Public plazas are found throughout the lands conquered by the Spanish.

They are the perfect place to gather.

To celebrate.

To woo a sweetheart.

According to the ancient Mayas, they're also the perfect place for human sacrifice.

Funding for the Desert Speaks was provided by Desert Program Partners.

Representing concerned viewers making a financial commitment to the education about and preservation of deserts.

And by The Stonewall Foundation.

Before our portion of the Sonoran Desert became a part of the United States, it belonged to Mexico.

And before that to Spain.

By Spanish law towns were required to have public open areas where people could get together for fiestas, markets, proclamations and orders from the Crown.

But those public areas were by no means the first plazas in the New World.

Public spaces were just as important in the ancient cities of the Mayas as can be seen in the Yucatecan city of Chichén Itzá.

Chichén Itzá means the mouth of the water hole of the Itzá people, the ancient ones that once lived here.

At one time 100,000 people lived in Chichén Itzá, the Mayan capitol.

When I came here back in the early 60s, the opinion was that these great wide open spaces of Chichén were just for the.

Architect Bob Vint has been studying urban open spaces around the world for years.

.many, many thousands of people could gather.

Yeah.

It's really a vast public square that's defined by the placement of the buildings.

80,000 to 100,000 people lived around the temples.

They all came here for good times as well as spiritually important significant dates, and there were lots.

So it was the center of their culture, which was based on study of astronomy and the seasons and the cycles of planting and life and death.

What we see in the Mayan cities such as Chichén Itzá is the pre-Columbian conception of space in which they manipulated vast plazas created by the placement of the structures within their community.

They were essentially creating their vision of the world order with the priestly caste that ruled from above on the pyramids.

They were astronomers as well as priests.

And they had a whole world view that was realized in their architecture.

The plaza was used mostly for ceremonies.

It was a civic plaza.

At the top of that pyramid stood Halaz Huanic, the supreme religious leader.

From up there he was able to speak to the entire population because of the excellent acoustical properties of the pyramid.

The aesthetic calculations at Chichén Itzá were not just for the eye, they were also for the ear.

When the ceremonies completed, the majority of the population returned to their homes just outside of the central plaza area.

What's impressive about it is the manipulation of the limestone, which is of course native to the site, Yucatan being essentially an enormous limestone shelf.

It gave the Mayans all the building material they needed.

The abundance of building materials fit in perfectly with the grandiose plans of the priestly caste.

The motivating factor for building this site was religious.

They worshipped the rain god, the wind god, the corn god and the most important Mayan god at Chichén Itzá, Chac, the water god.

They even performed human sacrifices for him.

Oh, my goodness, the Temple of the Warriors.

And here we have the figure of the Chac Mool.

Oh, hi Chac.

Human hearts.

The guy who received the human hearts to feed the gods.

And here's the god himself impersonated, the plumed serpent, Kukulcán.

Quetzalcoatl as the Aztecs and the Toltecs call him.

Yeah, in the Mayan period 1,000 years ago, the forest would have been cleared and it would have been filled with corn fields and the wooden huts of the Mayan people.

But this was their ceremonial space as well as their public market space.

This is architecture at the highest level on a worldwide scale.

It's breathtaking.

Now this, we see these buildings today as white buildings but they were originally very colorful.

They were covered with stucco and painted and decorated.

Of all colors, yeah.

This temple is dedicated to the jaguar, which is a sacred creature for the Maya.

Interestingly, the Aztecs worshipped the eagle but here there were no eagles.

The jaguar was a sacred being.

And the serpent also wraps the upper temple.

This recess, which is worthy of a Grecian temple, is completely covered with bas relief sculpture.

The Mayas were considered to be sort of primitive people by Europeans until it was discovered that they were the most sophisticated astronomers in the world at their time.

It was a lunar calendar that they had and they accurately predicted the illuminations of the moon more than 2,000 years into the future with greater accuracy than we're able to do with our methods today.

The Mayas were conquered but they still survive.

Still today 600,000 people speak the Mayan language.

Everyone from the Yucatan is extremely proud to be a direct descendant of the Mayans.

Merida, the Spanish capitol of Yucatan, was founded in 1542 on the site of a vanquished Maya town.

