Panteón de San Fernando

[5] For many years, it was common for the dead to be buried inside the churches, behind the walls or under the floor, barely covered with wooden boards and almost at surface level, which produced very bad odors and very unpleasant spectacles for temple visitors.

[6] In the Apostolic College of San Fernando, of the Franciscan missionaries of Propaganda Fide, little by little the burial of corpses inside the church was avoided and the space of the atrium in front of the door began to be used.

[7] Around 1832, the construction of the current San Fernando Cemetery began, thanks to the efforts of the convent's trustee, Don Ignacio Cortina Chávez, and thanks to the collections that were already being made.

Because of this, the prices of funeral services in San Fernando went up, and in a few years, only the richest and most powerful people of the society could afford to pay for their burial in this place.

With time, San Fernando was practically at half of its capacity, and there were thoughts of expanding it, when a decree of President Juarez ordered the closing of all the cemeteries that were within the limits of the city.

[10] After President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada ordered the construction of the Rotunda of Illustrious Men in the Civil Pantheon of Dolores, San Fernando was closed and its purpose was only to preserve the remains of the illustrious people already buried there; it remained so during the Porfiriato, until in 1900 its destruction was planned to build a monumental "National Pantheon", behind it, in the current Calle de Héroes, which took its name from this project.

[11] In 1935, the San Fernando Pantheon was declared a historical monument by the National Institute of Anthropology and History, and in 1968 it received a major restoration on the occasion of the Olympic Games held in Mexico.

During the seventies and eighties, the pantheon underwent several slight modifications due to the celebration of the centennial anniversaries of Juarez and Francisco Zarco, as well as the 1985 earthquake.