Villa Coyoacan

The Villa Coyoacán is a town founded around the VII century d. C. by indigenous Nahua Colhuas. It is currently the headquarters of the government of the Coyoacán mayor's office and one of the most important tourist centers in Mexico City.

History

Pre-Hispanic Era

The Villa de Coyoacán, Villa Coyoacán or Villa Coyoacán National Park today popularly known as Historic Center of Coyoacán i>, it is one of the oldest towns in the Valley of Mexico, even long before Mexico City, founded around the VII< century. /span> by Nahua indigenous Colhuas who created an Altépetl (Indigenous State City) that controlled the south-western area of Lake Texcoco and the western area of Lake Xochimilco, around the year 1332 it became part of the cities subjugated by the Nahuas Tepanecs of Azcapótzalco, due to the following period of peace under the Tepanecs, other towns or neighborhoods were founded in its surroundings, including Copilco, Los Reyes Quiahuac Xotepingo, Tepetlapan and Coapan.

It was in 1410 that the tlatoani of Azcapotzalco Tezozómoc elevated the rank of the city to lordship and gave his son Maxtla as ruler. Coyoacán was one of the first Tepanec cities that fell into the hands of the Mexica, the chronicles say that Maxtla started the war after he humiliated the Mexica envoys to the festival at the temple of Coyoacán by dressing them and treating them like women, after which he Trade was closed between the cities of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Coyoacán, after being defeated and its temple burned, the city of Coyoacán had to pay tribute and deliver the product of certain extensions of land to the Mexica warrior chiefs and politicians who took those lands as spoils of war, by 1430 the Triple Alliance that defeated Azcapotzalco left the fate of Coyoacán in the hands of the Mexica.

It was under this subjugation that included slaves and victims for human sacrifice in the Great Temple of Mexico-Tenochtitlan that in 1490 the Huey Tlatoani Mexica Ahuizotl ordered an aqueduct to be built for the inhabitants of Coyoacán from their lands to Mexico City. Tenochtitlan, an aqueduct whose sources were particularly prosperous, which is why the Tlatoani of Coyoacán warned that the volume of water that occasionally drops could cause a flood. Ahuitzotl, upset at feeling it as a negative night, orders him to build the aqueduct of In any case, in this way, shortly after its completion, the predicted flood occurs and, faced with a possible punishment for the entire city, its tlatoani XXXXX decides to put itself in the hands of the Mexica who sacrifice it as punishment.

In this way, the Spaniards led by Hernán Cortés found the people of Coyoacan receptive to the idea of joining the Spaniards to free themselves from the Mexica yoke, which occurred in 1521 when Hernán Cortés managed to gain not only their alliance, but They swear eternal vassalage to the Spanish king and to him as his envoy. The Coyoacanenses initially destroyed their temples and built one of the first Catholic chapels in the Valley of Mexico and painted all the walls of the city's buildings white with lime by order of Cortés, thus ending the indigenous religious paintings that existed. In Coyoacán, even Cortés takes the city of Coyoacán as his main command post from which he can control the Tlalpan causeway. After the Mexica defeat, some of its main leaders will settle in the renowned San Juan Tenochtitlán from which they will govern their lands..

As at the fall of Mexico - Tlatelolco on August 13, 1521, both this city and Mexico-Tenochtitlan were full of corpses that produced a great stench, Hernán Cortés ordered the remaining Mexica indigenous people in the city to clean the cities to then be concentrated in Santiago Tlatelolco where Cuauhtémoc would govern them with the title of Indigenous Governor of the Republic of Indians of Santiago Tlatelolco, similar to how it was before Huey tlatoani of Mexico-Tenochtitlan was elected. By that time Cortés had already decided to leave the government of Coyoacán in the hands of Hernando Cetochtzin, son of Cuauhpopoca, who had been burned to death in what is now the Plaza de la Constitución in Mexico City, during his government between 1521 to 1525. Coyoacán was the seat of the government of New Spain and the second Spanish-style town hall in Mexico was formed in 1521, for which the Old Palace of the Coyoacán Town Hall was built (today the delegation headquarters), also in 1523 or 1524 it was formed in that same place the City Hall of Mexico was transferred until 1529 to its headquarters in Mexico City. It is said that when Cortés returned from Mexico City after the conquest, he found graffiti on the white wall of a house in Coyoacán that reproached him for not equitably distributing the loot of the conquest, especially the gold lost during the so-called Sad Night., that is why he allowed the other Spaniards to torture Cuauhtémoc along with other nobles and indigenous governors. Tradition says that this torture took place in the Old City Hall Palace of Coyoacán, although other sources say that it was in the tepan of Santiago Tlatelolco.

