Stars & Stones: Astronomy and Archaeology in the Works of the Mexican Polymath Antonio León y Gama, 1735–1802

Itinerario ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Pimentel
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Construction Work ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mary Louise Pratt ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

The main square of Mexico City, known as the Zocalo, occupies a central place in the make-up of the city, the nation, and even the national identity of Mexico. As we all know, the conquistadors built Mexico City on the site of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire. Indeed, the ruins of the Great Temple of the old city lie hidden under the square itself. This essay deals with the moment when the native past began to emerge from beneath the plaza, when a viceroy had the ground paved, and undertook a series of public works to solve the problems of drainage and water channelling which had existed throughout the history of the city. In his effort to modernise, the viceroy brought his contemporaries face to face with a long-buried past. For amidst the construction work two great archaeological pieces were discovered in 1790. These findings were subsequently studied by the multi-talented Creole, Antonio León y Gama, one of the most steadfast representatives of the Enlightenment in New Spain. By examining elements of Leon y Gama's work, I want to do a bit of historical excavation myself and reveal the existence of what we might describe, following Mary Louise Pratt, as a contact zone—one in which contemporary tools for investigatively ordering time and space were brought to bear on natural and cultural phenomena alike, in order to situate Mexico and its cultural heritage historically as well as geographically.

Divine Idea and ‘our Mother’: Elite and Popular Understanding in the Cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 240-260
Author(s):  
D. A. Brading
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Our Lady Of Guadalupe ◽  
Great Learning ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vain Attempt ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

In 1648 the creole elite of Mexico City was enthralled to learn that in December 1531 the Virgin Mary had appeared to a poor Indian and had miraculously imprinted on his cape the likeness of herself, which was still venerated in the chapel at Tepeyac just outside the city limits. The moment was opportune, since in 1622 Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna had completed the construction of a new sanctuary devoted to Our Lady of Guadalupe and in 1629 the image had been brought to the cathedral in a vain attempt to lower the flood waters that engulfed the capital for four years. In effect, Image of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God of Guadalupe (1648) was a heartfelt response to the growth in devotion to the Mexican Virgin; and its author, Miguel Sánchez, wrote as if inspired by a particular revelation, since his only guides were oral tradition and the stimulus of other apparition narratives. A creole priest, renowned for his piety, patriotism and great learning, Sánchez appears to have modelled his account on Murillo’s history of Our Lady of Pilar and her apparition at Zaragoza to St James, which is to say, to Santiago, the patron saint of Spain.

The Modern City

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIANE E. DAVIS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Political Alliances ◽  
The Social ◽  
Shifting Balance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City ◽  
Rich History

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.

Out of Tlatelolco’s Ruins: Patronage, Devotion, and Natural Disaster at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, 1745–1781

2013 ◽  
Vol 93 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ramírez ◽  
William B. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
City Center ◽  
The Social ◽  
Promotional Efforts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bourbon Reforms ◽  
Disease Epidemics ◽  
The City

Abstract Colonial inhabitants of Mexico City were accustomed to coping with natural disasters, including disease epidemics, droughts, floods, and earthquakes, which menaced rich and poor alike and stirred fervent devotion to miraculous images and their shrines. This article revisits the late colonial history of the shrine of Our Lady of the Angels, an image preserved miraculously on an adobe wall in the Indian quarter of Santiago Tlatelolco. The assumption has been that archiepiscopal authorities aiming to deflect public worship toward a more austere, interior spirituality suppressed activities there after 1745 because they saw the devotion as excessively Indian and Baroque. The shrine has served as a barometer of eighteenth-century Bourbon reforms even though its story has not been fully told. This article explores the politics of patronage in the years after the shrine’s closure and in the decades prior to the arrival on the scene of a new Spanish patron in 1776, revealing that Indian caretakers kept the faith well beyond the official intervention, with some help from well-placed Spanish devotees and officials. The efforts of the new patron, a Spanish tailor from the city center, to renovate the building and image and secure the necessary permissions and privileges helped transform the site into one of the most famous in the capital. Attention to earlier patterns of patronage and to the social response to a series of tremors that coincided with his promotional efforts helps to explain why a devotion so carefully managed for enlightened audiences was nevertheless cut from old cloth.

