Mexico City

A

Spanish Rule

In 1519 a group of Spaniards under the leadership of explorer Hernán Cortés arrived in Mexico. In 1521 Cortés conquered the city in an 85-day siege, during which most of Tenochtitlán was destroyed. When the conquest was complete, the population of the city had dwindled to about 30,000 people as a result of the war and epidemics of unfamiliar European diseases.

The Spaniards began to reconstruct the city soon after they conquered it. Like most Spanish colonial cities, Mexico City was laid out on a grid pattern. The cathedral and the principal administrative buildings were built around a central plaza, known today as the Zócalo. The mansions and palaces of the elite, most of whom were appointees from Spain, were located in the streets running off the plaza. The poor lived farther away or slept in the streets, while Native Americans lived in jacales (villages of huts) at the city margins.

The new European-style city, renamed Mexico City, became the most important settlement in Spain's American colonies. It served as an administrative center, a major military outpost, and a base for exporting the mineral and agricultural wealth of the Americas to Spain. The city became the capital of the colony of New Spain, which included Mexico, most of Central America, and large sections of what is today the southern United States. Beginning in 1535 a series of royal governors known as viceroys ruled New Spain from Mexico City. The city's upper class grew rich on the profits from Mexican gold and silver mines.

Despite problems with disease, famine, and flooding, the city grew. In the 17th century the Spaniards built massive canals to drain Lake Texcoco. The canals reclaimed land and alleviated chronic flooding. The city's population rose gradually, reaching 60,000 by 1600, 105,000 by 1700, and 137,000 by 1800.

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B

The 19th Century

Early in the 19th century, Mexico fought an armed struggle to achieve independence from Spain. In 1821 Agustín de Iturbide, a military officer who joined the independence forces, triumphantly entered Mexico City, which had been largely spared the sieges and looting suffered in other parts of the country. Iturbide declared Mexico an independent nation and proclaimed himself emperor. However, his rule became despotic and wasteful, and in less than a year the military forced him to resign.

Mexicans adopted a republican constitution in 1824, in which powers were shared between the states and the federal government. The constitution created a national congress, which selected Mexico City as the national capital and created the initial boundaries of the Federal District.

B

1

Political Instability

A tumultuous period followed in the life of the city and the nation. The war for independence left the economy in shambles, and various factions in the country could not agree on the political future of the nation. A struggle for power ensued. Over the next 50 years, more than 30 presidents and 50 governments succeeded one another. Often, two or even three groups claimed jurisdiction simultaneously. This lack of stability made obtaining adequate finances difficult for Mexico City and most other Mexican cities. Lacking funding, the city’s services and infrastructure suffered.

Such national disarray made Mexico easy prey to foreign intervention. France occupied the capital from 1863 to 1867 and established the Austrian archduke Maximilian briefly as the country's emperor. During his reign, Maximilian dedicated much of the city's treasury to beautification projects and made some lasting changes in the city's appearance. He expanded the palace at Chapultepec Park and built the tree-lined boulevard that is today known as the Paseo de la Reforma.

Forces under the control of Mexico's elected president, Benito Pablo Juárez, overthrew and executed Maximilian in 1867. Juárez ruled until his death in 1872, when a struggle for power again erupted among Mexican politicians and military leaders.

B

2

Presidency of Porfirio Díaz

In 1877 Mexico's long turbulent period ended with the presidency of Porfirio Díaz, a military officer who seized the presidency in a coup. Díaz ran the country with a dictatorial hand. His government erected many magnificent public buildings, and Mexico City assumed the look of a European capital. Construction of the Palace of Fine Arts, whose architecture imitated European styles, began under Díaz, as did work on the legislative building (now the Monument to the Revolution), a dominating structure of steel and cement. Prominent architects, both Mexican and European, designed other private and public buildings; these included a national theater, hospitals, churches, and department stores.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s the city began to shift to an industrialized base. During the transition, unemployment actually increased as many traditional artisans found themselves without jobs. Housing also became a significant problem; 16 percent of the population rented rooms on a day-to-day basis.

Growth in trade and commerce gave rise to a new elite that took the place of the colonial elite, which had been based on wealth from silver and gold. The country's new upper class built homes in the newer suburbs to the south and southwest of the city. Their mansions, like the newly constructed public buildings and monuments, departed from classical Spanish architecture and adopted artistic styles popular in England and France. Among Mexico's elite, the French influence predominated. Upper-class families sent their children to study in Paris, bought household goods produced in Europe, wore the latest fashions from London and Paris, read literature from the continent, hired European chefs, and practiced sports popular in Europe, such as polo.

Painting from the period, such as the landscapes of José María Velasco, emulated the trends favored in France and England while incorporating indigenous Mexican subjects. Architecture in the capital was most influenced by the art nouveau movement, which stressed organic decorative patterns, such as intertwined stems or flowers, and emphasized handcrafting as opposed to machine manufacturing.

C

The 20th Century

Although the country was politically stable and its economy improved, Díaz disregarded social problems, creating unrest throughout the country. The value of wages for workers declined from 1877 to 1910. The government never implemented a public education system. Child labor was a serious problem throughout the period; an estimated 12 percent of all textile workers were children. Many working-class Mexicans received their wages as script (a credit slip issued by their employers), forcing them to purchase their food and other necessities from employer-owned stores at inflated prices. Peasants and indigenous Mexicans lived and worked under particularly precarious and oppressive conditions. Many worked under a system of debt peonage, under which they became legally obligated to their employers. This pattern, which resulted in numerous abuses and exploitation, became a form of economic servitude.

