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First class financial and commercial
district in Mexico City, the Zona Rosa (Pink Zone)
is a place in which the tradition has always been
modernity.
Zona Rosa is located within Colonia
Juárez, its limits are Paseo de la Reforma,
Florencia, Chapultepec Avenue and Insurgentes
Avenue. Like the rest of Colonia Juárez, it was
originated at the end of the 19th
Century, and started out as a residential area
characterized by large houses and small eclectic
mansions that belonged to distinguished
personalities of Porfirian society.
In
its first years, Colonia Juárez wasn’t
built up a lot and its location at the time, outside
of the Historical Centre, originated a sort of
isolation from the city, accentuated by the social
characteristics of its inhabitants and their
residences, constructed in European style along
streets named after the Old Continent‘s
cities. This isolation within the city led Zona Rosa
to be declared a neutral area during the coup d’état
of 1913, also known as Decena Trágica, and to
shelter the ambassadors and diplomatic
representatives of Mexico within the walls of its
Geneve Hotel.
Decades later, in the midst of the country’s
economical development after the Second World War in
the late 1940’s,
a lot of big hotels were built around Paseo de la
Reforma, like the María Isabel and the Reforma
Hotels, among others. As a result, the avenue and
surrounding area became attractive to foreign
tourists, a situation that motivated changes in the
area’s land use regulations. Because
of this, the owners of the elegant houses started
renting out their garages to people who requested
space for their boutiques and businesses and, after
recognizing the demand for space, ended up selling
the houses which were rapidly turned into luxurious
restaurants and exclusive night clubs. This
phenomenon was documented in Carlos Fuentes’
novel
“La
Región más transparente”
(The most transparent region).
Colonia Juárez was thus invested in by several
businessmen, mainly focused on tourism, who opened
elegant hotels like the Presidente, as well as
modern and sophisticated commercial centres like the
Jacarandas Mall, with its coffee shops, fashion
boutiques, art galleries and exotic personalities
from artistic and literary spheres who used to meet
there, like José Luis Cuevas, Vicente Rojo, Manuel
Felguérez and Vicente Leñero, the latter being
attributed with having named the area as Zona Rosa.
Leñero thought the area was
“too
shy to be red, too daring to be white”.
The streets of Zona Rosa became a fashionable place
and its coffee houses a place to see and be seen,
the city’s
meeting place.
In
the 1980’s Zona
Rosa began a period of decay, allowing other areas,
such as Polanco, to outshine it. With a low demand
in the area, other social groups saw an opportunity
to settle themselves there, such as the Korean
community and specially the gay community, which has
since established a great number of businesses
ranging from sex shops and boutiques, to famous
night clubs, all of which has led the Zona Rosa to
become, without being a gay neighbourhood, one of
the first places of open respect for the rights of
this community, chiefly manifested every year with
the Gay Pride Parade on Paseo de la Reforma, each
last Saturday of June. These groups, as well as
strong investments in housing, hotels and shops
around Paseo de la Reforma, are injecting new life
into its streets with innovative projects like
Reforma 222, one of the most successful buildings in
the city in recent years, as well as the Park Hyatt,
St. Regis and Ritz Carlton hotels which are to be
inaugurated in coming years and which promise to
bring life back to the area.
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