It is in Coyoacán where he received the Purépecha tlatoani Tangáxoan Tzíntzicha in the same year of 1521, who upon seeing the destruction of Mexico - Tlatelolco and México-Tenochtitlan decided to surrender his government and swear vassalage to the Spanish crown in order to avoid a similar destruction After this, Hernando Cetochtzin accompanies Cortés on his expedition to Las Higueras where he is killed along with Cuauhtémoc and other indigenous governors of the Valley of Mexico, which is why Juan de Guzmán Ixtolinque is named Indigenous Governor, a position he held from 1525 to 1569 when he died and it was confirmed by royal decree on July 18, 1551 in the city of Valladolid.

During his government Juan de Guzmán Ixtolinque founded, together with Cortés, the temple of La Conchita next to which he built his main house, the house where Hernán Cortés usually resided during his many stays in Coyoacán. This indigenous governor is the first leader of the Republic of Indians of Coyoacán, which includes a royal grant of the lands and his appointment as a nobleman with the right to use his own coat of arms, which is why Ixtolinque takes control of at least the entire southeast and part of the west of the current Federal District, leaving under its government more or less what today constitutes the territories of the delegations of Coyoacán, Tlalpan, Magdalena Contreras, Álvaro Obregón and Cuajimalpa de Morelos, of all these territories it is especially to the west where Ixtolinque has jurisdiction problems since when Hernán Cortés was granted the Marquisate of the Valley of Oaxaca, his territories overlapped, which is why several lawsuits were held between the two to define the limits of their jurisdiction, as a result of this is that by 1600 to 1700 They create several codices that together are called Techialoyan Codices, which generally mark the limits of the many Indian Republics that the Spanish created to keep indigenous people and Spaniards separated, as well as maintain a certain control structure inherited from pre-Hispanic times, the The peculiarity of these documents, especially those that belong to towns in the west of the Federal District, is that they mention Hernán Cortés as the one who founded the towns and that these were under the rule of the chief and other lords of Coyoacán, Juan is almost always mentioned. by Guzmán Ixtolinque, for example the Techialoyan Codex from Cuajimalpa.

In addition to that, Juan de Guzmán Ixtolinque commands by his own right or in agreement with Hernán Cortés and others to found different public works among which temples and convents stand out, such as the temples open for indigenous people of San Juan Bautista, the temple of San Jacinto Tenanitla, and the town hospital of Santa Fe that Friar Vasco de Quiroga directed for most of his life and whose lands were never disputed to the Franciscan order until the implementation of the Reform Laws in 1867; As for convents, he founded the convents of San Juan Bautista annexed to the temple already built, the Convento del Carmen in San Jacinto Tenanitla, the first for the Dominican order and the second for the Carmelites, of the latter it stands out that there was a bitter dispute between the orders for control of the different areas to evangelize, which led Juan de Guzmán Ixtolinque to grant them lands, including the Olivar del Conde and then to his descendants what was the Holy Desert of the Lions. Among the other works that he carried out on behalf of Coyoacán was providing labor and materials for the construction of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City to which, for example, he brought stone from the Pedregal de San Jerónimo or wood from San Pedro Cuajimalpa. Other of the various things that he did in favor of Coyoacán was to get the Spanish Crown to recognize the merits of the city in the conquest and grant it the title of Villa and its own shield by which it recognized its sovereignty over a certain territory, that happened on July 24, 1561 by Philip II and which served as the municipal shield until 1928.

