Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park. Photo: Google

BY KELIN DILLON

During his daily morning press conference on Thursday, March 10, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced the resumption of Mexico City’s 10 billion-peso Chapultepec Forest project, which will develop and integrate an 88-hectare fourth section into the Latin America’s second-largest park, following a two-year pause in the venture due to the covid-19 pandemic. The project is set to be complete in December 2023, AMLO said.

While this section of the forest had been used as a weapons factory since 1779, the land was later turned over to the government in 2019 for the expansion of Chapultepec Park, adding another 88 hectares to the huge park’s 648-hectare sprawl.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum joined the conference by López Obrador’s side, where the head of the Mexican capital revealed that some 3.87 billion pesos have already been spent on the project, as well as announcing progress on the interconnection of the park’s four different sections by a five-kilometer track of off-ground cable buses and pedestrian bridges.

“The inauguration of this project will be in December 2023, with all its parts,” said Sheinbaum at the time. “This project includes the environmental rehabilitation of all forests, sanitation, reforestation and the water rescue of ravines that the forest has, particularly in the third and fourth sections of Chapultepec.”

Sheinbaum then pointed out how this same plot of land was previously intended to be privatized, sold off and turned into a “second Santa Fe” – a newly-developed community of businesses and high-rises located some distance from the traditional Mexico City area – by AMLO’s predecessor, former President Enrique Peña Nieto, for 18 billion pesos.

For his part, Gabriel Orozco, the creative director of the Chapultepec Park project, went on to announce the park’s new section would include a number of attractions, including cultural areas, the former gunpowder factory, a National Art Warehouse and a brand new National Cinematheque.