La Romita

Today, the area is no longer poor or dangerous, but its streets are narrower than the rest of Colonia Roma and its residents still consider themselves distinct.

[1] In the pre Hispanic period, the area was a small island called Aztacalco located near the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan surrounded by the shallow waters of Lake Texcoco.

By the mid 18th century, a road connecting Mexico City and Chapultepec passed nearby and due to its many trees was named La Romita as it resembled an avenue in Rome, Italy.

[1][5] According to local lore, in the colonial period thieves caught in Tepito were hung here using the large Montezuma cypress trees that the area had, which became something of a spectacle.

[4] In the 20th century, it was also the home of a notable pulque bar called La Hija de los Apaches located on Avenida Cuauhtemoc.

Durazo befriended and protected a more studious resident of the area, José López Portillo, who eventually went into politics and became president of Mexico from 1976 to 1982.

This led wide scale corruption and brutality until Durazo was replaced and jailed by the following president Miguel de la Madrid .

The protagonist of the novel Las Batallas en el Desierto, written by José Emilio Pacheco, talks about the thieves of Romita and the fear he had of the neighborhood.

[1] Los Olvidados was partly filmed here in the 1940s especially the scene where an indigenous boy named El Ojitos is abandoned by his father at the church.