The Hotel Casino de la Selva (Jungle Casino Hotel) was a hotel and casino located in the city of
Cuernavaca
Cuernavaca (; nci-IPA, Cuauhnāhuac, kʷawˈnaːwak "near the woods", ) is the capital and largest city of the state of Morelos in Mexico. The city is located around a 90-minute drive south of Mexico City using the Federal Highway 95D.
The na ...
, Mexico.
The main building was opened in 1931 as a hotel and casino, but from 1934 it was used only as a hotel.
Additions in the late 1950s included buildings designed by the architect
Félix Candela
Félix Candela Outeriño (; January 27, 1910 – December 7, 1997) was a Spanish and Mexican architect who was born in Madrid and at the age of 26, emigrated to Mexico, acquiring double nationality.
He is known for his significant rol ...
that were roofed by reinforced concrete paraboloid shells.
The interior was decorated with murals by well-known Mexican and Spanish artists.
After the 1970s the hotel went into decline, and in 1994 was sold to a hotel chain that failed to pay taxes on the property.
It was seized by the Mexican government and was auctioned off in 2001 as a site for construction of a
discount store
A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down cost ...
and a
hypermarket
A hypermarket (sometimes called a hyperstore, supercentre or superstore) is a big-box store combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including ...
.
After demolition had begun there was a public outcry, and eventually some parts of the murals were preserved.
History
Initial construction (1931)
Cuernavaca in the early 1930s held the homes of several former generals who later became presidents,
Plutarco Elías Calles
Plutarco Elías Calles (25 September 1877 – 19 October 1945) was a general in the Mexican Revolution and a Sonoran politician, serving as President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928.
The 1924 Calles presidential campaign was the first populist ...
,
Lázaro Cárdenas
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.
Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to a working-class family, Cárdenas joined the M ...
and
Manuel Ávila Camacho
Manuel Ávila Camacho (; 24 April 1897 – 13 October 1955) was a Mexican politician and military leader who served as the President of Mexico from 1940 to 1946. Despite participating in the Mexican Revolution and achieving a high rank, he cam ...
.
It was also often visited by foreigners, particularly Anglo-Saxons.
The first constitutional governor of
Morelos
Morelos (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Morelos ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Morelos), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 36 municipalities and its capital city is Cuer ...
state, Vicente Estrada Cajigal
( es), authorized construction of a casino complex in Cuernavaca by the Compañía Hispanoamericana de Hoteles.
This was a consortium of Mexican businessmen backed by President
Abelardo L. Rodríguez
Abelardo Rodríguez Luján, commonly known as Abelardo L. Rodríguez (; 12 May 1889 – 13 February 1967) was the Substitute President of Mexico from 1932 to 1934. He completed the term of President Pascual Ortiz Rubio after his resignation, du ...
.
Manuel Suárez y Suárez
Manuel Suárez y Suárez (23 March 1896 – 23 July 1987) was a Spanish immigrant to Mexico who became a successful entrepreneur and patron of the arts.
He is known for the Casino de la Selva in Cuernavaca, the Hotel de México, and the adjacent Po ...
, an
Asturian entrepreneur, was the building contractor.
The Casino de la Selva was inaugurated in 1931 near the train station.
The layout was relatively simple.
There was a large fountain at the entrance, then a main driveway between two blocks of rooms, one on each side.
The drive led to the main hall, used as the gaming room.
There was also an Olympic swimming pool, a pediment and some other facilities.
The grounds contained bungalows set within the surrounding Amanalco Forest.
Hundreds of the trees were at least 100 years old.
Two of them were estimated to be over 1,000 years old.
The site held springs and a wide variety of plant species.
There was evidence of pre-Hispanic culture that could have been over 1500 years old.
The pre-Columbian site was first excavated in the 1940s.
Early years (1931–46)
![Manuel Suarez y Suarez sculpture](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Manuel_Suarez_y_Suarez_sculpture.jpg)
The Casino de la Selva was briefly the most luxurious watering spot in the Americas until the Garci-Crespo Hotel opened in
Tehuacán "By faith and hope"
,
, image_map =
, mapsize = 300 px
, map_caption = Location of Tehuacán within the state of Puebla.