History of the Torre Latinoamericana

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Beckhart
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Construction Projects ◽  
Historic District ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Construction ◽  
Historic City ◽  
The City

Historians have extensively explored the topic of architecture in Mexico City in the 20th century. From the relationships between politics, public patrons, new construction technologies, and new idioms of modernism, the impressive story of architecture in this megalopolis continues to astound and captivate people’s imaginations. Architecture was a channel that politicians used to address housing, education, and health care needs in a rapidly growing city. Yet scholars have not been especially concerned with private construction projects and their influence on the process of shaping and being shaped by the visual representation of Mexico City. Private building projects reveal an alternative reality of the city—one not envisioned by politicians and public institutions. Private construction projects in the historic city center are particularly interesting due to their location. These buildings are built on ancient clay lakebeds and volcanic soil on which the Aztecs first built the city. Not only are these buildings located in the heart of the city, the buildings in the rest of the historic district are also sinking. Any building in a historic district that has withstood the test of time should be an object of interest to scholars. The Torre Latinoamericana is perhaps the only building in the historic district and the entire city that ceases to sink, and instead floats! Located on the corner of Madero and San Juan de Letrán, the building sits at the heart of history, culture, and ancient Aztec clay lakebeds. The Torre Latinoamericana was built between 1948 and 1956 and is one of the most important visual symbols of resilience and modernity in Mexico City today.

Art and Science: or Bach as an Expositor of the Bible

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 343-353
Author(s):  
W. R. Ward
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
The State ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Moment

For a long time before dramatic recent events it has been clear that the German Democratic Republic has been in die position, embarrassing to a Marxist system, of having nothing generally marketable left except (to use the jargon) ‘superstructure’. The Luther celebrations conveniendy bolstered the implicit claim of the GDR to embody Saxony’s long-delayed revenge upon Prussia; still more conveniendy, they paid handsomely. Even the Francke celebrations probably paid their way, ruinous though his Orphan House has been allowed to become. When I was in Halle, a hard-pressed government had removed the statue of Handel (originally paid for in part by English subscriptions) for head-to-foot embellishment in gold leaf, and a Handel Festival office in the town was manned throughout the year. Bach is still more crucial, both to the republic’s need to pay its way and to the competition with the Federal Republic for the possession of the national tradition. There is no counterpart in Britain to the strength of the Passion-music tradition in East Germany. The celebrations which reach their peak in Easter Week at St Thomas’s, Leipzig, are like a cross between Wembley and Wimbledon here, the difference being that the black market in tickets is organized by the State for its own benefit. If Bach research in East Germany, based either on musicology or the Church, has remained an industry of overwhelming amplitude and technical complexity, the State has had its own Bach-research collective located in Leipzig, dedicated among other things to establishing the relation between Bach and the Enlightenment, that first chapter in the Marxist history of human liberation. Now that a good proportion of the population of the GDR seems bent on liberation by leaving the republic or sinking it, the moment seems ripe to take note for non-specialist readers of some of what has been achieved there in recent years.

scholarly journals On the Issue of Creating a Russian Agent Network in Shanghai at the Beginning of the 20th Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Drobotushenko Evgeny V. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