We're in the Yucatan, which is a Maya place, and there's plenty of pigeons in the plaza but the presence, if you look around you, just sort of suddenly look around, and it's still Maya.

This is their place.

Yeah, it's, their claim is on it and we tourists are simply spectators and spectacles in our own right.

Yeah, they look at us but you see the faces are very, very indigenous, in spite of the fact that it's a Meztiso or Mexican city.

And so the life of this place is Yucatecan.

The English and North American tradition, which is ours, that of we Gringos, is more of a carpentry tradition.

That is, we had abundant forests and so we tended to do wooden frame buildings.

The Spanish, upon conquering the Yucatan, conquering the Mayans, set about trying to recreate Spain here in what is now Mexico.

And one of the character defining elements that they brought with them in terms of their architecture was that of masonry construction.

They tend to build with stone and brick as opposed to timber.

I hate to tell you, Robert, but I came here in 1962 on a motor scooter and of course there was one-tenth of the traffic.

I got two traffic tickets in one day.

One for going the wrong way and one for stopping when I shouldn't have stopped.

Things haven't changed have they, Dave?

That's right.

But it's interesting to note, these plazas to evolve over time.

You know, they're not frozen in suspended animation.

They have a life.

The trees grow, they die, they're replaced.

So if you look at historic photos, you see how they do take on a different aspect.

And so your coming back after 40 years really it's all part of the life of the plaza.

The plaza is marvelously important.

We are able to come here, to sit, talk and discuss issues.

We happily relax here until 5, 6, 7 in the evening and then go home to sleep.

We all first met our girlfriends and wives out here.

There's a lot of socializing in the plaza.

Teens meet other teens and walk around the square together.

Happy as a lark and young like us, 80 years old.

[band] The itself, look at it and it sucks us us in.

We want to sit down, at least at this time of day.

Right.

And enjoy it.

And there's a lot of plazas that's not true of.

That's true.

It's very inviting.

Yeah, it is.

And there's an openness about it that makes it very pleasant.

And it's not just the vegetation.

It's a relationship to everything else.

Of course, the light doesn't hurt.

Yeah, the light is just marvelous.

Many of the buildings on the plaza are built of the native limestone which gives Merida this bright, sunlit quality.

And in fact it's been called Plaza de Blanca, the White City of Merida.

But this really is a colonial city.

It is.

It bears the Spanish stamp from, my gosh, for like 400 years.

Yeah.

It's very different from any indigenous community.

I think it really represents the effort of the Spanish to transplant their culture to the New World.

Indeed the city itself is named Merida, after the original Merida, which is in Spain of course.

Oh, that's right, in Spain.

Once the Spanish had created this vision of home here in the New World, they set up essentially a stage set for a way of life that is taking place to this day, as you can see in this plaza so filled with people and children playing and couples courting and old folks sitting and reading a paper.

And it's made possible by this architecture that we have inherited from the Spanish.

Wherever the Spanish went in the New World, they constructed plazas.

In Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In Potosî, Bolivia.

In Arequipa, Peru.

In Bacadéguachi in Sonora, Mexico.

And in the capitol of New Spain, Mexico City.

[band] The flag must be the central flag of Mexico.

It's a huge thing.

Yeah, that's the symbol of a strong central government right there.

But the Zócolo is not only a symbolic center for the Mexican nation, it's the literal center as well.

It's the geographical center.

Geographically and governmentally.

It's the central valley of Mexico.

It's the central plaza in the largest city in the country.

When the Spanish arrived here, just 30 years after Columbus had "discovered America," they conquered the Aztecs and founded a great European style city based on the law of the Indies, which was their method of planning and constructing cities.

The first thing they did was to lay out the plaza.

That was rule number one.

And coming off the corners of the plazas were the principal boulevards that made up the city.

On one end was the cathedral symbolizing of course the power of the Catholic church as well as the national palace in this case symbolizing the strength of the central government.

I've known people from Sonora 1500 miles away and one of their goals in life is to see the Zócolo in Mexico City.

It's certainly a symbol of the national pride and a place that Mexican people feel at home and to express their political beliefs, their support for the nation on it's day of independence and also to protest government policies when appropriate.

Yeah.

But also it's just sort of the place you want to make a little pilgrimage.

This is an ancient Méxicha like offering dedicated to the four paths of the universe.

