Cuernavaca in the early 1930s held the homes of several former generals who later became presidents, Plutarco Elías Calles, Lázaro Cárdenas and Manuel Ávila Camacho.

[1] The first constitutional governor of Morelos state, Vicente Estrada Cajigal(es), authorized construction of a casino complex in Cuernavaca by the Compañía Hispanoamericana de Hoteles.

[6] The Casino de la Selva was briefly the most luxurious watering spot in the Americas until the Garci-Crespo Hotel opened in Tehuacán in 1934.

[3] Suárez and the Valencian architect Jesús Martí Martín founded the company Vías y Obras, which built facilities in the ports of Veracruz, Acapulco and other cities.

These are based on hyperbolic paraboloids, in which straight beams can be used to build a saddle roof, and can cover large spans with minimal thickness.

[3] At the end of the 1950s the construction company of the brothers Félix, Antonio and Julia Candela built a dining room attached to an auditorium, and a non-denominational chapel in place of the fountain at the entrance, all with shell roofs.

Candela's pupil, the architect Juan Antonio Tonda(es), designed the shells and about 30 bungalows in the south of the site and oversaw construction.

[11] The auditorium, reached via the Salón de los Relojes, had a single hyperbolic paraboloid roof and contained the mural La farándula (Showbiz) by the Mexican artist Francisco Icaza, a tribute to the German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

[11] After 1965 Suárez started various unfinished projects such as a monorail below the pools and a forum to hold large murals by David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Later this project was transferred to Mexico City where it became the Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, leaving the building at the Casino de la Selva unfinished.

[12] From the 1970s until his death Suárez put most of his energy into the Hotel de México (now the World Trade Center) in the Federal District, a project that grew out of control.

[13] Ownership was transferred to the Fondo Bancario de Protección al Ahorro (Fobaproa: Bank Fund for the Protection of Savings).

The Spanish Republican artist Josep Renau painted a mural there of "La Hispanidad" a history of the Iberian Peninsula from the time of the Phoenicians to the conquest of America.

[11] Renau's Mural de la conformacion hispanica, painted with his wife Manuela Ballester(es), depicted the conquest and colonization of America by the Spanish and covered more than 300 square metres (3,200 sq ft).

[16] The walls of the rooms and corridors also held the work of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Dr. Atl, Benito Messeguer, Jorge González Camarena, Francisco Icaza, Victor Moscoso and others.

[11] In 1980 the ceramicist Gustavo Pérez Mirada was able to rent the workshop for a nominal sum with the help of his friend Ida Rodríguez Prampolini.

She offered the author Carlos Monsiváis an old bungalow as a quiet space where he could write a book, his Días de guardar, published in 1971.

He auditioned amateur local actors with the idea of staging his play "Las Diecisiete Cajas" (The Seventeen Boxes) which he had successfully mounted the year before as an Off-Off-Broadway Theater piece in New York City.

In 1971, Doña Lilia invited the well-known stage and film actor Carmen Montejo to start a theatre training program at the 500-seat Casino de la Selva Theater.

concerts, recitals, and dance performances including appearances by the Argentinian singer-songwriter Facundo Cabral, the Cante Jondo singer Enrique Morente, and the Flamenco dancer Pilar Rioja.

[12] The property was sold at auction in 2001 to a joint venture of the American discount retailer Costco and the Mexican Comercial Mexicana supermarket chain.

[15] 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.

[24] 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".

[18] 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.

[18] 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, historical and ecological resources.

[26] 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.

[27] In 2003 the UN High Commission on Human Rights in Mexico condemned the project and criticized the local authorities for using excessive force in removing the protesters from the site.

[6] One of the organizers of the protests, Flor Guerrero, described the failure to protect the Casino de la Selva as symbolic of Mexico's acceptance of the U.S. free-trade gospel.