Columbia University, NY, feb. 09 Ambiguous Territories Conference Counterpoint boundaries of Hispanic architecture in the XXth century Mexico & Spain, 1900-1930 Johanna Lozoya 1. Modern cultural relations between Mexican and Spanish architectures of the XXth century have scarcely concerned architectural historians of both sides of the Atlantic. Little has being said, or thought, of the so called hispanismo americano and hispanismo indiano as cultural counterpoints . Instead they have being studied apart as local phenomena within a nationalists cultural framework, ignoring other identitary boundaries as those created from a common loyalty to a family, a social class or a region. [images] Such is the case of Indianos´ architecture of northern Spain at the beginning of the century, which has rarely being connected to the Mexican Neocolonial style of the time, even though cultural networks between Mexican urban middle class and communities of Spanish immigrants show a complex history of a counterpoint identitary phenomena. On the other hand, Mexican Hispanic architectures in that period are rarely thought beyond the boundaries of a nationalist Mexican viewpoint in which lo español ranges between us and otherness, mexicanidad and antimexicanidad , tradition and modernity, past and future. These narratives do not considered the shared common identitary grounds of these modern architectures nor the cultural interatlantic boundary they work on. 2. If common cultural grounds are to be thought between Indianos´architecture and Mexican Neocolonial style, then different boundaries for hispanism and Latin American culture must be reconsidered. The geographical space in which this counterpoint identity developed, do not correspond entirely to the political boundaries of modern Spain or Mexico, nor to the commercial ultramarine itineraries of the time. Nevertheless it is a story of coasts and harbors, but mainly of a geography of individual and colective loyalties to tribal and regional identities. On the other hand it is a not new story, but yet a modern one: this cultural counterpoint starts back in the XVIIIth century when immigration to Mexico, among other American territories, became an economical strategy for the survival of rural families in northern Spain. In strict sense, Indianos were those who return home with a fortune after a whole life of hard work in America; but they were the least, most of them didn´t return at all, either because they had no fortune or their lifes were rooted or ended in America. Those who became rich enough through minery, cattle, commerce or agriculture, also became elite in the colonial society. Yet it was at the end of the XIX century and the beginning of the XXth when the Indianos became a powerful community in Spain as well as in Mexico. By then, 1 two hundred years of social networks in the Spanish Colony in Mexico included new and old Indianos´ families. About that time, in the second decade of the XXth century, Mexican Neocolonial architecture became a cultural expression of a modern Mexican-Hispanic nationalist proyect. The first and second Mexican generations of rationalists architects such as Federico Mariscal, Ángel Torres Torrija, Manuel Ortiz Monasterio, Bernardo Calderón, Carlos Obregón Santacilia, Juan Segura, Luis Barragán among others, design their first buildings through this hispanic imaginary. Though Neocolonial style has being considered one single cultural expression – mainly hispanic modernism developed by the members of the Ateneo Mexicano - it responds to a wide range of Mexican spatial imaginaries of lo español. [ images ] Though it ows its name to the revival of colonial barroque as an arquetype of modern national architecture, it also refers to rural Mexican architecture (haciendas and cortijos), to Mexican imaginaries of regional architecture from Andalucía and Extremadura, to the North American hispanism of historians, travelers and photographers linked to the intelectual circuit of Harpers´Magazine , to the English and Spanish romantic image of an exotic Spain widespread in architectural magazines of Primo de Rivera period, to the California- Hollywood revival of Spanish style and to traditional architecture from northern Spain imagined by the Spanish Colony in Mexico. [images] This last particular expression of Neocolonial style was also used in the new urban spaces of the “modern” Mexican middle class. This northern Spanish architecture was design by Mexican architects and the phenomena reveals the intimitate social and economical connections between the Spanish Colony and the Mexican architects. A relation that points out the continuity of “old” hispanic cultural traditions imagined by the immigrants and sheltered in the modern cultural imaginary of this guild. Furthermore it reveals common cultural identitary values between Indianos´architecture and Mexican Neocolonial architecture, which represent: . a Latin American formula of modernity: progress-catholisism- hidalguía . identitary loyalty not to a Nation but to a region . identitary loyalty not to a king or a national State but to a family and a social class . a puritan catholic point of view towards labor . social enhancement (nobility) through labor 2 3. Social enhancement through labor, is a social and cultural value strongly represented in these counterpointed architectures. But, ¿how is labor a common and fundamental issue for these two cultural worlds? ¿why is it important for them to point it out through architecture? [images] The main reason for a considerable amount of population of northern Spain to immigrate to New Spain in the Ancien Regime ot to Mexico at the beginning of the XXth century has to do with a peasant social and economical structure based on mayorazgos and infanzonados. This meant that land property couldn´t be divided among the members of a family and it was inheritated by the oldest child (son or daughter), who had to look after the family. This economical model left all the rest of children, specially men, without land o fortune, so it was a common strategy to develop temporal jobs (handling cattle, commerce) or to immigrate to America, specially tu Cuba and Mexico. At their arrival in Mexico, these secundones integrated immediately to an economical and social net created by older immigrants, usually people from the same family or at least the same village, where they initiate a long and hard process of making fortune mainly through