page_title: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora
section_title: Creole patriotism and the triumphal arch to welcome the viceroy in 1680
hierarchical_section_title: Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora / Creole patriotism and the triumphal arch to welcome the viceroy in 1680
context_page_description: Don Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora was one of the first great intellectuals born in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. He was a criollo patriot, exalting New Spain over Old. A polymath and writer, he held many colonial government and academic positions.
context_section_description: In 1680, he was commissioned to design a triumphal arch for the arrival of the new Viceroy, Cerda y Aragón. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was commissioned to design the only other one, which were erected in the Plaza de Santo Domingo, near the main square or Zócalo. No image of the triumphal arches is known to be extant, but both Sigüenza and Sor Juana wrote descriptions of the works. Sigüenza's work was entitled Theater of Political Virtues That Constitute a Ruler, Observed in the Ancient Monarchs of the Mexican Empire, Whose Effigies Adorn the Arch Erected by the Very Noble Imperial City of Mexico. Sigüenza's title was meant to convey to the new viceroy that his tenure in office was in a long line of Mexican monarchs. On the arch were images of all twelve Aztec rulers, "each taken to embody different political virtues. Also represented was the god Huitzilopochtli, whom Sigüenza claimed was not a deity but a "chieftain and leader of Mexicans in the voyage that by his command was undertaken in search of the provinces of Anahuac." Sigüenza's gigantic wooden arch (90 feet high, fifty feet wide) was a manifestation of creole patriotism that embraced the florescence of the Aztecs as a source of their own pride in their patria. He hoped that "on some occasion the Mexican monarchs might be reborn from the ashes to which oblivion had consigned them, so that, like Western phoenixes, they may be immortalized by fame" and be recognized as having "heroic ... imperial virtues." Sigüenza praised the arch that Sor Juana had designed, but hers took the theme of Neptune in fable and did not manifest any explicit theme "contribut[ing] to the growth of creole patriotism."
caption: Viceroy Tomás de la Cerda
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