, image_map1 = Puebla en México.svg
, mapsize1 = 300 px
, ma ...
in 1934.
However, the owners were unable to pay their debts to the state or to the builders.
Manuel Suárez was the main creditor and acquired the property in 1934.
That year the new president
Lázaro Cárdenas
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.
Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to a working-class family, Cárdenas joined the M ...
took office.
One of his first decrees banned gambling in Mexico since he saw casinos as centers of vice.
Suárez retained the property but ran it purely as a hotel.
Suárez and the Valencian architect
Jesús Martí Martín
Jesús Martí Martín (1899–1975) was a Spanish architect and painter. His first love was always painting, but he trained as an architect and was successful in this profession in Madrid in the years before the Spanish Civil War. During the civi ...
founded the company Vías y Obras, which built facilities in the ports of
Veracruz
Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
,
Acapulco
Acapulco de Juárez (), commonly called Acapulco ( , also , nah, Acapolco), is a city and major seaport in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, south of Mexico City. Acapulco is located on a deep, semicircular bay and has bee ...
and other cities.
Suárez built the Hotel Mocambo in Veracruz, and was involved in other industries, including sugar mills.
In 1938
Malcolm Lowry
Clarence Malcolm Lowry (; 28 July 1909 – 26 June 1957) was an English poet and novelist who is best known for his 1947 novel ''Under the Volcano'', which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list. moved to Cuernavaca to work on his novel ''
Under the Volcano
''Under the Volcano'' is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) published in 1947. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the Mexican city of Quauhnahuac, on the Day of the Dead in November ...
'', and described the hotel in the first chapter,
Expansion (1946–70)
In 1946 the Casino de la Selva was closed so that Vías y Obras could undertake various enlargements under the direction of Martí.
The two blocks of rooms were each given a second floor, and a French-style garden was laid out in the area between them.
New rooms were added to the main building.
Other additions included a large convention hall, a bowling alley and cafeteria, a walkway around the Olympic pool, two more pools and sandy areas to give a beach-like atmosphere.
The effect was much like the Hotel Mocambo.
Félix Candela
Félix Candela Outeriño (; January 27, 1910 – December 7, 1997) was a Spanish and Mexican architect who was born in Madrid and at the age of 26, emigrated to Mexico, acquiring double nationality.
He is known for his significant rol ...
came to Mexico to escape
Francoist Spain
Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...
and worked for Vías y Obras from 1942 to 1947.
He helped the architect Martí in his renovation of the Casino de la Selva.
Candela is best known for his reinforced concrete shells, which he introduced to Mexico.
These are based on
hyperbolic paraboloid
In geometry, a paraboloid is a quadric surface that has exactly one axis of symmetry and no center of symmetry. The term "paraboloid" is derived from parabola, which refers to a conic section that has a similar property of symmetry.
Every plane ...
s, in which straight beams can be used to build a
saddle roof
A saddle roof is a roof form which follows a convex curve about one axis and a concave curve about the other. The hyperbolic paraboloid form has been used for roofs at various times since it is easily constructed from straight sections of lumber, ...
, and can cover large spans with minimal thickness.
At the end of the 1950s the construction company of the brothers Félix, Antonio and Julia Candela built a dining room attached to an auditorium, and a non-denominational chapel in place of the fountain at the entrance, all with shell roofs.
Candela's pupil, the architect Juan Antonio Tonda
( es), designed the shells and about 30 bungalows in the south of the site and oversaw construction.
Later the chapel was converted to a nightclub, the Club Jano, and then the Discoteca Mambo.
![Felix candela en Casino](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Felix_candela_en_Casino.jpg)
The dining room, the ''Salón de los Relojes'' (Room of the Clocks), had a roof formed of five paraboloid sections with a large clock hanging from the central point where the arcs intersected.
It showed the times of places around the world.
