ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the Casa de Montejo’s facade operated within the space of representation as a sign both of conformity to monarchical ideologies and of deviation from them. The building’s visual rhetoric influenced the evolving royal legislation governing town formation in Hispanic America. Beginning with some information regarding how the Casa de Montejo became a permanent feature of Merida, the chapter analyzes the plaza’s importance in Hispanic American urbanism through a discussion of Merida’s plan. Additional documents reveal further ideas about the sixteenth-century building’s importance to Merida’s urban development. The chapter argues that the Montejo palace’s facade acquired new meaning as not only a signifier of Spanish culture but also a site of agency for Yucatan’s first governor. The fact that the gridded urb was considered necessary to fostering civic culture inspires speculations about the urban form as a rhetorical incarnation of the Spanish cultural order, the apex of which was the monarch and church.
