Rubbing shoulders in Tlatelolco's Plaza de las Tres Culturas (Square of Three Cultures) are Aztec ruins, a Spanish Colonial church and a 1960s residential complex. Over the centuries, the area around this square has also witnessed the massive slaughter of Indians by the Spanish, a massacre of students by the military and hundreds of deaths in a lethal earthquake. We went to find out more on Photo Walk Nº86.Tlatelolco, the sister city of Tenochtitlán (now Mexico City), was the biggest market in Aztec times and thousands of people came here daily to trade, bringing their goods in canoes since Tlatelolco was located on an island in a shallow lake. Rising up in the centre of the square was a massive pyramid with two temples on top. It's hard to imagine what it must have looked like but the archaeologists have discovered at least 7 layers to the pyramid. Each new ruler built a bigger pyramid over the top of the former one. When Hernán Cortés arrived here in 1521, his army fought against the Aztec ruler Cuauhtémoc and his people, slaughtering 40,000 Indians. The Spanish conquerors then destroyed the temple and built a church using the same stones. The Iglesia de Santiago was inaugurated in 1610 and the Colegio annexed to it became the first higher education centre in the Americas. This church too was badly damaged by last year's earthquake and to see huge cracks in the walls, damaged bell towers and scaffolding inside the church was a bit unnerving. The square is surrounded by the Nonoalco Tlatelolco housing complex, built in the 1960s and viewed at that time as a modern concept. 102 apartment blocks housed 80,000 people and the area also had hospitals, schools, parks, shops and theatres... a city within a city. Unfortunately, a couple decades after the complex was built, an 8.0 earthquake shook Mexico City in 1985 causing one of the 15-storey apartment blocks to collapse, killing hundreds of residents. Another 12 apartment blocks had to be demolished due to the damaged sustained and many people moved away from the area, leaving it to become dilapidated and crime-ridden. In more recent years, efforts have been made to improve conditions here, including some new street art to brighten up the buildings.
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Margaret MetcalfeBorn to travel, explore and share photos and experiences Archives
May 2019
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