On November 21, 1964, President Adolfo López Mateos toured the main squares and buildings of the urban team that would bear his name, but that We all recognize as Tlatelolco. Next to him, Mexican architect Mario Pani saw his idea of a housing unit consolidated that accommodated hundreds of families and that, with it, the urban and social context of what was known as a «horseshurous horseshurns» would be modified.
Tlatelolco was created as «a city within the city» that allowed its inhabitants to have all the necessary resources for day to day in the same space. Its history is closely linked to that of people for whom it was thought Since, like any social and housing project, it is not possible to imagine it without the relationship between inhabitant and space.
Mario Pani created a project that brought with it the modernization of housing and the use of large -scale space.Photo Library, INAH.
Tlatelolco as a modern movement
Le Corbusier's theory about «The Radiant City» plays a fundamental role in the construction of the project for the urban group Tlatelolco. Mario Pani had studied the architecture career in Paris and He brought with him those principles that, in the case of housing projects, broke completely with the schemes of multifamily spaces that in Mexico were culturally accepted until the first decades of the twentieth century: the neighborhoods.
Although during the time of Porfiriato, departments buildings had been consolidated as a style of inhabiting the city – inist to the single -family houses – this idea would be consolidated only in the post -revolutionary era. This brought with it the modernization of society and the search for new ways of living cities.
In accordance with the theoretical proposals of Le Corbusier himself, although the Urban Equipments Alemán and President Juárez are prior to the creation of Tlatelolco, it is In this all these ideas were consolidated, perhaps due to the extension of the land and what meant its development in that area of the city.
Inside the Franciscan College of the Santa Cruz, Bernardino de Sahagún would write his General history of the things of New Spain.Christian Ortega
The towers designed to be on the Paseo de la Reforma are an example of luxury housing of the Tlatelolco urban team.Christian Ortega
Archaeological ruins under Tlatelolco
Let's go further back. Tlatelolco was, during the pre -Hispanic era, a twin city to Tenochtitlán on a smaller scale, but with an important commercial importance. This brought the submission to the Mexican Empire and with it, the payment of mandatory tribute. His market was the most important for the diversity of products, Not only in species or types, but in origin, since it is calculated that to this part of the Mesoamerican region, products from the most remote Mayan region for commercialization arrived.