The auditorium, reached via the ''Salón de los Relojes'', had a single hyperbolic paraboloid roof and contained the mural ''La farándula'' (Showbiz) by the Mexican artist
Francisco Icaza, a tribute to the German playwright
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
.
After 1965 Suárez started various unfinished projects such as a monorail below the pools and a forum to hold large murals by
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
.
Later this project was transferred to Mexico City where it became the
Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros
The Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros is a cultural, political and social facility located in Mexico City as part of the World Trade Center Mexico City. It was designed and decorated by David Alfaro Siqueiros in the 1960s and hosts the largest mural w ...
, leaving the building at the Casino de la Selva unfinished.
The result of these later works was increasing diversity of architectural styles and growing maintenance costs.
Lilia Suárez, daughter of the owner, assumed management of the Casino de la Selva in 1966.
Decline and abandonment (1970–2001)
From the 1970s until his death Suárez put most of his energy into the
Hotel de México
The Hotel de México was to have been the largest hotel in the Americas, a huge project started by the entrepreneur Manuel Suárez y Suárez in 1966 in Mexico City, Mexico.
The project ran out of control and was never completed.
After Suárez die ...
(now the
World Trade Center
World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association.
World Trade Center may refer to:
Buildings
* List of World Trade Centers
* World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
) in the Federal District, a project that grew out of control. The Casino de la Selva was neglected and used only by foreign tourists.
Suárez died in 1987.
After this the hotel was used as a spa, and was sometimes rented for events such as wedding celebrations and graduations.
Cuernavaca continued to expand, but most development happened outside the city center, which had expanded to include the hotel.
A bus station was built beside the hotel and in 1991 the Plaza Cuernavaca shopping center opened to its east.
In 1994 Suárez's heirs sold the property to the Grupo Situr-Sidek, a hotel company.
The deed of sale does not seem to have included any stipulation that the murals were to be preserved.
In 1996 the group defaulted on $63.7 million of taxes it owed to the Mexican government, and the Ministry of Finance seized the property.
The Hotel Casino de la Selva was abandoned for several years and deteriorated quickly.
The heritage authorities chose not to evaluate the property.
Ownership was transferred to the Fondo Bancario de Protección al Ahorro (
Fobaproa
Fobaproa (''Fondo Bancario de Protección al Ahorro''; "Savings Protection Banking Fund", in Spanish) was a contingencies fund created in 1990 by the Mexican government, led by then dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to attempt to re ...
: Bank Fund for the Protection of Savings).
By 2001 the buildings had deteriorated badly, with murals crumbling from neglect, bat guano on interior walls, and litter and human excrement covering the floor of the main salon that held some of the finest murals.
The buildings and over of green land were sold in 2001 for 10 million pesos, well below market value.
The cultural wealth contained in the property was not declared.
Artwork
![Mural de Reyes Meza](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Mural_de_Reyes_Meza.jpg)
Suárez wanted the hotel to be a gathering place for intellectuals and artists, and commissioned various works of art for the walls and gardens.
He hired Mexican and Spanish artists such as
José Reyes Meza José Reyes Meza (November 23, 1924 – October 31, 2011) was a Mexican painter, costume and set designer, who helped to found a number of cultural institutions in Mexico. Reyes Meza began his artistic career principally in theater, although he wa ...
and
Josep Renau
Josep Renau Berenguer (17 May 1907 — 11 November 1982) was an artist and communist revolutionary, notable for his propaganda work during the Spanish Civil War. Among his production, he is remarkable for his art deco period, his political propa ...
to decorate the walls with murals showing Mexican history from the pre-Columbian period to the modern age.
The murals would cover an area of .
The hotel became the center of cultural activity in Cuernavaca and was visited by artists, writers and political activists.
The former gaming room in the main hall came to be called the Salón de los Murales.