commerce, minery and cattle. Most of these northern immigrants came with the noble title of hidalgo, which was very common among the peasants of the Castillian highlands due to old medieval privileges still in use in modern times. Up until the XIXth century, when these immigrant hidalgos after years of work adquired fortune they bought higher Spanish noble ranks so by the beginnings of the XXth century this highlanders social and economical networks that had survived the civil Mexican wars (the so called independent wars) were very wealthy and part of the Mexican social elite. This Indianos, being elite or middle class, saw itself as an aristocrat american class built through the hardships of labor. The virtues considered most important were: love for the land (homeland), industrious attitude, spirit of enterprise, love for saving, sacrifice and patriotism. In modern times – as it happen during the Ancien Regime- those who had fortune, small or big, kept on sending money to their villages to be used by their families in the construction of public and religious architecture, as well as for bridges, roads, dams, etc. Some of them became real art patrons not only in their own villages, but in main cities such as Madrid, Santander and Barcelona, for by the end of the XIX century those families who became elite in Mexico introduced themselves in the Spanish and European aristocracy and as well as urban high class. Their old rural villages became for them mythical homelands, but their money and their lives turned towards the modern big cities. Indianos´ architecture in Spain has being studied as a wide range of imaginaries that include regional vernacular architecture of the Ancien Regime as well as the incredibly exotic and bizarre palaces built along the Cantabrian Coast at the end of the XIXth. [image] But Indianos´architecture was far more complex, rich and numerous in Mexico (and in Latin America) where this immigrants invested their fortune enhancing and patronizing the 3 villages and cities they lived in. Many churches, plazas, forts, convents, public buildings, domestic architecture and industrial architecture (haciendas, trapiches, mines, harbors, etc.) of Mexican regions linked to the cattle and mining industry were constructed by these catholic capitalists. [image] By the beginning of the XXth century, these people settled in capital cities working, mainly in the commercial and finantial (banks) nets. So when in 1922 philosopher José Cantú Corro wrote “ Renacimiento de la Arquitectura Colonial”, ( Arquitectura ,1922) which is a defense of the new Neocolonial Mexican style as a nationalist architecture, it is not strange he turns to the formula: progress-catholicism-hidalguía: [Hace falta el acercamiento de todos los que formamos la gran raza hispano-americana. Ante las amenazas de poder aboservente del sajón, ante los ensachamientos del coloso del Norte, es un deber sagrado y patriótico identificarnos los que hemos nacido bajo este espléndido cielo con los que allende los mares, alientan el mismo espíritu hidalgo, cabelleresco y progresista. Testimonio de esta cohesión espiritual es el resurgimiento de la arquitectura netamente mejicana.] Those of us who belong to the great Hispanic American race should get closer. It is a sacred and patriot duty, in the face of the saxon´s absorbing power and the expansion of the giant of the North, to identify ourselves, been born under this splendid sky, with those who overseas encourage the same hidalgo, chivalrous and progressive spirit. Testimony of this spiritual cohesion is the revival of [this] authentic Mexican architecture. [image] 4. In Mexico City, this particular “Indiano”- Neocolonial architecture was not only inspired in northern Spanish vernacular housing. Some of it has remarkable resemblance to Andalucian palaces design by German architects in Madrid in the early twenties. Nevertheless, the use of coat of arms, towers and highlander type of balconies are always present. This architecture became quite well known by the Mexican middle class through sections of design and architecture in El Universal and Excelsior, the most important newspapers of the city. Mexican architects such as Alfonso Gutiérrez, Alfonso Pallares, Raúl Arredondo and Luis Prieto Souza, editors of these sections, were linked socially and/or related to the Spanish Colony. In the other hand, architectural magazines such as El Arquitecto, Arquitectura y Cemento, in there sections “Modern construction” patronized this Neocolonial imaginaries as national modern architecture parallel to German, American and French new rationalist architecture. What is most interesting, is that this Neocolonial imaginaries widespread in the new modern middle class neighbourhoods financed by Mexican, Spanish, North American and English investors, through Neocolonial housing models design by the Society of Mexican Architects (SAM). Actually, in this decade the urban-social presence of the Spanish Colony was so intense in the city´s every day life that national Spanish festivals, such as the “Fiesta de la Virgen de la Covadonga”, were celebrated in the main streets of the Mexican capital. 4 The recognition of Indiano- Neocolonial architecture as an image of progress [“nobility of labor”] introduces in the Mexican range of modern cultural imaginaries , an hispanic cultural model of modern architecture as opposed to the anglosaxon/german model. Yet, it is a particular one: it is not a nation nor a nationalist culture that links Indiano- Neocolonial architectures, nor a international hispanism, but a social class idea of labor, progress and nobility shared by this immigrants and their social Mexican networks. This is an alternative cultural map for the invention of modernity in Latin American during the early XXth century that expands the concept of Latin American boundaries. Bibliography Lozoya, Johanna, “ Formas de lo español en las revistas mexicanas de arquitectura, 19201929”: Agustín Sánchez Andrés, Tomás Pérez Vejo y Marco Antonio Landavazo (coord.), Imágenes e imaginarios sobre España en México. Siglos XIX y XX, México, Porrúa, 2007, pp. 491-522. ISBN 970-07-6851-1 Lozoya, Johanna, “ Relatos sobre antimodernidad: el estilo neocolonial en las historias mexicanas de la arquitectura”, Madrid, Revista Goya, num. 322, 2008, pp. 53-66. ISSN 0017-2715 Sazatornil Ruiz, Luis (ed.), Arte y mecenazgo indiano. Del Cantábrico al Caribe, Gijón, Ediciones Trea, 2007. ISBN 978-84-9704-290-1 5