Jardín Ramón López Velarde

This park's namesake, Ramón López Velarde, was born in 1888 and would become one of Mexico's most notable poets. Despite his early death in 1921 at the age of 33, he managed to leave behind an impressive body of work that encompassed poetry books as well as collaborations for magazines and newspapers. He is often referred to as Mexico's "National Poet," and the naming of the park in his honor is also due to his house having been located nearby. In the early 1900s this was still the General Cemetery of La Piedad, which López Velarde was known to wander. By the mid-1920s, the cemetery was deconsecrated, most of the remains moved to the Panteón General de Dolores, and the National Stadium built on the grounds.

This stadium, inspired by Ancient Greece, wouldn't last long and was in a state of abandonment by the 1940s when a park was built in its place. Following the collapse of several nearby buildings in the 1985 earthquake https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/linkogecko/lists/1985-mexico-earthquake, the park was expanded and received its current name (its previous namesake was architect Antonio M. Anza). Few legacies remain of the former cemetery, stadium and residential buildings that once stood here. The park's peculiar statue of a javelin thrower does seem to date back to the National Stadium days. Pictures from 2020 still show the athlete holding a javelin, but it is unclear at what point afterward it was replaced with what now resembles a long femur. The reason behind the change is even more unclear, but it might be a throwback to its time as the General Cemetery.

In this same decade, the park underwent renovations which were concluded in 2023, and included the addition of "The Elephant of Abundance", a multicolored animal sculpture by artist Fernando Andriacci from Oaxaca. Sports areas in the park include soccer fields and basketball courts, some of which feature the emblem of FMF (Mexican Soccer Federation) and telecom company AT&T. It would appear they were the corporate sponsors of these in dedication to the 200th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the United States, celebrated in 2021.

What has likely been intended as the park's most permanent monument actually turned out to be anything but. In 2006, the "Paseo del Rock Mexicano" (Walk of Mexican Rock) was inaugurated here, centered on a larger-than-life black sculpture of a rock guitar; the monument also featured 50 pillars, each with a plaque with the name and artist of one of the 50 songs deemed to have been most important to rock music in the country. From "Yo No Soy Rebelde" released by Locos del Ritmo in 1960 to 2003's "Frijolero" by Molotov, the 50 songs featured here showed the evolution of Mexican rock, starting with styles greatly influenced by the United States' blues and rock 'n' roll to fusions with other genres at the start of the 21st century. It was perhaps these fusion examples that led many music purists to disapprove of the monument, which became unpopular and was subject to vandalism throughout the 2010s, only to be later abandoned. As of late 2024, the guitar remains as do the 50 pillars, but all the plaques are now gone.

Rock purism in Mexico was something of a response to previous heavy repression, as is often the case. During the early and mid 1960s, the musical genre was considered relatively inoffensive, with only a few controversies related to the dances and teenage culture it promoted. 1968 https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/linkogecko/lists/1968-summer-olympics saw the deadly governmental response to a student protest in what came to be known as the Tlatelolco Massacre, days before the opening of the Mexico City Olympics. A similar massacre called El Halconazo https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/el-halconazo-monument-mexico-city took place in June 1971, with the Festival de Rock y Ruedas de Avándaro taking place in September. This festival has often been called "The Mexican Woodstock" as its role in the country's counterculture and music was similar to the impact of the 1969 New York festival.

The list of 50 songs includes several acts that played in Avándaro, such as Peace & Love, Dug Dugs and Three Souls on My Mind (later known as El Tri). In response to the previous repression of students, crowds at the festival are known to have repeatedly chanted "tenemos el poder" (we have the power) which, along with nudity, sex and drug intake, are believed to have shocked then-president Luis Echeverría Álvarez, and his government would go on to ban rock music concerts and reduce its airtime on radio and television. His successor José López Portillo would maintain a similar policy and therefore, during the rest of the 1970s, rock music would be limited to clandestine concerts in abandoned or insecure buildings. These were later dubbed "hoyos fonky" (funky holes) by writer Parménides García Saldaña.

In the early 1980s, rock bands from elsewhere in Latin America like Soda Stereo from Argentina became too big to ignore and were allowed to play stadium concerts in Mexico. Local acts would eventually be granted airtime and permission to perform live outside of the hoyos fonky. Mexico City and its metropolitan area would be almost hegemonic in their influence, however, and listed artists from this period of relative freedom included Rockdrigo González https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/rockdrigo-memorial, probably the best example of rupestre singers who often performed solo with only a guitar and maybe a harmonica, as well as Botellita de Jerez and Caifanes. The latter were pioneers of mixing rock with genres that were popular among Mexico's working class, like cumbia from Colombia. Their style saw the origin of Mexican purism towards rock, as some disagreed that they would be labeled as such, given their playful take on genres and influences.

The 1990s to early 2000s saw the greatest defiance to rock purism, and the fact that nearly half of the 50-song list comes from the 13-year period up to 2003 might have led to the downfall of its reputation. Perhaps the largest bands of this time were Maldita Vecindad and Café Tacvba, the ones that started where 80s fusion left off and further combined Latin rhythms like son and bolero with building blocks of rock like blues and punk, all while incorporating instruments disliked by rock purists such as saxophone, the melodica and upright bass. But it was the accordion-loving northern city of Monterrey www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/monterrey-mexico, with its closeness to the United States, that would most change what "rock" meant in Mexico.

Rockotitlán, a Mexico City-based venue, had long held a yearly "battle of the bands" invariably won by acts from Mexico City and its surroundings. The 1995 edition saw the shocking victory of Zurdok Movimento (later known as just Zurdok and surprisingly absent from the list), from Monterrey. This is often seen as the rise of what would come to be known as the "avanzada regia". Regiomontano is the demonym of Monterrey, often shortened to regio or regia, and the "advance" of bands from this city at the turn of the century had to do with its characteristic musical landscape. Rock in the United States at the time was marked by the adoption of other home-grown genres like rap, embracing local folk such as country and bluegrass, as well as international music, ska and reggae from Jamaica perhaps chief among them. Bands in Monterrey were more exposed and open to this than those in central Mexico, and therefore acts like Control Machete and El Gran Silencio would incorporate rap into their music, and Jamaican-styled acts like Inspector and Panteón Rococó flourished in both regions.

With its crucial role in northern Mexican folk music as well as Monterrey's cumbia culture (and its home-grown slowed-down version, kolombias), the accordion features heavily in the city's sound. Celso Piña, maybe Monterrey's most beloved musician, was an accordionist, so it makes sense that the instrument appears in the listed songs by regia Julieta Venegas and Nortec Collective from Tijuana. Nortec also joins the regio bands Kinky and Plastilina Mosh in their predilection for electronic sounds. The northern sounds therefore brought a greater influence into Mexican rock by elements of ska, hip hop, electronica and the accordion, among others, and this was reflected in the commemorative list. Reactions to this musical diversity were mixed, but purist views were often the loudest. A relative lack of other types of diversity, such as the under-representation of women, independent artists and acts from outside the metropolitan areas of Tijuana, Monterrey and Mexico City, also contributed to the monument being decried and abandoned. Visiting Jardín Ramón López Velarde nowadays is an eclectic experience in which the empty pillars of the Paseo del Rock Mexicano echo like the legacy of what was once a cemetery and a stadium.