By: Christian Figueroa
The plans for the building of the capital of Chile Santiago. This map demonstrates The colonial urban planning of the Spanish Empire and how Santiago Chile is a prime example of how Spanish layouts were performed and made during the 18th century. The map provides us with a visual representation and information of how Spanish urban planning was based on Colonial Administration and social hierarchy throughout Latin America.
The Urban Design of the map of Santiago demonstrates a pattern with Spanish legal code and how they govern urban planning throughout the colonies. They commonly used grid-based systems of layout. Which reflected Spain’s control over their colonial colonies and territories as well as their methods of Imposing order. The grip pattern created an effective way to manage cities and facilitate administrative control as well as provide religious and Commercial activities. For example if you look at land marker a it shows a Center Square plaza where nothing is built and this indicates that it’s the center of the city. This also reflects the religious power of Catholicism that has a hold on Spanish Urban Planning As demonstrated on landmark number one there’s a cathedral located next to the plaza. This provides a key indicator on which and where government buildings will also be built and where centralized control of the town will be administered. This can also symbolize both the spiritual and Administrative power that has over the center town.
The spiritual power is also a demonstration of how the Catholic Church within Colonial urban planning is embedded and intertwined with the creation of many of the towns around Latin America. The Reason why is because the relationship institutions served a big role in Colonial governance for example Catholic Church administrative bookkeeping throughout the colony for example keeping baptismal records and historical documentation of current events. You can see throughout the town you have the central Cathedral labeled by landmarker 1 as well as landmark number 11 demonstrating the “Noviciado de los Jesuitas”. The placements are very key to colonial power structure as it demonstrates governance and religious institutions and infrastructure are closely intertwined and held at high levels of power.
This leads to social structure because of urban planning. The map demonstrates to us the centralized control of people’s lives. The town is built upon filtering people into the Center Plaza and then throughout the town. As well as how social hierarchy is placed within the capital of Santiago. By looking at the center plaza and the buildings that are located around it you can make an inference. The people who are held in high regard are concentrated within the areas of the Central Plaza, those being Colonial Elites which include Spanish settlers administrators like the Creoles and clergy. Therefore, from walking away from the center of town you start to filter out those Elites and get into more areas in which lower classes or indigenous populations could be living.
There is a Roman comparison in which Romans viewed that people of Rome or within Italy that they were themselves held as Civilized then those leaving the outskirts of Roman empire. The Romans viewed those living outside or on the outskirts of the Empire as barbaric backwards and needing to be civilized. If you were to compare how the Spanish controlled their colonies and administered it, it’s similar to how the Romans did it when expanding their empire. I find that this key detail is very important as colonization reflects similarly to how Romans expanded their empire .
citation
https://jcb.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/detail/JCB~1~1~633~510006:Plano-de-la-Ciudad-de-Santiago-Capi?sort=image_date%2Csubject_groups&qvq=q:plano;sort:image_date%2Csubject_groups;lc:JCB~1~1&mi=13&trs=18