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No one in Mexico City doubtsthat Coyoacán is one of itsmain cultural centers. It boasts

a historical, cultural and artistic patrimo-ny that is one of the most important in allLatin America. As recently as 50 yearsago, Coyoacán still looked like a provin-cial village with its enormous viceroyalparish church, its sidewalks paved withblack volcanic stone, settled amidst corn -fields, orchards and old colonial countryhouses, the ideal refuge for the intellectand the arts. In the 1940s Dolores delRío and Emilio Fernández, among other

great figures of Mexican film, walked itsstreets; Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera andSalvador Novo begat many of the scan-dals of their time in the midst of a conser -vative, religious society, that had a hardtime understanding why it had to put upwith Leon Trotsky living there.Coyoacán was bursting with contra-

dictions: the opulence of its mansions con -

trasted with the simplicity of its poorerneighborhoods, and the social classes,portrayed with irony and candor in Mex -ican film, took on very different forms, aphilosophy and a way of living homoge-neous only during the patron saints daysfiestas and the biggest fiesta of them all,September 15, Indepen dence Day. The pedregales, or stony crags, an area

to the south of Coyoacán, the source ofraw materials for four centuries of Mex icanarchitecture, finally surrendered around1950 to the building of the Na tional Auto -nomous University of Mexico (UNAM)campus. This changed life considerablyin Coyoacán, which was soon populatedby academics and scientists from other

CoyoacánThe Cultural Heart of Mexico City

Luis Felipe Sigüenza Acevedo*

* Tourism Promotion Coordinator for CoyoacánWard.

Photos

by Da

nte Ba

rrera

Santa Catarina Plaza.

The House of Malinche.

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parts of the city and even abroad, thus sub -stantially raising the de mand for the cul-tural goods that had been developingsimultaneously. Since then, the universityhas been one of the most important axes

of Co yoacán’s so cial, economic, demo -graph ic and, of course, cultural devel-opment. Today, for exam ple, the area hasmore than 100 bookstores, many special-izing in tech nical and scientific books,and at least 20 public libraries, some asimportant as the Na tio nal Library itself,the National Pu bli cations Library and theUniversity City Central Library, whichtogether boast four million tomes, one ofthe most im portant collections in theworld.Recently, the Center for Information

and Documentation on Folk Culturesopened there, an annex to the NationalFolk Cultures Museum, itself founded in1982 by the federal government, just offCoyoacán’s central plaza. This space hasbeen key to the promotion, dignificationand recovery of Mexican culture.

Two other national museums, the Mu - seum of Foreign Interventions and theNational Watercolor Museum, also havetheir own documentation centers. TheMuseum of Foreign Interventions also

has a library focusing mainly on Mex icanforeign policy. This museum is locatedon the same site as the National Manueldel Cas tillo Negrete Conser vation, Res -toration and Museography School, in thehistoric ex-monastery of Churu busco.The National Watercolor Museum,

moved from the more centrally located Ro -ma neighborhood to Santa Catarina deCo yoacán after the 1985 earthquake des -troyed its original building, has a large li -brary that Alfredo Guati Rojo, its founderand lifelong director, has put at the ser-vice of the community. It also has a mag-nificent international collection of watercolors which makes it the foremost of itskind in the world.Also located in Coyoacán are the Ra -

fael Galván Library of the Institute forthe Right to Exile and Public Freedoms,

situated in one of the annexes to the LeonTrotsky House Museum; the library andrecording collection of the UNAM Na tio n -al School of Music; and the UNAM Ins -titute of Bibliographical Studies.

But not only are books sold and col-lected here; Many nationally known writ-ers also live in Coyoacán, like Fer nan doBenítez, Luis Everaert —the chroniclerof Coyoacán— Germán Dehesa, RafaelRamírez Here dia, David Martín delCampo and Jaime Labastida. Im por tantpublishing houses have their headquar-ters here, among them Siglo XXI Edi tores,founded to promote research and pub-lishing in the social sciences, philosophyand the humanities; Editorial Clío, thatprints mainly historical and anecdotaltexts, particularly about recent Mex icanhistory; and Ediciones Paulinas, spe cial -ized in religious works.In the area around Río Churubusco,

or the Churubusco River —today chan-neled into pipelines and covered by amain thoroughfare—, the federal govern-

The National Folk Cultures Museum. The Blue Circle Gallery’s patio.

