Chapultepec Audiobook By Gustavo Vazquez Lozano cover art

Chapultepec

The History and Legend of the Only Real Castle in the Americas

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Chapultepec

By: Gustavo Vazquez Lozano
Narrated by: Virtual Voice
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About this listen

 There are more than one hundred castles in the Americas. Virtually all of them were built between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries as recreational homes for tycoons, amusement parks or tourist destinations, in republics that had long ago severed their ties with monarchies. Among the plethora of castles in North and South America, only one can be called a true historic castle, where viceroys and monarchs once lived: Chapultepec Castle, in Mexico City. The top of Chapultepec Hill, once a sacred place for the Mexica, occupies an infinitesimal fraction of Mexican territory, but that small space that pre-Hispanic inhabitants considered to be the entry to the underworld, has seen the most dramatic events in the history of that country unfold. Chapultepec, the only genuine castle in the continent, was built on the remains of ancient Aztec buildings when Mexico was still a colony of Spain. The Alcazar and its surroundings are full of ghosts: from the last Toltec king who committed suicide by hanging at the entrance of one of the caves, to Empress Charlotte, walking along its corridors and stained glass windows overwhelmed by melancholy, knowing that her empire was collapsing. There are of course the ghosts of the presidents who inhabited it, trying to grasp a bit of glory too, from Porfirio Díaz who took European artists to make it even more magnificent, to Lázaro Cárdenas who refused to live amongst such ostentation, and moved to a more modest residence in another place of the wood —without forgetting the Boy Heroes, the cadets who perished fighting against the US army, whose historical existence is demonstrated here beyond a doubt. Not to mention that at different times, like the enchanted palaces in fairy tales, Chapultepec was also a ghost too, an abandoned mole in whose surroundings wild beasts roamed, and passers-by risked their lives in the thick of a forest full of bandits. In one of its less dignified moments, the castle was even used to store peppers. Madame Calderón de la Barca, an eminent traveler, already in 1843 wrote that the castle alone was “the most haunted by recollections of all the traditionary sites of which Mexico can boast. Could these hoary cypresses speak, what tales might they not disclose!” It would not be an exaggeration to say then that Chapultepec Castle, a place of legend, sacrifice, tragedy and splendor, is the symbol and synthesis of today's Mexico. Chapultepec, the History and Legend of the Only True Castle in the Americas, looks at the history of this amazing building, from its construction to the 21st century.
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