Casa de Las Bombas Cultural Center

The Casa de Las Bombas Cultural Center began as a pump house providing water to the 13 towns of old Iztapalapa. President Lázaro Cárdenas opened the pumps in 1940. These ran straight through the end of the 1980s.

At that time, the Iztapalapa government signed an agreement with Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM) to loan the property and convert it to a Cultural Center. The center was planned as a part of the UAM Extension program. It opened its doors in September 1990.

Always bigger than it looks in photos, the Center offers workshops in all kinds of artistic undertakings. It’s also an important center for educational advising for area high school students.

A forum in the basement hosts plays, poetry recitals, music and dance performances for a maximum of 80 guests. It’s alwaus sold old out. There’s also an open-air forum with a capacity for 320 guests on the center grounds. This venue is generally used on weekends for theater, music, and dance preformances and for film screenings.

There’s also a temporary exhibition space. This hosts exhibitions of painting, engraving, photography and popular art in general. Perhaps the center is most famous for hosting book events and a small branch of the UAM library. It circulates some 3,000 titles and especially those appropriate for primary and secondary levels.

The Casa de las Bombas is on the north side of the La Purisima sports complex. The Mercado La Purisima is on the south side of the same complex. The Metro UAM-I is about a 12-minute walk away.