ABSTRACT
Metropolis, for the Greeks, was the mother city and, for the Romans, the capital of a province. The inhabitants of the Spanish American metropolises could thus build up an urban identity by proclaiming themselves the centre rather than the periphery; they placed themselves in the first globalisation as emporia of a culture built from bits and pieces from home and abroad. The tracing of a fabulous and fanciful genealogy of the Spanish American urban creation, manipulative of the records of its etymology and its toponymy, served the purpose of turning the Renaissance city of the conquistadors into a Creole metropolis. In the face of the Renaissance and empirical model implicit in chronicles of the Indies and geographical accounts, the Creole urban myths projected a new loyalty, based on a Baroque topology, with an exuberant reading of the symbols and rhythms of its own nature, also hagiographic due to its aim of exemplifying and disciplining those inhabiting it.
