Abstract de la SAH

THE PORFIRIAN ELITE AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEXICO CITY, IMAGE AND REALITY

When Porfirio Díaz took the presidencial power for the first time in 1877 Mexico city hardly had grown beyond the city boundaries marked by the colony. Two urban development named colonia de los arquitectos and colonia Santa María la Ribera were the only settlements beyond that limits. The first settlement was made by a conservative engineer -architect and was to be sold to architects who wanted a country house. The second was made by to important land lords: the Flores brothers who made this development to take advantage of the vecinity of their lands to the road that communicated Mexico City with the town of Tacuba.

This two developments started in the middle of the century the new evolution of Mexico city . Supported by the governmental idea that many foreign inmigrant would come to settle the country, most of them from the United States, the land developers used this real and imaginary possibility to make with their settlements a very profitable real estate bussinnes. Although this possibility never hapenned, and the initial colonias were occuppied by locals, the idea was strong enough to start the construction of the city on imaginary and real bassis.

Following and improving bassis they inherited, the new land developers made the foundations of the modern modern Mexico city. During thirty years of dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz the city expanded its limits dramatically with many land developments thant increased the city area in more than three o four times the initial extension.

The new opportunities of land subdivision openned by the comercialization of the properties of the catholic church and indigenous communities, the organization of the real estate business through companies that were brought by United States entrepeneurs and the idea of an elite leading the society were the elements that gave to the porfirian city a new kind of development . In no other effort were involved so many important people, investments and enterprises, including the dictator himself. The city meant for them the construction of a real place for imaginary people, the settlement of a new society that some day they would lead toward the progress.