T H E S P L E N D O R O F M E X I C O

TlatelolcoMemory of a City

Mauricio Magdaleno Chapa*

Verónica López

There are people who detest a placebecause it is linked to fateful moments intheir lives; others see in a place its happy

nature; these experiences alsomake up the city.

ALDO ROSSI

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Tlatelolco is a landmark in the city. Me moryis our starting point for defining Tla te lol -co: we find different historic mo ments of

urban integration there, allowing us to understandthe city we see today. It can be recognized by theThree Cultures Plaza, which brings together a cere-monial pre-Hispanic center, the Santiago Tlate lol -co Fran ciscan church, the tecpan, or the indigenousgovernment imposed by the Spaniards, the No -noalco-Tlatelolco housing project, the Foreign Re -lations Ministry tower and the subway line: this sums

up some of the most significant moments of whatis today Mexico City.Dramatic stories are also an inseparable part of

its history, like the October 2, 1968 student mas-sacre in which the army shot into the crowd ofunarmed young people participating in the studentmovement, and the September 1985 earthquake,when Tlatelolco was one of the city’s most severe-ly affected areas, with the collapse of the NuevoLeón building and serious damage to others.Tlatelolco was one of Mexico City’s first set-

tlements in the pre-Hispanic era. The first mo mentof architectural integration occurred when thefirst settlers established the indigenous city on anisland in the Texcoco Lake in what we now know

* Architect. He has participated in the restoration ofhistoric buildings in the states of Oaxaca, Guerreroand Morelos.

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as the Valley of Mexico. The most important siteswere Tenochtitlan in the middle and Tlatelolcoin the north, where Meso ame rica’s main pre-His -panic trade center developed. But this caused mil-itary clashes with the inhabitants of Teno chtitlan.According to other sources, after the city of Te -nochtitlan was founded, the Mexicas scattered tothe four corners of the world and in 1337 a groupof malcontents settled between the lake and thebanks of reed-grass on a terrace (tlatelli) connect-ed to the mainland by five or six avenues, two ofwhich went directly to Tlatelolco. It is also saidthat the Mexicas lived together in Tenochtitlan 12years and then some separated off and foundedTlatelolco Xilliyacac.

With the arrival of the Spaniards, the imperi-al College of the Indes of Santa Cruz of SantiagoTlatelolco was established in Tlatelolco to teach(or impose) their faith. At the same time thecities of Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlan were razed,and on top of them, what would be the city of Mex -ico was traced, using some elements of the pre-Hispanic city, like the direction of the streets andavenues. This was the beginning of the destruc-tion of the lake city; the drying of the lakes was anunfortunate policy the results of which we still suf -fer from today, particularly the loss of the area’secological balance. The valley had four lakes wherechinampas, or artificial islands, were used for dwell -ing and agriculture.

Daniel Munguía

6The Franciscan Santiago Tlatelolco Church.

Dramatic stories are an inseparable part of Tlatelolco’s history,like the October 2, 1968 student massacreand the September 1985 earthquake.

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Enrique Trejo

Carlos An

grigiani

The population explosion and the massive use of automobiles changed the face of the city from

the first half of the twentieth century.

Chinampas caused only minimal changes in thephysical environment, and the city had an effi-cient transportation network inherited from thepre-Hispanic settlement made up of channels.These, however, gradually disappeared along withthe chinampas, except for a few that survived intothe mid-twentieth century and the ones in Xo -chimilco, the only reminder of what the lake cityhad once been.Tlatelolco’s second moment came at the end

of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenthcenturies, when Mexico City achieved a real iden -tity and a style of its own. It rose on the site ofwhat had been the city of Tenochtitlan. Tla te lol -co was still on the periphery of Mexico City andsmall, scattered constructions on what were un -doubtedly chinampas could still be seen there.In the second half of the nineteenth century,

