Source: WTL photo taken on site at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas in Mexico City.
Image: The sign at the entrance to the plaza, which includes an archeological site, the Plaza de la Tres Culturas, the parish church of Santiago, the old convent of Santiago, and a museum.
Comments: In 1521 Cortés' Spanish soldiers destroyed Tlatelolco including the Aztec temples that stood on this site. In the pre-Columbian era, Tlatelolco was located on the edge of Lake Texcoco, and it was linked to Tenochtitlán by a causeway. Nowadays and underground subway that floats in the marshy ground connects this plaza with the rest of Mexico City. In place of the tlatelolca buildings and market place, the Spanish built the Templo de Santiago church (1609), which you see on the far side of the plaza. (Santiago was Spain's warlike patron saint.) Behind the church is a modern high rise office building. In this plaza on a night in October, 1968, the Mexican army killed about 400 Mexican students who were protesting the Mexican government's expenditures on the international Olympic Games of 1968 instead of on Mexico's schools and the poor. In addition, Inside the church is the baptismal font of Juan Diego.