Plaza de las Tres Culturas

The Plaza de las Tres Culturas ( " Square of the Three Cultures" ), and Plaza de Tlatelolco ( "place of Tlatelolco " ) called, is located in the center of Mexico City and is part of the delegación Cuauhtémoc. Owes its name to the place the fact that group around him Structures representing different epochs of Mexican history:

• Culture of Tenochtitlan, from the period before the conquest of Mexico by the Spanish conquistadors; represented by a series of pre-Columbian pyramids and ruins, which date from the heyday of Tlatelolco. At that time there was a major market in Tlatelolco, where the inhabitants of the valley of Mexico negotiated goods of all kinds from all over Mesoamerica. This is the era of the first culture.
• Spanish culture, from the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico to the Mexican independence; represented by a convent and the Catholic Cathedral of Santiago in the Mexican colonial style. At this place the two Spanish missionaries Bernardino de Sahagún and Juan de Zumárraga the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco was founded on the initiative. As a sign of complete submission cultivated the Spanish conquistadors their Christian churches to build exactly to the pre-Columbian ruins of places of worship; while they used not only the indigenous workforce, but also indigenous building materials. This is the era of the Second Culture.
• Modern Mexican culture, represented by the Torre de Tlatelolco ( " Tower of Tlatelolco " ), since 2005 the seat of the Mexican Foreign Ministry, as well as by the well-known under the name Unidad Habitacional Tlatelolco residential buildings, several of which were designed by the famous architect Mario Pani. This is the era of the Creole syncretism and represents the third culture

In addition, the Plaza de las Tres Culturas was repeatedly the scene of another important events in the history of Mexico:

• Before the conquest of the Aztec empire by the Spaniards Hernán Cortés visited the marketplace of Tlatelolco. A few days later, on August 13, 1521 should be the venue for the final defeat of the Aztecs, as their last ruler Cuauhtémoc was defeated by Cortés. The chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo describes that such a bloodbath was done, that it was not possible to put one foot before the other, since there piled so many corpses. It is estimated that more than 40,000 indigenous people have been killed in battle.
• Here, the Treaty of Tlatelolco was signed in 1967, with which America declared a nuclear- free zone. The treaty was primarily the work of the Mexican diplomat Alfonso García Robles, who was honored in 1982 with the Nobel Peace Prize.
• On October 2, 1968, 400 years after the conquest of Tenochtitlán and ten days before the opening of the Olympic Games, it came back at a bloodbath: The so-called Tlatelolco massacre, hundreds of civilians, especially students, on the orders of then-President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Luis Echeverría Álvarez Minister of the Interior ( both belonged to the PRI ) killed by members of the armed forces and the police. The event, which was until recently always denied by officials, was edited by several Mexican writers, including Carlos Monsiváis, Elena Poniatowska and the institution of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Octavio Paz also songwriters (eg José de Molina ), and film directors (eg, Jorge Fons with Rojo Amanecer ) to address this issue attended.
• In 1985, several buildings were around the Plaza de las Tres Culturas seriously damaged in an earthquake, including Edificio Nuevo León of the Unidad Habitacional.