From the holy place to the civil place. Spaces for the dead in the urban configuration of the city of Zacatecas

Abstract

The spaces designated for the burial of the dead reflect the life of the civilization that created them. Therefore, it’s of utmost importance to observe them not only in their morphological and architectural conception, but also in their relationship to the geographic space where they are located. This perspective allows us to relate the space for the dead to the different factors that link it to the city, such as the social powers manifest in its geographic location and the belief system in space-time. Globally, spaces for the dead have evolved from extramural to intramural and on the contrary, in line with the thinking of societies that, like cities, don’t remain static, but evolve in the quest to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants. The objective of this research is to identify the morphotypological features of spaces for the dead, supported by historical cartography, in order to characterize the influence that social power relations have historically had on their location; posing the problem of explaining how social power relations determined the origin, evolution, and morphotypological characterization of spaces for the dead, using the city of Zacatecas, Mexico, from the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century as a setting; a city of recognized economic power due to its rich silver mines and decisive in the northern expansion of New Spain during the viceroyalty. Based on the basic axis of research, the type developed is qualitative.