City Detail

Coyoacán (US: KOY-oh-ə-KAHN, Spanish: [koʝoaˈkan] (listen)) is a borough (demarcación territorial) in Mexico City. The former village is now the borough's "historic center". The name comes from Nahuatl and most likely means "place of coyotes", when the Aztecs named a pre-Hispanic village on the southern shore of Lake Texcoco dominated by the Tepanec people. Against Aztec domination, these people welcomed Hernán Cortés and the Spanish, who used the area as a headquarters during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and made it the first capital of New Spain between 1521 and 1523. The village and later municipality of Coyoacán remained completely independent of Mexico City through the colonial period into the 19th century. In 1857, the area was incorporated into the then Federal District when this district was expanded. In 1928, the borough was created when the Federal District was divided into sixteen boroughs.