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La Catedral de Mérida by Miguel A. Bretos (review)

Can an architectural structure be said to function as a historical protagonist? Can a monumental building, although designed, constructed, and used by human actors, maintain its own life story—a biography that stands witness to the course of centuries? In Miguel A. Bretos’s new book, a case is implicitly made for the dramatic rethinking of how we as scholars imagine and analyze the supposedly stagnant piles of stone that stage the human events that are our usual subjects of historical inquiry. Using the majestic structure as his narrative’s main character, Bretos deftly traces the history of the cathedral, the city in which it stands, and the province it ultimately came to represent, thereby illuminating the complexity of colonial society and the emergence of Yucatán’s distinct identity within the Mexican nation state.