page_title: Coyoacán
section_title: Churubusco
hierarchical_section_title: Coyoacán / Other neighborhoods of the borough / Churubusco
caption_attribution_description: English: Walkway from main gate to main building of the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones (ex Monastery of Churubusco) in Coyoacan borough, Mexico City
context_page_description: Coyoacán is a municipality of Mexico City and the former village which is now the borough’s “historic center.” The name comes from Nahuatl and most likely means “place of coyotes, ” when the Aztecs named a pre-Hispanic village on the southern shore of Lake Texcoco which was dominated by the Tepanec people. Against Aztec domination, these people welcomed Hernán Cortés and the Spanish, who used the area as a headquarters during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and made it the first capital of New Spain between 1521 and 1523. The village, later municipality, of Coyoacan remained completely independent of Mexico City through the colonial period into the 19th century. In 1857, the area was incorporated into the Federal District when this district was expanded. In 1928, the borough was created when the Federal District was divided into sixteen boroughs. The urban sprawl of Mexico City reached the borough in the mid 20th century, turning farms, former lakes and forests into developed areas, but many of the former villages have kept their original layouts, plazas and narrow streets and have conserved structures built from the 16th to the early 20th centuries.
context_section_description: The Churubusco neighborhood has the historic Dieguinos monastery located near the ancient road to Iztapalapa. In the pre-Hispanic period, this area was a small island, which was called Teopanzolco, at the juncture of Lake Texcoco and Lake Xochimilco. In the 17th century, the Spanish built the monastery of Churubusco over a ceremonial site dedicated to the god Huitzilopochtli. This monastery complex is best known for its role during the Mexican–American War. The Mexicans, aided by the "Saint Patrick's Battalion", a military unit composed of catholic immigrants (mainly Irish), had fortified the monastery and fought until they ran out of ammunition and then beaten only after hand-to-hand combat. When U.S. General David Twiggs asked Mexican General Pedro María de Anaya to surrender his ammunition, the reply is said to have been "If there were any, you would not be here." There is a memorial to this event outside the main entrance and a plaque commemorating the "Irish martyrs". The monastery's church still retains its original function, but the most of the rest of the complex is now the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones. The collection includes an American map of the facility from 1847, artifacts from the French Intervention in Mexico and a plot by Henry Lane Wilson to bring down the government of Francisco I. Madero in 1913.
  The Casa de Cristo (House of Christ) is located on Heroes Street in Churubusco. It was constructed in 1906 as a residence for Bertha Vizcayno de Vergara who remained there until 1967. Today, it is still private property but is used as a restaurant. It has three floors and twelve rooms, with walls of brick and limestone and wood roof decorated with tiles. The front has sandstone Ionic columns. The name comes from the inscription of "Casa de Cristo" over the main entrance.
caption: Walkway inside the Churubusco monastery
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