After the death of Hernán Cortés, the so-called Villa de Coyoacán registered great prosperity, which continued to be governed in part by his family, a government that during the colony was openly disputed by other descendants of indigenous and Spanish nobles, For example, the lawsuit between Petronila and Teresa Guzmán against Juan Hidalgo Cortés Moctezuma y Guzmán, who had to reinstate the governorship of the Indian Republic to women, his descendants governed Coyoacán until mid-1780 when no more descendants were found and apparently he had already been his family's governorship was revoked by the Bourbon Reforms. That economic prosperity that Coyoacán registered during the colony was due in part to the trade of the Nao de China whose control was in the hands of the Consulate of Merchants of Mexico, many of whose members had houses on the site and that are still standing, in addition has the case of the workshops or industrial works that were installed in nearby territory and from which many of the names by which the regions near Coyoacán are known are derived, for example Anzaldo, Contreras, Posadas and Sierra. This boom was also reflected in a certain fame of the people of Coyoacan as bricklayers and builders in general, which, as mentioned before, made them intervene in several large-scale projects.

Politically, Coyoacán stopped directly administering its vast territory in 1653, the Court of Mexico trying to improve the collection of the Kingdom of New Spain installed control and customs offices among other neighboring towns of Coyoacán such as Tlalpan, San Jacinto Tenanitla and San Pedro Cuajimalpa, so its political power is decreasing little by little, this is how it reached the Independence of Mexico.

19th century

When Mexico became independent, the town of Coyoacán was already a city with more than five thousand inhabitants, an administrative and regional trade center; by then San Agustín de las Cuevas had already taken away international trade through Acapulco. When the State of Mexico was founded on March 29, 1824, Coyoacán became the capital of the third prefecture, leaving the entire south and south west of the District of Mexico West under its command, which did not please several towns such as Xochimilco, which is why and the various changes that exist between the federal and centralist regimes during the first half of the XIX century make it very difficult to know the true scope of its administration, the truth is that the towns continue to attend Coyoacán as the local capital, thus avoiding having to attend the city of Toluca, when San Agustín de las Cuevas is designated as capital of the state of Mexico the municipality falls on that city and It is called the Municipality of Tlalpan but it has a brief existence and returns to the old order. Derived from the drying up of Lake Texcoco during the viceroyalty, Coyoacán has gained swampy lands from the lake in which new haciendas such as the Churubusco Convent are extended or formed, or even artificial rivers such as Río Churubusco are formed, which are built by the new owners of the haciendas, these changes cause their commerce to begin to decline and their transformation begins into a rest town for the elites of Mexico City who buy the houses and make them more to their liking, around that time San Jacinto Tenanitla stops be a small town to gradually become the San Ángel that it is today.

Within the chapters of the Independence of Mexico in Coyoacán, the so-called Coyoacán Conspiracy was planned, which was directed by the priest of San Mateo Churubusco, Manuel Altamirano, that conspiracy was stopped when the Independence movement began in Dolores under the leadership by the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla.

It was only until August 20, 1847 during the War between Mexico and the United States that Coyoacán again distinguished itself in war actions, since the Battle of Churubusco took place in its vicinity, and shortly after on September 13 the execution of Irish soldiers in the town of San Jacinto Tenanitla.

By decree of Antonio López de Santa Anna of February 16, 1854, contrary to what is popularly believed, several prefectures with their municipalities from the state of Mexico are not annexed to the Federal District, but rather the territorial area is increased. of the Department or District of México Oeste in this, in addition to dividing the Municipality of México into eight quarters, and increasing the territorial limits of the District of México to Tlalnepantla in the north, the Occidental in Tacubaya is added to the South with its head in Tlalpan the territory From Coyoacán, to the east was Lake Texcoco, this department had the town of Mexicaltzingo as its capital for the state of Mexico. It was not until the decree of President Benito Juárez of May 6, 1861 that the territory of Coyoacán became part of the Federal District as part of the Tlalpan Party, which was made up of the municipalities of Tlalpan, San Ángel, Coyoacán, Iztapalapa and Iztacalco.