The Spanish Republican artist
Josep Renau
Josep Renau Berenguer (17 May 1907 — 11 November 1982) was an artist and communist revolutionary, notable for his propaganda work during the Spanish Civil War. Among his production, he is remarkable for his art deco period, his political propa ...
painted a mural there of "La Hispanidad" a history of the
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula (),
**
* Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica''
**
**
* french: Péninsule Ibérique
* mwl, Península Eibérica
* eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
from the time of the
Phoenicia
Phoenicia () was an ancient thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenician city-states extended and shrank throughout their histor ...
ns to the conquest of America.
The other side of the room held a 1965 mural by
José Reyes Meza José Reyes Meza (November 23, 1924 – October 31, 2011) was a Mexican painter, costume and set designer, who helped to found a number of cultural institutions in Mexico. Reyes Meza began his artistic career principally in theater, although he wa ...
that depicted indigenous culture in the
Valley of Mexico
The Valley of Mexico ( es, Valle de México) is a highlands plateau in central Mexico roughly coterminous with present-day Mexico City and the eastern half of the State of Mexico. Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, the Valley of Mexico wa ...
.
The hall also had a mural of ''The Apocalypse'' by Jorge Flores, a disciple of
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
.
Renau's ', painted with his wife Manuela Ballester
( es), depicted the conquest and colonization of America by the Spanish and covered more than .
The walls of the rooms and corridors also held the work of
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
,
Dr. Atl
Gerardo Murillo Cornado, also known by his signature "Dr. Atl", (October 3, 1875 – August 15, 1964) was a Mexican painter and writer. He was actively involved in the Mexican Revolution in the Constitutionalist faction led by Venustiano Carra ...
,
Benito Messeguer Benito Messeguer (October 27, 1930 – October 19, 1982) was a Mexican artist born in Spain, best known for his murals which continued much of the work of the Mexican muralism movement. His work was recognized with a tribute at the Palacio de Bell ...
,
Jorge González Camarena
Jorge González Camarena (24 March 1908 – 24 May 1980) was a Mexican painter, muralist and sculptor. He is best known for his mural work, as part of the Mexican muralism movement, although his work is distinct from the main names associat ...
,
Francisco Icaza,
Victor Moscoso
Victor Moscoso (born July 28, 1936) is a Spanish–American artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters, advertisements, and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first of the rock poster artists of ...
and others.
Sculptures in the gardens included pre-Hispanic allegories by Federico Canessi
( de) and works by Antonio Ballester.
A large equestrian statue of
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of w ...
by the Spanish sculptor Florentino Aparicio was installed late in 1962.
Suárez provided the hotel with a pottery workshop directed by Aparicio, where several noted potters learned their art.
In 1980 the ceramicist Gustavo Pérez Mirada was able to rent the workshop for a nominal sum with the help of his friend
Ida Rodríguez Prampolini
Ida Rodríguez Prampolini (24 September 1925 – 26 July 2017) was a Mexican academic, art historian and cultural preservationist, who was heavily involved in the creation of organizations and institutions to preserve the artistic traditions of M ...
.
Famous visitors
In 1969 the daughter of Manuel Suárez, Doña Lilia Suárez de Rossbach, was director of the hotel.
She offered the author
Carlos Monsiváis
Carlos Monsiváis Aceves (May 4, 1938 – June 19, 2010) was a Mexican philosopher, writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers within the country's progressive sectors. ...
an old bungalow as a quiet space where he could write a book, his ''Días de guardar'', published in 1971.
Rafael Buñuel, younger son of the filmmaker
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...
, spent six months living at the casino in 1971–72. He auditioned amateur local actors with the idea of staging his play "Las Diecisiete Cajas" (The Seventeen Boxes) which he had successfully mounted the year before as an Off-Off Broadway Theater piece in New York City. The play was never produced in Cuernavaca, however.
In 1971 Doña Lilia invited the well known stage and film actor
Carmen Montejo
Carmen Montejo (born María Teresa Sánchez González; May 26, 1925 – February 25, 2013) was a Cuban actress.
Biography
Real name: María Teresa Sánchez González.
