Constructing Mexico City: colonial conflicts over culture, space, and authority

Abstract

Constructing Mexico City: Colonial Conflicts over Culture, Space, and Authority examines the spatial, material, and cultural dimensions of life in eighteenth-century Mexico City, through programs that colonial leaders created to renovate and reshape urban environments. In doing so, this study reveals various points of conflict and discord over how various social groups defined and shared the public spaces in the city, and understood their place within a wider colonial system. Bailey Glasco, drawing on research from numerous archives in Mexico City, sheds new light on the critical roles that urban planning and renewal played in the social and cultural dynamics of the city, as well as how it anticipated early definitions of modern Mexican identity.