This year, 2025, is the 700th anniversary of Mexico City, founded on an island on a lake as the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. (See Mexico City’s 700th Anniversary).
ABC reported on the commemorations taking place in Mexico City on July 26th, 2025.
From ABC: “Mexico City is marking the 700th anniversary of its founding with a series of public events on Saturday, including artistic performances honoring the city’s Indigenous origins.”
“Artists in Indigenous clothing reenacted the founding of the Aztec capital in front of the country’s top officials in Mexico City’s main square. Later, hundreds of dancers dressed in traditional clothing, feather headdresses, drums, and ankle rattles made of seeds performed sacred dances meant to connect with nature.”
“The anniversary commemorates the establishment of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica, a group also known as the Aztecs, who settled in the Valley of Mexico in 1325.”
President Claudia Sheinbaum presided over the official ribbon-cutting for a monument. Here’s photo of President Sheinbaum with her husband Jesús María Tarriba (on her left) and others:
From ABC: “ ‘Mexico was not born with the arrival of the Spanish; Mexico was born much earlier with the great civilizations,’ said President Claudia Sheinbaum in a speech in which she urged the eradication of the racism that still persists in the country.”
The Aztecs weren’t actually the first group to inhabit the island but the political entity they founded grew to dominate the whole region.
From ABC: “The main island in the lake was already populated by the Tepaneca people, but they allowed the Mexica to settle there in exchange for tribute payments and other services, Pastrana said.” [Miguel Pastrana of UNAM’s Historic Investigations Institute]
“Little by little, the Mexica’s power grew. They were strong warriors and commercially prosperous, and they were effective at making alliances with other peoples.” [And they were quite effective at conquering.]
“Tenochtitlan became a great city at the center of an empire until the Spanish conquered it in 1521.”
Tenochtitlan was destroyed but the Spaniards rebuilt it, Spanish-style, with the same stones. The city became the center of an empire again as the capital of the vast colonial territory of “New Spain”, and after that, the capital of independent Mexico.
Mexico City is one of the biggest cities on the planet. It is the political, economic and cultural capital of Mexico and the biggest Spanish-speaking city in the world.
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