Centro Comercial Parque Delta

One of the leading shopping centers in the center-city, Parque Delta was greatly expanded in 2016. Today it’s basically jam-packed about seven days a week. Perhaps Mondays are about the slowest.

With about 200 retailers, anchored most prominently by the Liverpool department store, the Soriana supermarket, and Cinemex cinema, there’s usually good reason for people to show up.

The Parque Delta Baseball Stadium

For most of the last century the site of the present day Parque Delta was home to the city’s biggest baseball stadium. In fact, baseball was played almost exclusively in Mexico City.

The park opened in 1928 to replace the Parque Franco Ingles. All the Mexico City teams played at multiple parks, including a prominent one at La Villa in the north of the city and in Parque las Águilas en Álvaro Obregón.

The park operated as Parque Delta until it was sold to the Mexican Social Security institute in 1955 and became known as Parque Seguridad Social. It was to remain operating under that name until the final game was played there on 1 June, 2000.

The Tragedy

Due to the size and space available in the baseball park, in the wake of the 1985 earthquake, the park was used as an enormous makeshift morgue. There simply wasn’t enough space anywhere else for the thousands of bodies. Many needed to be identified and claimed. Many never were and were sent to the San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetary in Iztapalapa. They were buried in mass graves there.

The name of the present Parque Delta shopping center was intended to honor those deceased and the many years of baseball memories, too.