Between 1857 and 1870, different railway projects were devised that took tracks from Mexico City to the south of the Valley of Mexico, most of them avoided Coyoacán since having the scree surrounding it almost completely did not allow it to be a place of travel. passage of those tracks, that is why it took until 1875 when a deviation of the Mexico - Tlalpan train was installed that runs along the Calzada de Tlalpan

In 1890 the first Colony was built on the land of the Hacienda de San Pedro and was inaugurated by General Porfirio Díaz who already held the position of President. The name given to the colony is Colonia Del Carmen in honor of the young and second wife of President Carmen Romero Rubio, this work was not very liked by the inhabitants since it involved providing it with water and other services, although that also meant receiving modern services such as electric lighting and sewage, at the same time the Railway was inaugurated del Valle whose route includes the towns of Mexico City, Tacubaya, Mixcoac, San Ángel, Coyoacán, San Antonio Coapa and Tlalpan. To these works, the Coyoacán Nursery is added, both works by Eng. Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, around 1898 according to a boundary treaty between the state of Hidalgo and the Federal District Coyoacán becomes the head of the District of Coyoacán, which encompasses the municipalities of Coyoacán and San Ángel, its territory is finalized until 1903 when it is given more or less the current limits that the Political Delegation of Coyoacán has, thus permanently ceasing to influence the west and south of the Valley of Mexico.

20th century

In one of the houses on what was then called Calle Real, then Calzada de Juárez and modernly Francisco Sosa, many of the sections of the Ateneo de la Juventud Mexicana are held, which at the end of the Porfiriato became one of the main centers of Mexican culture. At the beginning of the Mexican Revolution, Coyoacán has stopped growing in favor of Tlalpan or the new colonies of Mexico City, but it still receives as its last present the Kiosk that is in front of the Old Town Hall Palace of Coyoacán. During the armed struggles, Coyoacán becomes, like other points in the south and west of the Valley of Mexico, a battlefield, so the land stops being cultivated and several famines occur that bring emigrants to Coyoacán and other cities, which worsens. by the constant levies carried out by both Carrancistas and Zapatistas. After a certain tranquility was restored during the government of Plutarco Elías Calles, in 1926 the Mexico-Coyoacán Highway was inaugurated, which today is more or less Avenida Universidad. This paved road was built on the dried bottom of Lake Texcoco and whose basic purpose was to communicate Along with the Avenida de los Insurgentes the new urbanizations carried out by revolutionary generals such as Colonia del Valle, this road reaches Coyoacán where Hidalgo Street is also paved to bring it into the population, this gives rise to a growth that is noticeable by invasions of lands and the creation of industrial zones as occurred with the Coyoacán Paper Factory, generating anarchic growth that leads to several legal and physical disputes between invaders and owners, some hundreds of years old. On January 1, 1929, the municipalities in the Federal District disappeared, so since then it became another of the Foreign Political Delegations of the Federal District, in that context, on September 26, 1934, it was decreed by President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río a decree that in its first article says:

ARTICLE FIRST. Statement National Park with the name "El Histórico Coyoacán"This population, including the Vivero established in the same and other lands of the contour of the latter, which will be set by the Forestry and Hunting and Fisheries Department.

This decree was largely not fulfilled since from the beginning the Department of Forestry, Hunting and Fishing and the Department of the Federal District limited the limits of the national park to their liking, to the point that today only a part The protected area is called Villa Coyoacán and is even called a colony, if not a neighborhood. For example, it was initially considered to protect the entire Pedregal de San Jerónimo to the west and south, to the north to Río Churubusco, border then with the General Anaya Political Delegation, but in 1943, under the pretext of the creation of the University City of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the western part of the Pedregal de San Jerónimo was removed from the limits and named Pedregal de San Ángel, later it was It eliminated the northern part and finally the southern part where the invasion of the lands that today form at least the Colonia Pedregal de Santo Domingo was allowed to prosper, with which today only the informally called Historical Center of Coyoacán and the Nursery remains as a national park. of Coyoacán. A few years earlier, on April 19, 1934, the Monuments Commission of the Monuments Department of the SEP had already named the center of Coyoacán as a Typical and Traditional Zone.

