Disputing the Acoustic Territory: Politics of Sound and Sonic Order in 16th and 17th century Mexico City

Disputing the Acoustic Territory examines the importance of urban sounds—such as bell ringings, town criers, market bustles, and street musicians—in marking communal rhythms, controlling individuals’ sense of time, and defining colonial Mexico City’s identity. Throughout my dissertation, I analyze architectural treatises, maps, town ordinances, laws, chronicles, diaries, and literary texts to show that Mexico City was designed in accordance with acoustic principles of space, which helped Spaniards impose order upon the territory. I also demonstrate that, by shifting our attention to the aural experience of colonial settlements, we can enhance our understanding of the modern and contemporary struggles of Mexico City, as well as uncover power relations unaddressed by traditional approaches that look at colonial literature and urban culture only from visual and textual perspectives. My research intervenes in debates regarding the urbanization of Mexico City and its long-term consequences on the region’s social and economic inequalities. In my dissertation, I propose the concept of “acoustic territory” as a tool to explore the interactions between urban planning and sound, and to show how an acoustic approach to literature can be used to examine past and current social and political conflicts. By examining the organization of the city and cultural and literary polemics through an aural perspective, my work not only advances a more complex and accurate reimagination of the colonial period but also contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between sound, space, and politics in contemporary Mexico City. In Chapter One, I examine the rebuilding of Mexico City after the fall of Tenochtitlan in August 13, 1521. More specifically, I analyze the process of replacing the Mexica drums, which previously regulated everyday life in the territory, with Spanish bells. By focusing on the acoustic aspects of the dispute over the territory, I show the symbolic and political consequences of this acoustic change in the Mexican Valley. In Chapter Two, I study the acoustic practices of Indians in the territory during the first two centuries of Spanish hegemony and the role of such practices in bounding the crowd of rioters during the tumult of June 8, 1692—arguably the most consequential uprising during the colonial period in Mexico. In Chapter Three, I offer two readings of Bernardo de Balbuena’s Grandeza mexicana. On the one hand, I use Balbuena’s poem as a guide to reconstruct the acoustic aspects of the colonial city’s public life; on the other hand, I examine the acoustic intensities of Grandeza mexicana to explore one of the most crucial debates of the colonial period: the polemics of the possession of New Spain, a debate between Criollos and Peninsulars, as well as Indians and Mestizos. Finally, in Chapter Four, I focus on the acoustic experience of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the convent of San Jerónimo. While focusing on Sor Juana, this chapter aims to provide a glimpse of how individual experienced sound during the colonial period. Together, the four chapters of this dissertation serve to reimagine colonial life in Mexico during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and propose a new perspective through which to examine the colonial period and the life in the region.