The Birth of the Colonia del Carmen in Coyoacán during the Porfiriato (1890-1910): An Ideological Analysis

Abstract

This article examines the birth of the urban development known as Colonia del Carmen, in Coyoacán, from 1890 to 1910, during the Porfirio Díaz Regime, in Mexico. To do so, the main source analyzed here is the Bosquejo Histórico de Coyoacán of Francisco Sosa, one of the most famous Mexican writers and historians of the time. Indeed, although this text is written by this author as an innocuous historical narrative of Coyoacán, the fact that it was specifically written to commemorate the inauguration of the Colonia by Porfirio Díaz and his wife Carmen reveals a lot of the ideological climate that was behind this type of development at the end of the nineteenth century. Contrasting Sosa’s narrative with the official archives related to the development of the Colonia shows how Sosa tried to inscribe the commercial enterprise it represented within the myth of the Pax Porfiriana.