San Pedro y San Pablo, Teposcolula, View from Casa de la Cacica

1550-1575

Name(s) currently unknown

Teposcolula, Oaxaca, MEX

The largest 16th-century building to survive in Teposcolula is the Dominican monastic complex, but only a few blocks away, another important building is being excavated. This house or palace, known as Casa de la Cacica (also in Vistas), is believed to have belonged to one of Teposcolula’s ruling families. This photograph, taken from the palace looking toward the church, shows how the palace sits directly on axis with the open chapel, an architectural arrangement that was no coincidence.

Byron Hamann

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Ibarra-Sevilla, Benjamin. 2013. "The First Ribbed Vaults in the Americas: Craft Skills and Construction Processes in the Mixtec Region of Southern Mexico." Construction History 28 (1): 1-25.

Kirakofe, James. 1995. “Architectural Fusion and Indigenous Ideology in Early Colonial Teposcolula.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, XVII, 66: 45-84.

Mullen, Robert. 1998. Architecture and its Sculpture in Viceregal Mexico. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Terraciano, Kevin. 2000. "The Colonial Mixtec Community." Hispanic American Historical Review 80 (1): 1-42.