was rejected by official circles and powerful Portuguese patrons. His art has been interpreted by some Brazilian scholars as a deliberate rejection of the hard-edged plain style that prevailed in the colonial capital, Rio de Janeiro, and that was most associated with the power of the Portuguese conquerors.

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