Montejo started her career in radio as a child at the age of 6 in Cuba in ...
to start a theatre training program at the 500 seat Casino de la Selva Theater. Among many professional luminaries
Sergio Jiménez
Sergio Jiménez (December 17, 1937 – January 3, 2007), born in Mexico City, was a Mexican actor who became famous after portraying the character of ''El Gato'' in the film ''Los caifanes''. His last work was directing the telenovela ''La fe ...
came from Mexico City to teach classes. Montejo eventually founded the Tespis Theater Group. During the early 1970s Grupo Tespis, in addition to performing in a number of plays directed by Montejo, also produced professional plays. concerts, recitals and dance performances including appearances by the Argentinian singer songwriter Facundo Cabral, the Cante Jondo singer Enrique Morente, and the Flamenco dancer Pilar Rioja. The pianist Alfonso Morquecho also performed at the hotel.
The Mexican painter and muralist Gerardo Murillo, better known as
Dr. Atl
Gerardo Murillo Cornado, also known by his signature "Dr. Atl", (October 3, 1875 – August 15, 1964) was a Mexican painter and writer. He was actively involved in the Mexican Revolution in the Constitutionalist faction led by Venustiano Carra ...
, was among the best known guests.
Dr. Atl would hold marathon conversations from three to four in the afternoon in the dining room with other visitors such as
Mario Orozco Rivera Mario Orozco Rivera (January 19, 1930 – November 20, 1998) was a Mexican muralist and painter, a later proponent of Mexican muralism, and whose work was particularly influenced by David Alfaro Siqueiros. He created a number of murals, mostly in t ...
and
Benito Messeguer Benito Messeguer (October 27, 1930 – October 19, 1982) was a Mexican artist born in Spain, best known for his murals which continued much of the work of the Mexican muralism movement. His work was recognized with a tribute at the Palacio de Bell ...
.
A fragment of Dr. Atl's mural, ''Architectural view of the City of Puebla'', is preserved in the
Chapultepec Castle
Chapultepec Castle ( es, Castillo de Chapultepec) is located on top of Chapultepec Hill in Mexico City's Chapultepec park. The name ''Chapultepec'' is the Nahuatl word ''chapoltepēc'' which means "on the hill of the grasshopper". The castle has s ...
.
Leonora Carrington
Mary Leonora Carrington (6 April 191725 May 2011) was a British-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City and was one of the last surviving participants in the surrealist movement of ...
lived in the casino while they built her house in Cuernavaca.
Jules Dassin
Julius "Jules" Dassin (December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008) was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor. A subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, he subsequently moved to France, and later Greece, whe ...
visited with Luis Buñuel in 1969. They were making preliminary visits to Cuernavaca to sketch out plans for filming ''Under the Volcano'', but the project fell through because they couldn't secure film rights from Joseph Losey.
Demolition controversy
The property was sold at auction in 2001 to a joint venture of the American
Costco
Costco Wholesale Corporation (doing business as Costco Wholesale and also known simply as Costco) is an American multinational corporation which operates a chain of membership-only big-box retail stores (warehouse club). As of 2022, Costco i ...
discounter and the Mexican
Comercial Mexicana
Tiendas Comercial Mexicana S.A. de C.V., colloquially known as La Comercial and La Comer, was a Mexican hypermarket group that operated mainly in Mexico City and Central Mexico. It was founded in 1930 and operated by Controladora Comercial Mex ...
supermarket chain.
The partner companies quickly began to clear the site for construction of two giant stores, uprooting trees and tearing down many of the buildings.
Costco said they would invest over $30 million in the Club de Precios (Price Club) store, which would generate 1,500 temporary and 500 permanent jobs.
When the plans became public the
Civic Front for the Defense of the Casino de la Selva was formed by local environmentalists, preservationists and small business owners, asking the city to maintain the hotel and turn the land around it into a park.
![Fragmento mural casino](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Fragmento_mural_casino.jpg)
The issue quickly gained national and international media attention.
The painter José Reyes Meza was refused access to inspect the state of the murals.
