Can you help me learn about the Palacio Nacional?

Factual Questions
1

First a disclaimer: I’ve been freeloading off the collective wisdom here for about three years now. I feel guilty about doing that, but only just so, since I appreciate the spirit around these parts that seems to value sharing information for information’s sake, even if it’s free (as it has been for me up till now) or infinitessimally discounted (as it is for me now that I’ve ponied up for the subscription).

In other words, this is my first post.

I have before me a specific research project. It’s not a homework problem, as I’m not looking for answers that I can run with. Any insight you could provide would doubtless be valuable, but I need to find some primary sources and up till now I haven’t had much luck. Here are the questions I am trying to find the answer to:

  1. What was the signifigance of the political center of Tenochtitlan prior to the arrival of the Spanish?

  2. Discuss the style of the architecture of the Palacio Nacional and the significance of the building in relation to political power.

  3. Discuss the significance of the murals of Diego Rivera that are located in the stairway of the Palacio Nacional, in relation to the history of pre-Hispanic and post-conquest Mexico.

I am a coach of a high school Academic Decathlon team, and in the coming year our studies are focused on Latin America. Mostly we study resources that are supplied to us from the outset, but there are some independent research topics such as this one that require some digging.

I am more than willing to dig, as I have been doing, but I have reached an impasse when it comes to this topic. Does anyone know what primary sources I could turn to for an answer? Regardless, I would appreciate anything you could add that would enrich my understanding of the topic.

2

I don’t have the time to do it tonight, but tomorrow I’ll see what suggestions I can dig up (I’m an art historian). There should be lots and lots out there on any of these three items. Is there a university in your town? There are a number of article/book databases entirely devoted to art and architecture.
So you’re just looking for sources to have the kids have a look at, or are you trying to find angles/ theses/ arguments yourself?

3

Thanks very much for your kind offer. I’m a teacher, but not a scholar. I’ll take sources for the kids to look at, but in my position I feel the responsiblity to find those sources myself and do something with them, know what I mean?

I’m in Dallas, so there is SMU, UNT, TCU, and UTD to draw from. I’m just at a bit of a loss when it comes to something so specific, and how to find it. What I would like to have, ideally, is a rich understanding of the subject matter, context and all. I don’t back down from however many resources I have to read to acquire said knowledge (which is my normal brute-force approach); it’s just that in this case I can’t find what I would like to find–or to put a finer point on it, I just don’t know where to look for it, or how to find it.

But thank you again for your response. These questions do fall under the realm of the “Art” event, among our ten events, so conversing with an art historian is about the ideal of what I hoped for when I posed this question to the Straight Dope.

4

Ok, I’m looking at the SMU library catalog, for example, and with Diego, these seem promising (they have a good program with Precolumbian/Colonial/Modern Mexico and central American art)

Taracena, Bertha.
Title: Diego Rivera : su obra mural en la Ciudad de México : texto en español y en ingleś / Berta Taracena.
Published: México : Galería de Arte Misrachi, c1981.

 Folgarait, Leonard.

Title: Mural painting and social revolution in Mexico, 1920-1940 : art of the new order / Leonard Folgarait.
Published: Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Silva E, R. S.
Title: Mexican history; diego Rivera’s frescoes in the National Palace and elsewhere in Mexico City. A descriptive guide book of the National Palace and its royal rooms. Published by R. S. Silva E.
Edition: New rev. and enl. ed. [Rev. by the Ministry of Education]
Published: Mexico City, Sinalomex. Editorial, 1964.
(non-circulating)

Rochfort, Desmond. Murals of Diego Rivera / Desmond Rochfort ; with a political chronology by Julia Engelhardt. 1987

 Los murales del Palacio Nacional / Raquel Tibol...[et al.].

Published: México : Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes : [Milan, Italy] : Américo Arte Editores, c1997.

Obviously a number of things will be in Spanish-- if you want to stick to English it might be at a much lower level. When you start looking at the material on Tenochtitlan (which will be listed under Mexico City (Mexico) – history) a lot of it starts getting into Spanish, which, depending on your students, might be cool. ( https://poni.smu.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?SC=Redirect|S&SA=Mexico%20City%20(Mexico).&PID=TAW8nfZAxAf9YvaFg69PCN_QbzA&BROWSE=46&HC=66&SID=10 )

So a good start would be to jump on line with SMU and UTD’s (they have an intereting interdisciplinary program and might have lots of good stuff) online catalogs: I expect a community borrower status should be easy, and if it’s not it can be a fun photocopying expedition for the students and a crash course in university library use.

Thinkin’. . . I think a good theme for the thesis (maybe the obvious one) might lie in Tenochtitlan as a Precolumbian capital of the Aztec empire and its design (IIRC a sort of microcosm of the empire, and a really neat place), versus the colonial era rebuilding of the city (with things like the Palacio Nacional, which screams Spanish/Hapsburg imperial architecture) in the image of a European capital, along the lines of El Escorial (compare-- built in almost the same year, even): AND, you have to note, the Palacio (and the Cathedral, for that matter) is set on the Zocalo, this plaza that was the site of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, so a sort of literal burying of the old empire under the new empire. Then Rivera comes along centuries later and basically does a political illustration of this shift with a critical eye to the past: our interpreter of history.

5

Ah, a pal who does mesoamerican stuff recommends for Tenochtitlan,

The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and Periphery in the Aztec World (Paperback)
by Johanna Broda (Author), David Carrasco (Author), Eduardo Matos Moctezuma (Author)