Parque Morelos

Parque Morelos is a long, tree-shaded park beside Calzada Independencia in Guadalajara's historic centre, just north of the Mercado de San Juan de Dios. On an ordinary day it is a place for downtown families, vendors and office workers to cut through or sit in the shade, with footpaths and a children's play area.

Its story is tied to the San Juan de Dios River, which forked at this spot. In colonial times the ground was a poplar grove crossed by two bridges, one of them beside the Beatas' chocolate mill on what is now Calle Federación. The area was later neglected and ended up as a dump. Part of the land was also the old San Vicente de Paúl cemetery, attached to the Hospital de Belén and officially closed in 1896. After the Revolution the river was piped underground to make way for Calzada Independencia, the strip was laid out again as the Paseo de la Alameda, and architect Rafael Urzúa was hired to design a park for the city.

The current name dates from 1967, when a bronze equestrian statue of José María Morelos went up on a semicircular pedestal of marble and cantera stone. Next to it stands a pyramid-shaped cantera stela topped by an eagle, carrying in bronze letters point 12 of Morelos' Sentimientos de la Nación, the one calling for less extreme wealth and poverty and better pay for the poor. Beside the monument begins the Calzada de los Insurgentes, a walkway lined with 14 busts of independence heroes, among them Vicente Guerrero, Ignacio Allende, Guadalupe Victoria, Nicolás Bravo, Francisco Xavier Mina and El Pípila, ending at a bandstand.

Every autumn the park fills with the Feria del Cartón y del Juguete, a Day of the Dead fair more than 70 years old: around 300 stalls sell papier-mâché figures, sugar and chocolate skulls, papel picado, pan de muerto, clay figures and wooden toys such as spinning tops and baleros for home altars. The Tianguis del Heno follows in November and a Christmas market in December.