Paganism and religiosity in popular mexican architecture: From Aztlán to northern California

Abstract

The historic cities gained prominence through their victories and the scale of their ritual and secular ceremonies. In the present day, political and economic issues have obscured the religious identity of cities. However, man carries the past within him, being himself a product of earlier times, and he manifests this in folkloric expressions of the built environment.

Amongst the popular architecture of America, that found in Mexico requires special consideration given that, despite the country’s geographic location within North America, it continues to have its own strongly rooted culture. This independence of traditions and rituals is reflected in Mexican vernacular architecture, thus giving us the opportunity to analyse it as a cultural phenomenon stretching from Mexico to northern California. We will see here that the roots of Mexican collective imagination sink deep into the Spanish conquest to arise in the present in the form of a "new" architectural aesthetic.