It's an age old Méxicha ritual where the incense and smoke cleanses one's mind, heart and actions.

The purification ritual was handed down through the centuries along with traditional medicines.

The word itself plaza means place.

In French it would be plac.

In Italian it's piaza.

In Spanish plaza means place.

A place to be, a space to exist in as a community.

The role of the Zócolo in the City of Mexico is crucial because this city really is, it is one of the greatest cities of the American continent.

It ranks right up there with New York or Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo.

It is one of the great cities of the world and this is its great space.

The importance of a plaza is not determined by its size but by its relation to the city or town where it's located.

Big or small.

The little plaza in Pátzcuaro is a far cry from the Zócolo wouldn't you say.

Indeed, in scale with its town.

I mean Pátzcuaro is a town of 50,000.

Mexico is a city of 20 million.

There is a difference.

There's a slight difference, yeah.

Pátzcuaro was founded during the 13th century, was built by the ethnic group known as Purépecha or Tarasco, which were warriors and they were expanding the territory.

When they arrived in Lake Pátzcuaro, they started to build a whole culture and an empire.

You can see the Spanish presence here in the state of Michoacan, especially here in Pátzcuaro.

In the language of course, in the religion, the Catholic religion, and very much in the architecture.

Architecture really isn't about bricks and mortar and stone.

It's really about creating space for people.

And this plaza's a beautiful example of that because the plaza is what is not built.

It's what is left open and inviting to the public to come and just be here.

It's a place to meet your girlfriend by the fountain.

It's a place to sit on the bench in the shade of a tree.

It's like the living room for the whole city.

The plazas are public spaces where Spanish and indigenous people could like live together.

Many of the religious centers of the pre-Columbian times were in open places.

One plaza would take on perhaps a more commercial character, shops and stalls and food booths.

The other would be more civic where the Palacio de Gobierno was located.

Yeah, the government palace, the government operations.

Right, right.

And then of course there's the cathedral plaza, which is on another scale altogether.

In some Mexican towns those functions are combined.

Yeah, we're entering the Plaza Principal of Pátzcuaro.

A green plaza, it's sort of like a big lung for the city.

Here's where the city can breath, where the pavement can release it's heat.

It is surrounded by a continuous arcade, which shades the pedestrian.

It allows for outdoor tables and market stalls.

In old times, and even today, many houses don't have refrigerators and so every day the women, usually, come to the market to buy that day's food.

The Tarascans invented their own kind of food.

It's very heavy in fish from Lake Pátzcuaro, which you can't eat anymore cause the lake's contaminated.

But they also have their own kind of chili.

They make a special soup called Sopa Tarasca, which is based on beans, cheese, cream and chilies and it has a flavor like none other that I've ever tasted.

The whole thing pulls together in one region and centers here in the town of Pátzcuaro.

It's interesting to reflect upon the urban form of the Spanish town as a communal expression of the courtyard house.

In other words, the houses that surround this plaza tend to have internal patios or courtyards behind them away from the street so the family has its private space, its private garden, and yet then you have a communal space, which is the plaza where many families can gather and meet and have a shared space.

So really the courtyard is to the house as the plaza is to the city or the community.

Exactly.

It's the same architectural idea but carried out at a different scale.

This Spanish conception of the courtyard and of the plaza is in stark contrast to the English tradition that we inherited from the eastern seaboard of the U.S., the salt box from Cape Cod or the mid-western farm house, where the house stands in the middle of the lot with space all around it.

On the other hand, the Spanish tradition of high density building where you build the buildings right out to the face of the street, the buildings essentially become the walls of the plaza.

They define the space of the plaza.

Many people say, "Oh, look at that patio, it's so Mexican."

You can find patios with fountains and it's an influence from the Spanish architecture and the Spanish people had the influence from the Arabs or Moors who spent eight centuries in Spain.

For ritual purposes they wash themselves five times a day, the times they pray to La Mecca.

So they have to have in their patios or gardens running water.

Welcome to the palace of the last emperor of de Purépecha or Tarasco, which is the ethnic group that lives here in the state of Michoacan.

Here you can see it's traditional architecture, adobe, mud bricks and the use of the Spanish tiles in the roofs and the use of wood.

Is any of this material in here original from the emperor's place, house?

Some of the stones are reused from the pre-Columbian temples.