During the Cristero War on December 30, 1934, a confrontation took place between the supporters of the anticlerical Tabasco general Tomás Garrido Canabal, the so-called Red Shirts led by the then young politician Carlos Madrazo and the attendees of the temple of San Juan Bautista, where the first are dedicated to harassing those attending Catholic worship, an action that ends in a shootout where María de la Luz Cirenia Camacho González dies, who is immediately taken as a martyr by the clerical side of the Cristero War, never the authorities were able to establish someone's guilt, over the years María de la Luz was converted into a saint.

It is during the governments of Lázaro Cárdenas del Río and Manuel Ávila Camacho that Coyoacán was converted into the preferred place by the Mexican government to house the various European refugees and other nationalities who arrive in Mexico, among them we have King Carol de Romania and León Trotsky who died in 1940, by that time Coyoacán had ceased to be the economic capital of the southern zone and had become a refuge for artists and intellectuals, among them the artist couple of Frida Kahlo and Diego had a special mention. Rivera.

It is from that decade of 1940 that the change accelerates and more and more colonies, urban developments and housing areas appear such as those of Xotepingo and Ciudad Jardín, streets and avenues are also created, among them that of Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, which tried to be a southern border for urban growth, but it simply overflows and a multitude of colonies appear such as those of Taxqueña, Culhuacan, Huayamilpas, Coapa and Santa Úrsula, for which the total purchase of towns or expropriation under the concept of cause of public utility, which leads to legal disputes that in several cases leaves the new inhabitants of the area in a certain uncertainty, as was the case of the neighborhoods of San Lucas, San Francisco, Niño Jesús, Los Pueblos de the Kings Culhuacán, La Candelaria and San Pablo Tepetlapa.

In 1954, the University City of the National Autonomous University of Mexico was inaugurated, which increased the number of inhabitants in Villa Coyoacán, especially people with university studies. In the seventies there was an explosive invasion of land in the stony areas that caused effects due to the excess of basic needs to be covered by the delegational government. This expansion was partly ordered, especially when the so-called social leaders, mostly affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, achieved agreements to be provided with this infrastructure in exchange for votes for the politicians of that party.

In 1990, UNESCO declared the Historic Center of Coyoacán as a Zone of Historical Monuments.

Villa Coyoacán today

The squares and streets of Villa Coyoacán are the second most visited tourist attraction in Mexico City after the Historic Center of Mexico City with about 50 thousand visitors every weekend (in 2008).

Currently it is made up of the so-called colonies and neighborhoods of:

• Colonia Del Carmen
• Barrio Santa Catarina
• Colonia Villa Coyoacán
• Barrio la Concepción
• Barrio San Lucas

Plus parts of:

• Colonia San Diego Churubusco
• Colonia San Mateo
• Colonia Parque San Andrés

Places of interest

• Cortés Palace
• Frida Kahlo Museum
• Casa Museo de León Trotsky.
• Church of Saint John the Baptist (Coyoacán)
• Centennial Garden
• Museo Nacional de la Acuarela
• National Museum of Popular Cultures
• Plaza Hidalgo
• Plaza e Iglesia de Santa Catarina
• Plaza e Iglesia de la Concepción.
• Church of the Barrio del Niño Jesus (centuryXVI)
• Church of the Quadrant District of San FranciscoXVI)
• Plazuela and church of the Holy Kings Coyoacán
• Church of the San Lucas district (sixteenth century)XVI)
• The handicraft market and the food market.
• Coyoacán nurseries