A tip of the Gumbo hat to all the guessers who took a shot at this puzzle, and for all the clues you used for your interesting guesses…but Lynn Millar takes the laurels this time, identifying the scene in Mexico City’s very central park, the Alameda Central.
However, part of the mystery remains: I took that picture on a trip in 2002 or so, and I have wondered ever since exactly what the sculpture represents, and who made it! I’ve googled, and yahoo’d and wiki’d, and even written to the Mexican Consul, asking for help, and still dont know. So, Gumbo Guessers, can you solve the remaining mystery of Alameda Central?
As for the Alameda Central itself, it has a number of distinctions, among them that it is the first public park in the Americas, laid out in 1592, at the western edge of what was still a city on an island surrounded by the Aztec canal system. Over the years, it has been expanded, redesigned and even repurposed a bit. In 1770, for instance, it doubled in size by including an area that had been called El Quemadero, the place where heretics were burned by the Inquisition. By 1848, when Nathaniel Currier (yes, Currier and Ives), it looked like this:
Not a long time later, it drew the attention of Mexico’s French-imposed Austrian emperor, Maximillian and his wife Carlota, who had elaborate plans for the park, cut short by their overthrow and the return of Benito Juarez as President. Juarez, one of the most popular presidents of Mexico, and the first to claim Indio heritage, is honored in the park with a large monument, the Hemiciclo de Juarez.
The park is a popular mix of entertainments, food stands at the edge, and monuments. Around it, there are a number of major buildings, including several museums, first among them the Museum of Fine Arts (Palacio de Bellas Artas).
At the edge of the park is also the Museo Mural de Diego Rivera, which features a work Rivera created for the Hotel Prado: Dream of a Sunday in Alameda Park. The mural shows famous people and events in Mexican history, interspersed with ordinary people, and the things that they dream of. When the hotel was destroyed in a 1985 earthquake, the mural was moved to its own building at the park.
Below, in upper picture, Benito Juarez holds the liberal Constitution of 1857, together with numbers of significant 19th century figures, including the Emperor Maximilian. In lower picture the pug-faced boy is Rivera, with his wife Freda Kahlo holding hands with him and with a skeleton.