On 14 July 2001 it was reported that the Josep Renau Foundation of Valencia, Spain, had sent a communiqué to
Kōichirō Matsuura
is a Japanese diplomat. He is the former Director-General of UNESCO. He was first elected in 1999 to a six-year term and reelected on 12 October 2005 for four years, following a reform instituted by the 29th session of the General Conference. In ...
of
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
asking him to exert pressure on the Mexican government to hold responsible those causing this "damage to the universal cultural heritage".
The Civic Front organization filed lawsuits, organized a boycott of Costco's other Mexican stores, and held public demonstrations outside the construction site entrance.
A group of
Morelos
Morelos (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Morelos ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Morelos), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 36 municipalities and its capital city is Cuer ...
state deputies drafted a proposal to urge the Federal
Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia
The Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH, ''National Institute of Anthropology and History'') is a Mexican federal government bureau established in 1939 to guarantee the research, preservation, protection, and promotion of the ...
(INAH) and
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes
The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL, en, National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature), located in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, is the Mexican institution in charge of coordinating artistic and cultural ...
(INBA) to conserve the historical and archaeological cultural heritage on the site.
They described the damage to the murals due to demolition of part of the shell of the Casino de la Selva building as an act of aggression against the cultural heritage of humanity.
They called on the City of Cuernavaca to take into consideration the opinion of the citizens, suspend the work and prepare a comprehensive plan for conservation and use of the cultural, historical and ecological resources.
In August 2002 demonstrators held a lengthy sit-in, calling for access to the site so they could count the remaining trees.
On 21 August 2001 protestors blocked access to the property for eight hours before being evicted by the authorities.
31 of the demonstrators were arrested and accused of riot, sabotage, assault, blocking public roads and incitement to crime.
On 23 August 2002 the state authorities transferred 31 opponents of the shopping centre project who had refused to pay bail to Atlacholoaya prison and deployed 360 troops around the entrance to the site to prevent the arrival of a group of supporters from
San Salvador Atenco
San Salvador Atenco is the municipal seat of Atenco, in the Mexican state of Mexico. The name "Atenco" comes from a Nahuatl phrase meaning "place on the edge of water".
The town
Fifteen excavations have been done in this area, uncovering mammot ...
, México.
Six days later 15,000 people marched in protest through downtown Cuernavaca.
Eventually the company agreed to save the murals and part of the surrounding forest.
The hotel was demolished in the fall of 2002.
During the excavation figurines and prehispanic ceramics were found.
The INAH tried to intervene but was too late to stop the work.
Aftermath
Within a year the new Costco outlet and the new mega supermarket opened in two huge concrete blocks surrounded by a sea of asphalt.
In 2003 the UN High Commission on Human Rights in Mexico condemned the project and criticized the local authorities for using excessive force in removing the protesters from the site.
One of the organizers of the protests, Flor Guerrero, described the failure to protect the Casino de la Selva as symbolic of Mexico's acceptance of the U.S. free-trade gospel.
Another local resident gave a different view, saying "They said we were all against those stores, but the stores may bring more benefits than harm. New jobs and investment were created, and there's a greater variety of products to choose from in those stores. Besides, the Casino de la Selva hotel never belonged to the people."
Costco opened an art museum named the Museo Muros to hold the Renau and Reyes Meza murals that had been salvaged as well as the
Gelman collection of Mexican art.
A reinforced concrete shell was built next to the museum in imitation of the Salón de los Relojes.
The shell was poorly executed and does not achieve the feeling of lightness that was characteristic of Candela's work.
The museum was boycotted by the activists of the Frente Ciudadano Pro-Casino de la Selva and received very few visitors.
In 2008 the Gelman collection was withdrawn and in November 2008 the museum became a branch of the Papalote Museo del Niño.
References
Sources
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{{refend
Hotels in Mexico
Cuernavaca
Modernist architecture
Demolished buildings and structures in Mexico
Arts in Mexico
Murals
Félix Candela buildings
Defunct hotels
Defunct casinos
Demolished hotels
Buildings and structures demolished in 2002
Hotels established in 1931
Hotel buildings completed in 1931