IN STEREO

It is generally said that more than 200 natives came to work on this building, but they also came to die. Because the natives, to bring these stones, they did not bring them in the way they can be brought today – trucks and everything – they brought them on their backs. Imagine climbing, block after block, to where the tower is. It is said that at that time, if an Indian was put to work, the Spanish had no intention of supervising them because they needed to finish the construction, to make the orange domes. You had to be exact, then, to make sure it did not fall down. The architect saw if it was well-built and the Indians jumped on top of the dome – the Spanish made them jump – and if it fell, it wasn’t strong enough. But they had no choice. The colonial tiles were made by the natives and shaped over their legs, so each of them have fingerprints that remain all over them.

The city is divided by a ‘wall’, it seems to me, between the rich and the poor. Social class is still held here, in that the central parts are the wealthiest, which are the extreme opposite of the indigenous parts. But balancing the positive and the negative, we do not always try to take the bad from everything. Generally, we try to emphasise that the conquest was not as bad as you have been told, because if the Spaniards had not conquered them, maybe others would have conquered them in a worse way and would not have left anything. Thanks to the Spaniards, we have these constructions, because they were architects able to realise all these. They have also left us that, which is a legacy, it can be said, right? – Patty