Tlacotalpan

Site information

• Official name: Historic Monuments Zone of Tlacotalpan
• Location: Veracruz, Mexico
• Type: Cultural
• Year of inscription: 1998

Tlacotalpan, a Mexican city in the vicinity of Veracruz, was originally founded as a Spanish colonial town in the sixteenth century and gradually grew into a sizeable trading center because of its important location as a river port. While it was a major trading hub in the nineteenth century, the economic significance of Tlacotalpan greatly diminished with the advent of the railway toward the end of the nineteenth century, and the town went into decline. Today, however, the small town is famous as one of the best-preserved Spanish colonial settlements in Mexico. It retains both the original colonial grid plan and a remarkable range of historical buildings dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century

History

Not much is known about the pre-Hispanic history of Tlacotalpan. The region was inhabited for some centuries by the Toltecs, and it is believed that in the late fifteenth century the Aztec empire made an attempt to expand in the region. Although they left little lasting settlement in the area, the influence of the Aztecs lingers on in the name Tlacotalpan, a vulgarization of a Nahuatl word meaning "land between the rivers," which was adopted by Spanish settlers around 1550.

Spanish colonists in the Early Modern period were heavily influenced by Renaissance and humanist conceptions of the perfect city that emphasized symmetry and order and, consequently, they sought to develop rigidly planned cities. Tlacotalpan retains, almost entirely, the distinctive checkerboard grid pattern of urban development on which the original settlement was planned in the sixteenth century.

Tlacotalpan was established as a relatively small fishing and trading port and grew modestly. The population in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remained small. In the first three centuries after Columbus, Spanish emigration to the Americas significantly exceeded that of all other European countries. However, the colonial economy in Spanish America was still dependent on the enslavement and forced transportation of Africans as well as the imposition of exploitative work contract systems (termed successively the encomienda and repartimento systems) on the native population. Moreover, although Spanish settlers often intermarried with the local population, a system of cultural and ethnic separation almost certainly existed and persisted throughout colonial rule. Tlacotalpan, like all Spanish colonial cities, bore evidence of this separation in its cultural fabric. The city was divided into two very distinct enclaves, one for Spanish settlers and one for the native population, which can still be seen today. As in most colonial settlements, the population of enslaved Africans tended to live separately from the Spanish in the "native" quarter of the city.

The heyday of Tlacotalpan was the nineteenth century when the city came to serve as an important trading port. By the mid-nineteenth century ships left Tlacotalpan for Europe, Veracruz, and the Caribbean. The town attracted migration in this period and grew into a mid-sized city. While the basic layout of the town is preserved from the colonial era, the majority of the current buildings, particularly major structures, are from this era when economic growth prompted urban investment and development. The influence of the Spanish colonial era on the artistic and architectural development of the early Mexican state is itself reflected in such sites as the neoclassical San Cristobal church, built in 1849. In the nineteenth century Tlacotalpan attracted artists and musicians, such as Augustin Lara. However, in the twentieth century the development of railways ended the economic significance of Tlacotalpan, a river port, and the city declined.

Significance

Tlacotalpan always remained a relatively small city and witnessed few major historical events. However, it is recognized today as a major national heritage site by Mexico and a world heritage site by UNESCO on the basis of its unique preservation of Spanish colonial architecture and town planning. The economic decline of Tlacotalpan in the twentieth century has left the city relatively untouched by modern industrialization, and the edifice of the city remains remarkably intact from the colonial era.

The architecture of the city is notable for combining Spanish colonial planning with some Caribbean features of development. The city is, for instance, characterized by its distinctive colonnaded houses topped by colorful and intricately designed arcades which, though clearly Spanish in inspiration, emphasize a notable Caribbean influence, particularly in the variety of colors employed in the design of the archways. Although the town has suffered some damage, most notably from a 2010 flood, the majority of the city is remarkably well preserved. Moreover, while the majority of buildings date from the nineteenth century, the layout of the town has been essentially preserved since the sixteenth century, and some buildings from the late colonial period, such as the baroque church of San Miguelito, remain standing.

Bibliography

Bailey, G.A., et al. "Spain and Spanish America in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Current Trends in Scholarship." Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 1, Spring 2009, pp. 1–60

Castillo, Milton Montejano, and Tarsicio Pastrana Salcedo. "Urban Form, Heritage, and Disaster Prevention: What Do They Have in Common? International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation, vol. 9, no. 9, 2015, pp. 1158–62.

Deans-Smith, S. "Creating the Colonial Subject: Casta Paintings, Collectors, and Critics in Eighteenth-Century Mexico and Spain." Colonial Latin American Review, vol.14, no. 2, 2005, pp. 169–204.

Elliot, J. H., Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830. Yale UP, 2007.

Funari, Pedro Paulo A., and Maria Ximena Senatore, editors. Archaeology of Culture Contact and Colonialism in Spanish and Portuguese America. Springer, 2015.

Historic Monuments Zone of Tlacotalpan. World Heritage List. World Heritage Cultural Centre, UNESCO, 2016. whc.unesco.org/en/list/862.