Balbuena Garden

Jorge Pedro Uribe Llamas

Someone says they live "by the airport," and it's almost impossible not to think of Balbuena. How is it that so many people reconcile sleep every night or day? A plane two or three minutes after the previous one, hardly ever stopping. The same goes for Moctezuma, Peñón de los Baños, and other surrounding neighborhoods. Another question for the outsider: how do they manage to endure the super heavy traffic on Calzada Ignacio Zaragoza or Fray Servando? "Here we get used to everything," acknowledges a resident who prefers to tell us about the benefits of their neighborhood: "It's close to the Center, we have green areas, and we can use the Sports City." And the Velodrome. And the baseball stadium. Moreover, you don't have to travel long distances when going to or returning from a concert at the Palacio de los Deportes. We didn't ask him, but we infer that as a child he was taken to hear mass at the parish of San Felipe Neri, notable for its modernist architecture. Perhaps his parents were among the first neighbors of the neighborhood (mainly merchants from the Merced area), which began to be subdivided in the first half of the 1950s based on a modern and functional urban layout, on land then known as "the plains of Balbuena" (in honor of the poet Bernardo de Balbuena), right where in January 1910 Alberto Braniff undertook the country's first flight with the help of a Farman biplane. Hydraulic concrete was used for the streets of the nascent neighborhood, and a certain modest neocolonial architecture that can still be admired thrived there. Soon the famous architect Mario Pani would design the Unidad Habitacional Kennedy. It is said that Hugo Sánchez and former president Zedillo have lived in Jardín Balbuena. We are talking, then, about an unquestionable protagonist of the Venustiano Carranza borough, which measures 34 square kilometers and yet many of us overlook. Let's not be ungrateful, let's not give the plane to our Balbuena friends.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018.