Lomas de Chapultepec
Lomas de Chapultepec is a neighborhood (colonia) in the municipality (delegación) Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico City . It is located west of the Bosque de Chapultepec and is one of the most expensive residential areas in the Mexican capital. The district is closely connected to the city center via the Paseo de la Reforma .
history
The villa district Lomas de Chapultepec , originally Chapultepec Heights , was designed in 1922 by the architect José Luis Cuevas .
Its original name testified to the supposedly internationalist, but in practice much more US-American , attitude of its inhabitants (many of whom were wealthy foreigners and not Mexicans). After all, the local mansions were much more influenced by Hollywood glamor than traditional Mexican architecture. (108)
Even if the wheel of time could not be turned back with regard to the villas that had already been completed, the national-traditionalist forces succeeded in renaming and thus giving the quarter a Spanish name. (106) This is how the original Chapultepec Heights became today's Lomas de Chapultepec.
From the beginning, the neighborhood was the residential area of diplomats , high-ranking officials and members of the old aristocracy . Former revolutionaries , who in the meantime occupied a high position in the government apparatus and appreciated the comforts of bourgeois life, settled in Chapultepec Heights as early as 1923. (107)
The tendency of the nouveau riche to design their villas based on the US model made national-traditionalist circles sit up and take notice. A member of the editorial board of El Arquitecto magazine criticized the following in its first issue: "Lots of houses have turned up, but where is the Mexican house, the house made by Mexicans for Mexicans?" (109)
The most violent criticism was sparked by contemporary witnesses who disparaged the residential district rather disparagingly than colonial California or Hollywood style. Arturo Sotomayor described the quarter as “a kind of eczema on the outskirts of the city.” (110) Mauricio Gómez Mayorga, who was a student of architecture at the time, was angry that between 1926 and 1930 this style “spread like cancer everywhere in the city new districts ”. In his opinion, Mexico could have oriented itself to the new European architecture; instead it has "embraced the entertainment culture of a colonial style that evolved from the vulgar and uncultivated prosperity of Hollywood." (112)
Obregón Santacilia even described the style borrowed from Hollywood glamor as the most terrible that has ever found its way into Mexico: a style that was taken from magazines without bothering to visit Mexican villages and identify with the essentials to reach. (113)
Worst of all, however, this development gave rise to a new class of capitalists (114) that changed national identity per se. The new style did not reflect the cause of social justice or the very goals of the Mexican Revolution . Instead, what was happening in Lomas de Chapultepec and other nouveau riche settlements appeared to be a reflection of the personal enrichments that were already widespread during Porfirio Díaz's tenure .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Yolanda Bravo Saldaña: Mexico City (Monclem Ediciones, Mexico DF, Mexico), p. 81 ISBN 968-6434-50-X
- ↑ The numbers mentioned in this article (106–114) are evidence from the quoted paper by Patrice Elizabeth Olsen (see under web links below) and are intended to make it easier to find the relevant sources.
Web links
- Article by Patrice Elizabeth Olsen, Pennsylvania State University, Department of History
- Photos by Lomas de Chapultepec
Coordinates: 19 ° 25 ′ N , 99 ° 13 ′ W