the Catholic Church was stripped of many of itsworldly goods. Since it was the owner of almosthalf the land in the city, this meant that theFranciscans’ properties in Tlatelolco were trans-

ferred to government hands. The monastery wasturned into offices and a military prison. Newstreets and avenues were opened up, becomingthe basic elements of the urban transformation.Six neighborhoods for workers and lower incomepeople were founded in 1884: Morelos, La Bolsa,Díaz de León, Maza, Rastro and Valle Gómez.In the early twentieth century, the eighteenth-

century city had been embellished upon by the newarchitecture from the Porfiriato (the 30-year dicta-torship of Porfirio Díaz). This was the case of theJuárez neighborhood, which was very representativeof the pomp of the Porfirista elite. There, Europeanarchitecture, mainly French, would mix with ArtDeco and the Californian style characteristic ofother recently founded neighborhoods like the Con -desa, the Roma and later, the Hipó dromo Condesa,structured around several avenues vital for the citylike San Juan de Letrán, Juárez, Insurgentes andRe forma. This marked the beginning of an un pre -cedented demographic explosion, interrupted bythe 1910 Revolution. But Tlatelolco continued to be

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Tlatelolco is the emblem of the profoundtransformations of the city over the years and an example of how

cities are forced to take on new roles.

Daniel M

unguía

Verónica López

5 The Nonoalco-Tlatelolco Housing Project (1960).

Daniel M

unguía

on the periphery of the city, preserving the church-plaza-market residential layout. Criss cros sed by in - numerable railroad tracks, it was home to importantrailroad installations, the city’s main pulque customshouse, demolished in the 1960s, a graveyard fed bythe Revolution and a train cemetery, around whichinnumerable stories and legends arose.Finally, the third moment came with the end of

the Mexican Revolution. When the city began togrow more vigorously, important housing beganto be built like the Ermita Building in Tacubaya(1930), designed by Juan Segura, and later the Ba -surto Building in the Condesa neighborhood (1942),designed by Francisco J. Se rrano, perhaps the bestproponents of Art Deco architecture.In the 1940s, state economic policy produced

high inflation, with a dramatic effect on the priceof rentals, making life particularly difficult for lowerincome groups. At the end of that decade, the firsthigh density housing project was built in the city,the President Alemán Urban Center (1949), de -signed by Mario Pani. Later, this kind of housingproject would culminate in Tlatelolco with thebeginning of the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco HousingProject (1960), designed again by Pani, on an areapreviously occupied by an expanse of miserableshantytowns dating from the nineteenth century.It was in these shantytowns that, years earlier, LuisBuñuel had filmed Los olvidados (known in Englishas The Young and the Damned), a film recentlydeclared a World Heritage Treasure. The end of

the 1950s also saw violent clashes in the pla za andsurrounding areas between railroad workers andpolice, a precedent for the bloody repression of 10years later. The church continued to be used as amilitary prison and the former college was Pu blicJunior High School 16. Industries and shops wereestablished there and broad avenues were built toaccommodate the massive use of automobiles.The layout of the Nonoalco-Tlatelolco Housing

Project would not conform to the previous patternof the streets: the buildings were isolated fromthe street, voluminous shapes located indepen-dently of the outer boundaries.Later, centralist policies and the lack of op por -

tunities throughout the nation caused massivemi gration to the capital in search of better livingconditions. With that, Tlatelolco’s housing pro-ject and surrounding neighborhoods like Morelosand Peralvillo began to fill up. Frequently, the in -habitants of these neighborhoods built their ownhouses, copying middle-class commercial archi-tecture in an attempt to satisfy their wishes formodernity. When the building is finished, even ifa dwelling may be adequate from the materialpoint of view, the architectural quality and incor-poration into the urban landscape are very poor.This happened to Tlatelolco, the emblem of theprofound transformations of the city over the yearsand an example of how cities are forced to takeon new roles. If they did not, life itself as a humancongregation would be threatened.

Verónica López