Bellas Artes

Living in one of Mexico City’s suburbs, if you even can call them that given the hey are now in the middle of the sprawling city, my life always revolved around nearby places and neighborhoods. Rarely did we venture into the touristy sites of the city. While people who visit tend to go to all the most recognizable areas - Polanco, El Centro Historico, Teotihuacan, Xochimilco, Chapultepec - I just remember going to these places in school trips when I was smaller. They all seemed so mundane and normal, having them in your backyard can sometimes mean you don’t appreciate what you have as much. 

Xochimilco

Castillo De Chapultepec

I imagine this happens to everyone. If you grew up next to the Great Wall of China, to you it might be just a wall that you see everyday. But for someone who travelled across the globe to see it, they might be in awe and appreciate the structure for what it is and what it stands. This its exactly the situation I was in, and so are most people around me. 

This all changed as my love and interest for architecture began to grow. I began to realize just how unique all of these places are, and how lucky I was to have them be in my backyard. I started reading more about these places and what made them so special. The more I read the more I realized how rich Mexico’s history is, and how little we know about the places we live in. 

My latest example of this lack of knowledge is one of Mexico City’s most well known buildings: El Palacio Bellas Artes. Originally called the National Theatre, this building stands in the center of the city, and if you google the city, you’ll find its picture is the first one to come up. Everyone in town knows what it looks like and where it is, but no one seemed to know the meaning and story behind it. 

National Theatre Under Construction in 1918

Palacio de Bellas Artes 2016

Turns out Bellas Artes was built in the 1910, at a moment when Mexico, under Porfirio Diaz, began to worry about it’s international image. Most civic buildings were being built in neoclassical styles, and their main purpose was to showcase how Mexico was part of the first-world countries. This of course was just a farce, as almost everything about these buildings was imported, engineers, architects and sculptures and even materials were imported, the only thing truly Mexican was for the cheap labor. 

The Neo-classical Banco de Mexico Building

Mixing neo-Barroque Classicism with organic details similar to those in the beaux-arts movement, the National Theatre was designed by Italian architect Adamo Boari, and was finished by Mexican architect Federico Marshal in 1934, after the Revolution halted construction. With its art-deco interiors and lavish facade, the National Theatre stood as a symbol of economic and artistic prosperity in Mexico. 

The importance of this building was tremendous, it showed that Mexico was able to be a top-tier country, whose artistic values were in par with those of more advanced countries such as France, England and the US. The rationale behind the construction of this structure was to show how stable our county was, given that no country in turmoil is building shrines for its artistic endeavors. Of course this wasn’t true, as the construction was halted by the Revolution, so the symbolism behind the building was just a ruse to boost Mexico’s image, with no correlation with the economic and social mayhem happening at the time. 

Alameda Central

Now a days, El Palacio de Bellas Artes stands in the east corner of the Alameda Central (the main park in the center of the city), and it is a staple of Mexican architecture and the importance of the arts in our culture. I visit it regularly, as my friends and I love to go to nearby bars and then head to the park. However, as pretty and monumental as it is, knowing its history and the fact that there is very little “Mexican” in it,has made me skeptical of it’s symbolism. I wonder how would people look at it once they know it’s barely even ours.