Many workers wanted the rights to organize and strike in order to demand better pay, fewer hours, and improved working conditions. The government, however, suppressed these working-class demands, which led to a violent revolution in 1910. The Mexican Revolution forced Díaz to leave Mexico for exile and introduced a decade of civil violence. The revolution and its aftermath halted the development of Mexico City. Indeed, the population actually declined between 1910 and 1920.

The political revolution led to an equally important revolution in artistic and intellectual circles and the revival of indigenous themes in Mexican artistic and literary schools. Young art students, among them David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco, eventually supported a movement away from paintings on canvas to present their works in large, public formats on the walls of government and private buildings. They rejected European influences, hoping to create works that were both accessible to ordinary Mexicans and oriented toward national themes. This nationalistic movement and the dynamic change in style attracted artists and writers from all over the Americas in the 1920s.

By 1920 the political stability had been restored. For a brief period during the 1920s, an elected mayor governed the city, but in 1928 the federal government gave control of the capital to the Department of the Federal District. At this same time, the victors in the revolution, seeking to consolidate their political power, organized a powerful political party, the National Revolutionary Party (PRN). Eventually the PRN became the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

The PRI and its leaders monopolized control over local, state, and national government. For the next 60 years, the party never lost an election for the presidency or the governorship of any state. The party was able to maintain tight control over the administration of the Federal District and Mexico City because the president appointed the head of the Department of the Federal District and the president always belonged to the PRI.

In 1921 Mexico City had just over 900,000 residents and was surrounded by miles of rural farms and communities. During the next 50 years, the city’s population grew rapidly, as people moved from less developed regions to the capital. The population nearly doubled from 1921 to 1940 and more than doubled again from 1940 to 1960, when the population reached nearly 5 million. As the city grew, much of its colonial and European architecture disappeared. Numerous residences along the major avenues were destroyed to make way for modern office buildings and retail stores.

Neighboring communities were incorporated within the city’s metropolitan area, and by 1970 Mexico City was no longer surrounded by a rural landscape, but by an extensive megalopolis. This expansion reached beyond the boundaries of the Federal District into the state of Mexico, which surrounds the district on three sides.

During the 20th century, the land on which Mexico City was built subsided unevenly at rates of up to 30 cm (12 in) a year. This subsidence resulted from the drainage of Lake Texcoco and the removal of groundwater. As a result, the city sat on spongy soil, which tended to amplify the power of the earthquakes that occurred periodically in the Valley of Mexico.

In 1985 a major earthquake, centered on Mexico City itself, caused extensive damage in the central part of the city. Especially hard hit were the older buildings, many of which were not designed to withstand earthquakes. The government of Mexican president Miguel de la Madrid did not respond effectively to the crisis. Many city residents came to believe that the government was more concerned about protecting the damaged buildings from possible looting than about rescuing those trapped in the ruins. Citizens joined together to carry out the rescue efforts themselves, creating a strong sense of community.

This informal cooperation eventually became more permanent. Those deprived of housing and employment as a consequence of the earthquake demanded relief from the city's government and organized to support their demands. These organizations became grassroots civic and political groups that eventually promoted the growth of opposition parties in the capital.

During the 1980s and 1990s citizens of Mexico City voted in large numbers for presidential candidates from the two leading opposition parties, the National Action Party (PAN) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). In the 1988 presidential elections, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, representing the party that later became the PRD, received the largest number of votes in the Federal District.

The citizens of Mexico City also began to demand more self-government for the city. The first concession to returning power more directly to residents was the creation of the Assembly for the Federal District in 1988. The Federal District was divided into districts, each represented by an assembly member. Despite the existence of the Assembly, most power remained in the hands of the head of the Department of the Federal District.

As part of an electoral reform package, the federal government agreed to a 1997 election in which citizens would choose the head of the Federal District. The contest for this position became the most significant electoral race in the 1997 national elections. The victor would represent more than 16 million people and would be a potential candidate for a presidential nomination in 2000.

Voters elected Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas as head of the Federal District, and he took office in December 1997. His party also won control of the assembly, as well as most of the seats to the national congress that were elected from the Federal District. Although constitutionally the president of Mexico retained the right to appoint the police chief and the attorney general of the Federal District, Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo transferred those decisions to Cárdenas.

However, Cárdenas encountered great difficulty coping with the widespread social and economic problems confronting the city. The most important problem for the city residents was the lack of personal security. Although Cárdenas changed police chiefs several times and introduced new forms of policing, including bicycle patrols, his government was unable to reduce crime levels in auto theft, burglaries, and muggings. In 1999 Cárdenas resigned as head of the Federal District to run for president of Mexico. The assembly chose Rosario Robles Berlanga to replace him. Robles was the first female head of the Federal District. In the 2000 election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was elected head of the federal district.

López Obrador resigned as head of the federal district to run for Mexico’s presidency in the 2006 elections. He was narrowly defeated. He was succeeded as head of the federal district by Marcelo Luis Ebrard Casaubon, who won election in July and was inaugurated in December. In 2007 Mexico City’s legislature approved a law allowing abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. The controversial legislation made Mexico City one of the few places in all of Latin American where abortion was legal.

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