Actually most of the temples in Mexico and here in the state of Michoacan where many convents and churches were built with the stones of the pre-Columbian temples.

Tear down the old stuff and make a clear statement as to what is going to rule now.

Oh, look how this is stepped up here, three levels.

It gives a great affect from coming down below.

It's a little bit like the pre-Columbian temples in what we call the Meso-American architecture and it's the use of the slope.

Taludi tabledo is the name in Spanish.

Well, we're here at what we call La Casa de los once patios.

So, the house of the eleven courtyards.

The house of the eleven courtyards.

And it is a building from the 16th century.

It's the first convent for indigenous girls in all Americas.

Ah, look at these doors.

So those are very heavy.

My guess is that these probably weigh a hundred kilos at least apiece.

Yes.

18th century doors.

They look almost no more than a hundred years old.

Ah, look this opens up.

Ah, courtyard.

You promised a courtyard.

We've got a courtyard.

Another patio from the House of the Eleven Patios.

I guess there's more than one way out of the courtyard.

Yes.

Ah, you will find more patios here and also you can see all the work that is done in wood.

You can see the doors and some windows.

There is this large tradition also here in the state of Michoacan, the work of copper.

From the pre-Columbian times, the Purépecha or Tarasco did know how to work with this metal.

There were mines of this material, of this metal.

So this actually was going on before the Spaniards got here.

Well, this shape particularly not but the work and the use of copper was known before the Spaniards arrived.

The Purépecha or Tarasco did use the copper for ornamental purposes and as well to make some tools.

The tradition still goes on.

And you can see a town, small village close to the Pátzcuaro area, which is called Santa Clara del Cobre The ancient people who lived here fashioned tools to defend themselves in times of war.

When you design something out of copper, you must first make the tool that will shape it because the tool is the basis of everything.

So with this wide variety of hammers all of them are necessary for them to produce the pieces of art that have made them a very well known shop here in Santa Clara de Cobre.

It takes between eight to ten days to shape a piece like this one.

Everything begins with a small chunk of raw metal that is hammered out.

This is just one piece of copper.

There are no solder joints.

We are fourth generation.

My kids are fifth generation artisans who work with copper.

My great grandfather and grandfather, my father, me and now my kids and even their kids carry on the tradition.

But what we see in a town like Pátzcuaro is the fusion of the Spanish ideal of how a town should be built but it's imbued with the essence of Mexico, which is the Meztiso culture, the blending of the indigenous and the Spanish.

And it creates a real vibrancy.

I think what makes these plazas Mexican are the Mexican people, You know, the life that takes place within them.

The Law of Indies actually did recommend that in warmer climates that you have narrower streets so that you might have more shade on the street and in cooler climes, larger spaces between buildings to let the sun in.

And so it was really a very well reasoned document.

The plaza then belongs to the whole town and it becomes the pride of their town.

An expression of civic pride and that's true throughout Mexico.

From here all the way up to the northern border, much as is this plaza.

Because it is the heart and soul of the Mexican town.

Following the Gadsden Purchase about 150 years ago, Mexicans officially withdrew from the desert southwest.

They left behind a legacy including churches, colonial architecture and a rich, cultural tradition.

But the plazas and everything they embodied are nowhere to be seen.

Landlocked Quito and Otovalo, high in Ecuador's alteplano, are home to many indigenous people.

The islands of Bartolome, Española and Genovesa, also in Ecuador, are significantly less populated.

By humans, that is.

All these places are part of a memorable journey to the Galapagos Islands.

Next Time on the Desert Speaks.

There are a lot of theories about what went on in this Ball Court and some of them are terrible and some of em are fun.

But whatever, it was a serious game.

It was the original American basketball.

You had to get the round rubber ball through the stone hoop.

It was played using a solid ball about eight inches in diameter.

Yeah, hard rubber.

And that the players could not touch the ball with their hands.

They used elbows, shoulders, hips, knees and had to wear a heavy protective armor to keep from injuring themselves.

Funding for the Desert Speaks was provided by Desert Program Partners.

Representing concerned viewers making a financial commitment to the education about and preservation of deserts.

And by The Stonewall Foundation.

Copies of the Desert Speaks are available from KUAT.

Please mention the episode number when ordering.

For more information visit the Desert Speaks online at this address.