VOICES ofMEXICO• 50

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ment set up the National Cinema the quein 1968 to preserve Mexican films whichflooded the world market after WorldWar II. Its location was not haphazard:the cinematheque was built right nextdoor to the Azteca Churubusco Studios,opened in 1945. Together with LatinAmerican Film Studios, founded in 1934in San Pablo Tepetlapa, and Cuauh témocStudios, later replaced by Studios Amer -ica opened in 1945 in the Coapa coun-tryside, they made Coyoacán the centerfor full length feature film production inthe golden age of Mexican cinema.Fire broke out in the cinematheque in

March 1982, and it was moved to thenearby town of Xoco. However, the landwhere the Azteca Churubusco Studiosstood was used to build the National Cen -ter for the Arts, an enormous complexthat houses the University of the Arts anddocumentation and informational cen-ters for music, theater, dance and thevisual arts.Two other institutions enrich the life

of Coyoacán with their presence: theUNAM National School of Music and theHigher School of Music of the NationalInstitute of Fine Arts. Other schools alsomake cultural contributions, like the Auto -nomous Metropolitan University Xochi -milco campus, located in the ward ofCoyoacán, and the cultural extension pro -gram of the National Polytechnic School,with its campuses in Culhuacán, in theeastern part of the ward.The UNAM Cultural Dissemination

Office has played an important role inmaking aspects of universal culture avail-able to Mexicans and in projecting ourown artistic and cultural proposals world -wide. Under its aegis are the UNAM Uni -versity Cultural Center, with its concert

halls and first rate fora, the UniversityMuseum of Contemporary Art and thetheater, dance, music and visual arts pro-grams that promote artistic creation amongthe university’s almost 300,000 students,teachers and administrative workers.Besides writers, Coyoacán has been

home to visual artists like Diego Riveraand Frida Kahlo, who are part of a tradi-tion that some historians date back to

pre-Hispanic times, when dance and mu -sic filled the religious fiestas of the tepa -necas coyohuacas, or the Tepanec residentsof Coyoacán. Rufino Tamayo also livedthere at one time, and today artists likeRaúl Anguiano, Diego Rosales, Geles Ca -brera, Arturo García Bustos and VicenteRojo make their homes there.The visual arts are displayed in many

different kinds of venues: private homes,

The National Watercolor Museum.

Leon Trotsky’s study... and grave.

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galleries, plazas and on the street. Galle -ries also often house other forms of art. Forexample, Isabel Beteta has come to thefore with her Workshops Cultural Center,which also presents dance performances.Raúl Grifaldo keeps oil painting alive nextto the San Juan Bautista atrium, whileAlexis Covacevich graces a corner of Fran -cisco Sosa Street with his gallery, the BlueCircle. Rina García Lazo, from her seven-teenth-century Red House, also makes hercontribution to these efforts at dissemina-tion of art. The Coyoacán Gallery, man-aged by Olivia Mejía, is an example ofgood taste in the La Conchita neighbor-hood, and the San Angel Gallery showsgood art in the El Rosedal area.Coyoacán is synonymous with good

theater: Salvador Novo became an im por -tant forebear of today’s vigorous theatertradition when he founded La Ca pilla inthe Colonia del Carmen neigh borhood.Today, there are 34 theaters and fora inCoyoacán, some experimental and otherscommercial. The University CulturalCenter has the Juan Ruiz de AlarcónTheater and the Sor Juana Inés de la CruzForum; the National Center for the Artshas its Theater of the Arts, the An tonioLópez Mancera Forum and the SalvadorNovo and Raúl Flores Canelo Theaters;a few steps from Coyoacán’s central plazais the Dramatic Arts Center and the Ge -neral Society of Mexican Writers’ Ro dol -fo Usigli Theater is located in the SanMateo Churubusco neighborhood.Living in Coyoacán means enjoying its

historic and cultural resources; it meanstaking a delicious walk on which you cancapture the creative spirit of its residentsof yesterday and today. Co yoa cán is alivein its culture and gets prouder and proud-er of it every day.

The National Center for the Arts’ office tower has become a landmark in Mexico City.

The Theater of the Arts in the National Center for the Arts.