page_title: Casino de la Selva
section_title: Demolition controversy
hierarchical_section_title: Casino de la Selva / Demolition controversy
caption_attribution_description: English: Cuernavaca murales Español: mural en casino de la selva cuernavaca
context_page_description: The Hotel Casino de la Selva was a hotel and casino located in the city of Cuernavaca, 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 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 and a hypermarket.
  After demolition had begun there was a public outcry, and eventually some parts of the murals were preserved.
context_section_description: The property was sold at auction in 2001 to a joint venture of the American Costco discounter and the Mexican Comercial Mexicana 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.
  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 of UNESCO 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 state deputies drafted a proposal to urge the Federal Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) and Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (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, historial 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, 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.
caption: Fragment of one of the murals
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