52 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
istic of an Alameda. And the city of Mexico furn- 
ishes admirable examples of the three, so located 
that they may be embraced in the description of 
what in an American town would be regarded as a 
single street or avenue. 
To begin with the Plaza Mayor de la Constitu- 
? 
f 
PLAZA MAYOR, CITY OF MEXICO. 
cion, the main plaza, the heart of the city which is 
the capital of our southern neighboring republic. 
Resisting the temptation to give a score of interest- 
ing details of its history, there are some that are 
worthy a hearing in this paper. The site is ap- 
proximately that of the legendary discovery that 
caused the Indian pueblo of Tenochtitlan to be es- 
tablished where it was, and it was subsequently 
marked by the great Teocalli in that pueblo. After 
Tenochtitlan was destroyed by the Spanish Con- 
quistadores of the sixteenth century, a Spanish city 
at first occupied but little more space than what 
is now included within the borders of the plaza 
Mayor. 
It is noted in history that during the inunda- 
tions which visited the city of Mexico in the seven- 
teenth century, when the streets remained for years 
at a time submerged in three or four feet of water, 
the plaza remained above water. To the present 
writer’s mind, this is cumulative evidence that the 
ancient teocalli, so often mentioned in books about 
Mexico, was a mound of earth faced with stone, and 
its destruction by the Spaniards consisted merely 
in removing the stone facings. And it took more 
than a century to reduce the mound to the level of 
the adjacent lands. 
For centuries the plaza was an ill-kempt place, 
the scene of many a political disturbance and of 
much bloodshed. Early in the seventeenth century 
the market was removed therefrom by royal order, 
but the petty venders who have pestered the local- 
ity with their cajoncitas (little shops) throughout its 
history, remained. They were driven out by fires 
and royal orders about the middle of the century, 
when a system of drainage acequias was put down 
Towards the end of the century the plaza was the 
scene of a riot in which nearly three hundred ca- 
joncitas were used as fuel in an attempt to burn the 
palaces of the Archbishop and the Viceroy. Again 
the petty venders returned, despite the provision of 
the Parian, a bazaar erected by the city on the south 
side of the plaza. 
There is a print extant of the appearance of the 
plaza during the eighteenth century. Directly in 
f-ont of the Viceregal palace stood a gallows and a 
frame for exhibiting the heads of executed criminals. 
The walled cemetery of the Cathedral, crowned the 
plaza on the north. A statue of Ferdinand IV, not 
remarkable as a specimen of the sculptor’s art, stood 
in the centre of the square. Filthy ditches sur- 
rounded it. 
Such was the view from the Viceregal palace, 
when in 1789, Don Juan Vicente de Guemes Pach- 
eco de Padrilla, Segundo Conde de Revillagigedo, 
arrived in Mexico as the fifty second viceroy. He 
was a reformer, although as eccentric a man as his 
name was long. Among the earliest reforms in- 
stituted by him in his capital, was that of the plaza, 
by the removal of its objectionable features and the 
improvement of its drainage. 
The next print we have representing the plaza 
is dated in 1803. It shows an immense glorieta, 
enclosed with stone coping and balustrade, with 
four gates of wrought iron at the cardinal points. 
In the centre war erected the equestrian statue of 
Carlos IV. The bitter anti-Spanish feeling engen- 
dered in the was for Mexican Independence endan- 
gered this statue, and it was first enclosed in a huge 
wooden globe painted blue and finally removed, in 
1824, to the patio of the University of Mexico. In 
1828 the plaza was the scene ofanother insurrection. 
The Parian was sacked and partially destroyed. 
Fifteen years later its site went to enlarge the Plaza 
Mayor. About the same time the foundation was 
laid of a monument intended to be commemorative 
of the heroes of the war for Mexican Indeperfdence; 
and this foundation, (in Mexican Spanish, “Localo”) 
has given a popular name to the plaza, that has quite 
supplanted its proper and more formal title. 
The next change took place under the Imperial 
government of Maximilian. The Localo Garden 
was laid out and planted. It comprises but a small 
part of the plaza, — being about three hundred feet 
square and having the zocalo for a centre. Work 
upon the monument stopped with the foundation, 
and upon it a bandstand has been erected. South 
