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.

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.