Cuando la ciudad tiene imagencronología del traslado de la ciudad de Guatemala. 1773-1776

Abstract

The content of the paper poses the constraints on the proposal of the urban design of the new city of Guatemala, based on the doctoral research that exposes the opportunity that the political system had to carry out a socioeconomic restructuring, from the transfer of the city to a new territory. In the eighteenth century, the city of Santiago was the third most important city in Spanish America; The bastion of power and the fundamental center of the Kingdom of Guatemala. The system of government instituted after the conquest was governed by the Monarchy, with a local government and a social and ecclesiastical structure that exerted a control and control over the indigenous population for the generation of wealth. The dynamics of the city was the reflection of the political system itself. The grid pattern of the colonial cities in America was the basis for the distribution of the social fabric. In the center, the square was the fundamental piece of all population nucleus and, being located around this one, the main factories of the authorities of government, city council and religious. The social pyramid was dispersed around this center of power and conformed by families favored by the Crown at the time of the conquest. Most powerful classes had their residence in it, a convenient place for economic and administrative activities. The earthquakes of 1773 that destroyed Guatemala city, located in the Panchoy Valley, now La Antigua Guatemala, originated the later transfer of this one in 1776, providing a new urban landscape in the place destined for its new settlement, Ermita valleye. The choice of the site for the transfer of the city and the same action was the subject of great debates between the local, municipal and religious imperial authorities that put the citizens in check. The decision to make the transfer to the Ermita valley not only resulted in the reorganization of political and social classes, but the possibility of reestablishing a tax order. In the midst of the great controversy and outcome of the events, the Neoclassical made way for the opportunity to emerge from the foundations of the factories as the predominant style, leaving the Guatemalan baroque to one side. For many urban planners, the laws proposed by King Carlos III outlined the urban silhouette of the city that sympathized with Enlightenment thinking, but beyond that the city was actually designed on the basis of the Ordinances of 1573 by Philip II . Thus, in addition to this criterion, the style itself was accompanied by a series of urbanistic details typical of the valley, which proposed a sober landscape that would develop at the end of the eighteenth century and the whole of the nineteenth century. The plan of the new city of Guatemala carried out by the Major Architect of the Crown, Marcos Ibáñez, forms a series of transformations on the great chessboard, traditional of the American cities, but modified according to the necessary conditions and that in the work Concludes as "opportunities". The layout of squares, temples and apples formed the ideal city for the political system, and its design was preconceived to optimize the experiences of its predecessor. The topography of the valley projected the solution of the floods and drains; The predisposition of apples and large temples would promote the health necessary for the population and the layout of the squares for was the need to strengthen the potable water service. All these conditions forged the Guatemalan urban horizon that proposed a picturesque landscape.