The history of the creation of the agent network of the Russian Empire has not found comprehensive coverage in scientific publications so far. The existing research referred to specific names or mention private facts. This predetermined the relevance of the work. The object of the study is the Russian agents in China in general and in Chinese Shanghai, in particular. The subject is the study of peculiarities of the first attempts in creating Russian agent network in the city. The aim of the work is to analyze the attempt to create a network of Russian illegal agents in Shanghai in 1906–1908. The lack of materials on the problem in scientific and popular scientific publications predetermined the use of previously unknown or little-known archival sources. This is the correspondence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Russian Imperial envoy in Beijing and the Russian Consul in Shanghai stored in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (SARF). The main conclusion of the study was the remark about the lack of scientific elaboration, at the moment, the history of official, legal and illegal agents of the Russian Empire in Shanghai, China. Private findings suggest that, judging by the available data, creation of a serious network of agents in the city during the Russian Empire failed. The reasons for this, presumably, were several: the lack of qualified agents with knowledge of Chinese or, at least, English, who could work effectively; the lack of funds for the maintenance of agents, a small number of Russian citizens, the remoteness of Shanghai from the Russian-Chinese border, etc. A network of agents will be created in the city by the Soviet authorities by the middle of the third decade of the 20th century, and Soviet illegal agents began to work in the early 1920s. The History of Soviet agents in China and Shanghai, in particular, is studied quite well which cannot be said about the previous period. It is obvious that further serious work with archival sources is required to recreate as complete as possible the history of Russian legal and illegal agents in Shanghai in pre-Soviet times

scholarly journals Quarantine conditions of education and life of Osyp Bodiansky in 1830–1831 (according to the letters of the Bodіansky brothers)

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 96-103
Author(s):  
Vita Bova
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
One Year ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
Academic Year

The chronological boundaries of this study cover one academic year. That was the last year of Osyp Bodiansky’s studies at the Poltava (Pereiaslav) Seminary. The main source base consists of Osyp and Fedir Bodiansky’s letters from Pereiaslav addressed to their parents. The article aims to study the quarantine period of Osyp Bodiansky’s life in Pereiaslav during the second cholera pandemic. It is an attempt to recreate one year of Osyp Bodiansky’s life from the moment he arrived to study before leaving for Moscow. The sequence of events helps to answer the question: where did O. Bodiansky live, how did he earn from the conditions, what was distance education in 1830–1831 like, how did he manage to avoid cholera? This year began with finding a good apartment and a trip to Kyiv to buy some books. O. Bodiansky planned to re- ceive 660 rubles from the conditions. In October, the seminary was quarantined and all the students were sent home. There were two attempts to resume the study, but cholera reached Pereiaslav and the study did not take place. O. Bodiansky completed a full seminar course in Pereiaslav only in September 1831 and went to continue his studies at Moscow University. The main focus of the article is the quarantine conditions of study in the seminary and the life in the city. This study has a prosopographic context, which contributes to the retrospective of the social portrait of O. Bodiansky and the city of that time. Osyp Bodyansky was one of those who studied in this city and kept in touch with the locals throughout his life. His character was formed here together with the desire to know the truth, love for the Ukrainian way of life.The relevance of the study of such a historical figure as O. Bodiansky, who made a significant contribution to the preservation and development of Ukrainian history and culture in the Moscow ideology, is dictated by the socio-political realities of today when Ukrainian culture once again needs protection and promotion. This is a human-dimensional vision of both the history of a particular region (in this case, Pereiaslav in the early nineteenth century) and the understanding of a person of a particular era and region as a person, not a known historical figure without any ideological involvement.

scholarly journals PROBLEMS OF EVACUATION HOSPITALS OF THE KRASNOYARSK REGION IN 1941–1943 AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF V. F. VOYNO-YASENETSKY (ST. LUKA)

2018 ◽  
pp. 46-52
Author(s):  
S. V. Kozhevnikov
Keyword(s):  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Hospital System ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Goal ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The current paper is the first to present some of the key activities and operational problems of evacuation hospitals in the city of Krasnoyarsk and the whole hospital system of the Krasnoyarsk territory in the first years of the Great Patriotic war. In addition, the paper touches upon the key aspects of the medical, pedagogical and scientific work of the famous surgeon V. F. Voino-Yasenetsky (St. Luka), who worked in Krasnoyarsk evacuation hospitals in 1941 – 1943. The research goal is to reveal the foundations of the diverse activities of evacuation hospitals for the treatment of wounded patients from the moment of their arrival by the military-sanitary trains in the city, further sorting and hospitalization of the wounded into a specialized or General surgical hospital, as well as stressing the importance of the rescue activity conducted by professor and surgeon V. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky in the system of evacuation hospitals. The results of this study can be used by historians of the war period, including those who are involved in the study of history of medicine during the wartime and V. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky's biographers.

