2020 | Building Peace through Heritage
As a tribute to the Twelve Apostles, the primary disciples of Jesus Christ, the Spanish Crown decided
to send 12 mendicants. These monks tried to convert the indigenous population with different methods.
The locals didn’t want to adopt the new religion, after all, they already had a religious identity.
The first attempts were violent; the preachers burned Mesoamerican worship temples and ritual artifacts,
which they believed was work of the Devil. Succeeding these cruel events, the missionaries
resolute to convert the Amerindians looking for similarities between the Catholic religion and their
polytheistic religion, and adapting some local lore to the catholic celebrations. For example, the architectural
expression materialized with a wide forecourt and an open chapel that offered a solution
to the indigenous population that were used to celebrate their rituals at open air. Another example is
the implementation of native physiognomic characteristics in some of the religious icons or Mexican
fauna and flora as shown in Fig. 2 2 . This is one of the reasons these monasteries have such particular
architecture style.
Fig.2 - Atrial cross from the Temple and Former Convent of Saint Michael the Archangel in Huejotzingo Puebla
(Ríos, n.d.)
Building religious infrastructure
“The religious people who did the Spiritual Conquest found out that the Amerindians already had an
important cultural background on topics such as hydraulics, architecture and theology” (Von-Mentz,
2009).
The monasteries built in the 16th century were designed from the inspiration of European monasteries
blueprints and adapting the new materials and topography. The new architectural concept is represented
visually in Fig. 3 and Fig 4. “The characteristics of the novo Hispanic monasteries are very alike.
Consisting of a church built aside the monastery, an open chapel, resting chapels and a big atrium surrounding
the buildings, that was essentially used for parties and preaching because the spaces inside
the church were too small to perform massive celebrations” (Reyes, 2000). “Each section that compose
the architectural space fulfilled a teaching function, as in the atriums of the Monasteries or in their open
chapels, reason of the proportions of those spaces, since the number of evangelized indigenous was
big” (Monterroso, 1978).
2
The atrial cross is an example of the tequitqui art. The tequitqui term was created by Jose Moreno Villa to categorize artistic
works with a fusion of Spanish and Indigenous elements especially in representations of religious symbols.
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