Benito Juárez (), is a borough (demarcación territorial) in Mexico City. It is a largely residential area, located to the south of historic center of Mexico City, although there are pressures for areas to convert to commercial use. It was named after Benito Juárez, president in the 19th century.
The borough has the highest socioeconomic index in the country as it is primarily populated by the middle- and upper-middle classes. The borough is home to a number of landmarks such as the World Trade Center Mexico City, the Estadio Azul, the Plaza México and the Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros.
The borough The borough is in the north center of Mexico City, just south of the oldest section of the city. It borders the boroughs of Miguel Hidalgo, Cuauhtémoc, Coyoacán, Iztapalapa, Iztacalco and Álvaro Obregón. The borders are formed by two rivers, the La Piedad and the Churubusco, as well as the following streets: Presidente Adolfo López Mateos (Anillo Periférico), 11 de Abril, Avenida Revolución, Puente de la Morena, Viaducto Miguel Alemán, Calzada de Tlalpan, Santa Anita, Atzayacatl, Plutarco Elías Calles and Barranca del Muerto. Many of the names of the rivers, streets and neighborhoods have their origin in the pre Hispanic period.
It has a territory of 26.63 km2 (2,661.5 hectares), which is 1.8% of Mexico City, with an average altitude of 2,242 metres. It consists of 56 neighborhoods called "colonias" and three major apartment complexes (unidades habitacionales) which cover 2,210 city blocks and through which some of the most important city thoroughfares pass. The borough is nearly entirely residential with a socioeconomic level of middle class to upper middle class.
The borough is located in the southwest part of the Valley of Mexico. The land is flat with little variation and a portion of it is former lakebed of Lake Texcoco. The ground is highly elastic clay which extends down for about fifteen meters. The climate is temperate with an average annual temperature of 17C.
Most of the neighborhoods of the borough have a socioeconomic level of middle class to upper middle class. Forty two percent of the land is zoned for mixed use (residential/commercial), thirty nine percent residential, thirteen percent for storage and warehouses, four percent for open space and two percent industrial. Almost all housing and other construction consists of cement, cinderblock or brick, including both walls and roofs. The total number of housing units is 115,975, with 99.9% privately owned. The average number of people per household is 3.1. About 94% of housing is constructed in accordance to building codes. Housing units mostly consist of individual houses (27%), apartments in complexes (62%) and a housing arrangement called a "vecindad" (5%). Over 99% of residential units have running water, 99.5% have sewerage and 100% have electricity. The most important colonias are Nápoles, Del Valle, Narvarte, Mixcoac, Portales, Ciudad de los Deportes, San José Insurgentes, San Pedro de los Pinos, Xoco, Insurgentes Mixcoac, General Anaya, Noche Buena and Nativitas.
Landmarks
The World Trade Center is located in Colonia Nápoles. It was a development project conceived in 1947, in an area called Parque de la Lama. However, political opposition stalled the project until the 1960s. At this time, in preparation for the 1968 Olympics, the project moved forward with a total eleven spaces centered on the Hotel de México building. This complex includes the Polyforum, a commercial center, a Public Art school, a handcrafts market, a dinner theatre, garden areas, parking garage and a public transportation hub. Most of the complex would not be completed until the 1980s and the World Trade Center tower was inaugurated in 1994. Today the complex extends over covers an area of 81,000m2.
Next door to each other are the Estadio Azul (lit. Blue Stadium) and the Plaza México bullring, also on the west side of the borough. The two were constructed as part of a large project called the Ciudad de los Deportes (Sports City). This project was conceived in the late 1930s to cover what was formerly the San José Hacienda. The complex was to include swimming pools, a baseball field, an indoor jai alai court along with several outdoor ones, boxing and lucha libre rings, theatres, forty tennis courts, restaurants and parking for over two thousand cars. However, the developer went bankrupt with only the bullring near completion. This bullring was begun in 1944 and opened in 1946. It was built to replace the El Toreo ring in the La Roma neighborhood, which dated from 1907. The new facility was built with the express purpose of being the largest in the world. The bullring covers a surface of 1452m2 with a 43-meter diameter. The stands extend up for 35.9 meters and the sand area is twenty meters below street level. There is seating for between 45,000 and 48,000 people.
Both the bullring and the Estadio Azul stadium have playing fields which are about twenty meters below street level. This is because both were built over the firing pits for former brick making operations of the hacienda. The stadium was inaugurated in 1947 and has been the home of the Cruz Azul professional soccer team since 1996. The Ciudad de Deportes was planned so that cars can easily enter and exit the area, but over time, housing and other construction has crowded the area around these two landmarks. Since the 1940s, the complex has been owned and operated by the Cosío family.
The Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros was built to be a multipurpose forum to host cultural, political and social events. It is divided into several areas include a 500-seat theater, galleries, offices and the main forum space. The building is also a museum hosting twelve panels on the outside walls and 2,400 meters of interior painted with a mural called "The March of Humanity" by David Siqueiros. Today it remains a private institution supported by the activities it hosts and donations made to the Siqueiros Foundation. The interior mural work was originally planned for a hotel in Cuernavaca with the theme of the history of humanity. However, the concept grew to more than the hotel could host, and it was later thought to put the work in its own building in Mexico City. This eventually became the Polyforum Siqueiros with the aim of constructing the largest mural in the world, which it remains to this day.
The borough is home to a number of houses of notable persons, many of which were part of the intellectual and political life of Mexico. As of 1945, many of these homes, up to those constructed in the late 19th and early 20th century have been declared under a state of conservation. One example of this is the house in which lived Valentín Gómez Farías in what was the village of San Juan Mixcoac. It was constructed in the 17th century and still remains.
The borough has a number of public sports facilities and cultural institutions. Sports facilities include the Olympic complex of the Francisco Márquez Pool and Juan de la Barrera Gymnasium, Benito Juárez Sports Complex, Joaquín Capilla Sports Complex, Tirso Hernández Sports Complex and the Gumersindo Romero Sports Complex. The borough has thirteen "casas de cultura" or cultural centers to promote culture through artistic, social, handcrafts events as well as through the staging of plays. The borough also has an established for Desarrollo Social (Social Development), and audio library and a Casa Museo museum.
History
Name and symbol
The borough was created in 1970 and named after former Mexican president Benito Juárez. The current logo for the borough was adopted in 2001, which is a stylized depiction of the head of President Benito Juárez. The prior logo was a glyph of a serpent which is symbolic of Mixcoac.
Archeology
The main archeological finds of the area are Aztec/Mexica and include those in Mixcoac, Actipan, Tlacoquemécatl, Xoco, Portales, Ticomán, La Piedad, Ahuehuatlan, Barrio de San Juan, San Pedro de los Pinos Acachinaco (Nativitas) and one at the Metro Zapata station. The pyramid base as San Pedro de los Pinos is located near Mixcoac. It is the only one of its kind left in the borough, discovered in 1916 by Francisco Fernández del Castillo. It was a Mexica temple dedicated to the god Mixcoatl. The site also contains two temazcals as well as two Teotihuacan style sculpted heads. Artifacts have been found in other areas as well such as Xoco and Santa Cruz which include ceramics, stone knives and figurines. In the former village of Atoyac, a pre-Hispanic idol was found during the colonial era and destroyed by the Spanish. The Spanish village was built over a Mesoamerican one, which was dedicated to Tlahuac. The church of Santa Cruz Atoyac was built over the temple.
Colonial period
Except for small villages on the east and west side, most of the territory of the modern borough was covered by the waters of Lake Texcoco during the pre-Hispanic period. Crossing part of the east side was a causeway that linked Tenochtitlan to Iztapalapa and Tlalpan. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, the first colonial era constructions in the area were evangelical churches built by the Franciscans such as the Church of Santa Cruz in Atoyac in 1564 and the Santo Domingo de Guzmán Church in Mixcoac in 1595. In the early colonial period, most of the area came under the jurisdiction of Hernán Cortés as part of his Coyoacán properties. As Lake Texcoco dried, the area became dotted with villages under the hacienda system and had some important roads leading south from Mexico City. The old causeway became the Calzada de Tlalpan and would eventually become the first to be paved. In the Mixcoac area, villages dotted an important colonial era road that connected the main village of Mixcoac with Tacubaya. Other important roads included that with linked San Ángel to Tacubaya, called the Atlacuihuayan, today Avenida Revolución, and the road that linked village of La Piedad with Mexico City over which bricks and pulque was transported.
The Cortés family would lose their Coyoacán lands by the early 17th century but as the lake dried, the area remained a rural zone just south of Mexico City. This city would remain within its conquest-era boundaries for all of the colonial period into the 19th century, with the Spanish living in the city and the indigenous living in the rural areas outside. However, these indigenous lost control over lands they held previously. Whatever lands they still held communally would be eventually taken over by growing Spanish-held haciendas. This area not only provided agricultural goods to Mexico City but was also important for brick making. These operations would remain important through the colonial era into the mid 19th century. In the 18th century, the territory of the modern borough included the villages of Santo Domingo, Mixcoac, La Piedad, Santa Cruz Atoyac, Actipan, San Juan Maninaltongo, Santa María Nonoalco and Xoco along with the la Candelaria, Santo Tomás Tecoyotitla and Atepuxco neighborhoods and the ranches and haciendas of Los Portales, San Borja, Nalvarte (Narvarte), San Simón, Santa Cruz, La Piedad and San Andrés de las Ladrilleras.
19th century
At the beginning of the 19th century and after the Mexican War of Independence, the Federal District of Mexico was created by the 1824 Constitution. This district would border but not include what is now the Benito Juárez borough, which was still rural farmland and pasture. For much of the colonial period, one of the major industries of the area was brick making, mostly for nearby Mexico City. However, by 1855 only ten small operations were left.