The Orchid family (Orchidaceae Juss.) on the territory of Chernivtsi: horological and phytocoenotical features

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-244
Author(s):  
Alla Tokaryuk ◽  
Tetiana Nykyrsa ◽  
Illia Chorney ◽  
Vasyl Budzhak ◽  
Ksenia Korzhan
Keyword(s):  
Orchid Species ◽  
Council Directive ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Bern Convention ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anacamptis Palustris ◽  
The Moment ◽  
National Significance ◽  
The City

The article reports about chorology, phytocenotic, biotopical features of 24 orchid species (Orchidaceae Juss.) on the territory of Chernivtsi. The history of studying orchids in the city is described. The authors give the cadastre of locations of orchids based on studies of material at the herbariums (CHER, KW, LE, LW, МНА), literary sources and own collecting expeditions. There found 24 species of orchids in Chernivtsi. 6 of them (Anacamptis coriophora (L.) R.M. Bateman, Pridgeon et M.W. Chase s.l., A. palustris (Jacq.) R.M. Bateman, Pridgeon et M.W. Chase, Corallorhiza trífida Châtel., Dactylorhiza cordigera (Fries) Soó, Orchis purpurea Huds. та О. signifera Vest.) are not been confirmed by modern collecting expeditions, 3 of them (Anacamptis palustris, Orchis purpurea, О. signifera) were listed from herbarium and literary sources of the second half of ХІХ century. At the moment these species and their habitats are suspected to have been lost due to urban transformation. 17 species (70,8%) of orchids have been found in 1-5 habitats, and 7 species (29,2%) – in 6-20 habitats. Orchids are the part of 4 alliance 4 orders and 2 classes of natural vegetation Carpino-Fagetea sylvaticae Jakucs ex Passarge 1968 and Molinio-Arrhenatheretea Tx. 1937 and 5 types of habitats (4 of them are natural and 1 – synanthropic) on the territory of Chernivtsi. Natural plant communities with orchids belong to 4 habitats from Annex I of the Council Directive – 9130, 9170, 6510, 6440 and 4 biotopes listed in Resolution №4 of the Bern Convention – G1.6, G1.A1, E2.2, Е3.4. Remnants of natural forest biotopes having orchids were survived by the designation of landscape sanctuary – «Tsetsino» (430 ha) the object of national significance and «Haryachyy Urban» (108 ha) the object of regional significance. There are 11 and 2 species of orchids on the territory of «Tsetsinо» and «Haryachyy Urban» respectively. Cultivated coenosis of the biggest Park Architecture Monument of regional significance «Zhovtnevyy» (63,5 ha) have 3 speсies of orchids. 4 species are not protected. These results are important for follow-up monitoring measures on rare species of plants in Chernivtsi.

Dreaming dialectically: The death and life of the Mexico City charter for the right to the city

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (10) ◽  
pp. 2064-2079
Author(s):  
Ben Gerlofs
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Political History ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Henri Lefebvre ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This article investigates the conceptual and political history of the right to the city in Mexico City from the late 1980s to the present, focusing especially on the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City completed and endorsed by leading political figures in 2010. By grounding this investigation in the dialectical methods of Henri Lefebvre, the article builds on roughly 12 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork in Mexico City to argue that all such instantiations of the right to the city are bound to commit a certain violence against the idea. What the Mexico City case also suggests, however, is that such a dialectical concept is also always radically open to revivification and reimagining, as exemplified by the return of the right to the city in Mexico City’s 2017 constitution. Analysing the right to the city and its attendant politics and history from this vantage allows two crucial and underappreciated insights to emerge from this case: that the right to the city can be and sometimes is pursued under alternative auspices, and that any apparent stasis, even political death, is best considered temporary and mutable.

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