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The Alameda Central is the oldest public park in
Mexico City and one of the favourite places of
relaxation for the inhabitants of the city.
The Alameda Central was created in the 16th
Century by the Viceroy Luis de Velasco, who ordered
“a walk to make the city more beautiful and at the
same time a place of recreation for its inhabitants”
be created. It was so and a great number of Alamos
(poplar trees) were planted in the eastern limit of
the then young vice-royal city, to the south of the
Temple of Santa Veracruz and limited by what are now
Hidalgo and Juárez Avenues. When it was noticed that
the Alamo trees weren’t growing fast enough they
decided to exchange them for ash and willow trees
which have a faster development. Nevertheless, the
name of Alameda has remained until our time.
After Viceroy Velasco’s ruling period came to an
end, the Alameda decayed to a point in which it was
used by the neighbors to let their horses graze. As
a response to this situation, walls were put up to
enclose the park and it remained like this for
several centuries. For several years in the western
limit of the park, in the small plaza of San Diego,
there functioned the stake of the Inquisition, were
atheists, Jews or any ‘inconvenient’ people to the
regime were condemned to death.
Years later, when the Bourbon dynasty took over
Spain’s throne, Phillip V, who had known the beauty
of the gardens of Versailles and the preoccupation
for beauty characteristic of the court of the Sun
King, personally ordered for the Alameda that
several fountains be built, new trees planted and
the entrance doors extended. He also ordered that
the Viceroy of the New Spain should personally
supervise that this garden was always in a good
state. In 1775, the Viceroy Carlos Francisco de la
Croix extended the lateral sidewalks of the Alameda,
which now took a rectangular shape instead of a
square shape as it had had before, he also marked
the interior sidewalks and four new fountains were
ordered. During this phase, the Alameda was the
favourite place for love, as it was visited by all
the available young men and women, who after
elaborate rites of gestures and signs with a
handkerchief and of course, with rigorous
supervision from their families, they could begin a
romance.
During the time of the Second Empire, the Central
Alameda was one of the favourite places of the
Empress Carlota Amalia from Belgium, wife of the
emperor of Mexico, Maximiliano of Hapsburg. Carlota
Amalia improved the place by planting a great amount
of roses and by donating the fountain “Venus led by
zephyrs” work of the sculptor Mathurin Moreau.
Later, President Benito Juárez ordered for the walls
of the Alameda to be demolished to “avoid crimes
that could be committed in favor of abandonment and
shadows”. He also introduced a lighting system in
1868.
Porfirio Díaz, as part of the works he undertook for
the improvement of the city, gave the Central
Alameda maintenance, ordered the construction of the
Palace of Fine Arts in the western limit and erected
the Hemicycle to Juárez on the south side of the
park, where the Morisc Kiosk, which after a brief
stay in the Alameda was transported in 1909 to the
district Santa María la Ribera, used to stand.
Porfirio Díaz also retook the custom the Viceroy
Bucareli had started of having musical recitals
every Sunday, custom which remains to this day.
The Alameda Central has been since its creation, a
place in which all classes of the Mexican society
come together as equals, a place in which people
meet and coexist in an area covered by trees and
strewn with fountains of mythological characters
which strive to change the ideas and fashions of
each time, from religious intolerance to the
vertiginous modernity of our time. |
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