Plaza Luis Cabrera

The Plaza Luis Cabrera, is a small community park in Roma Norte. It acts as an expansion of the tree-lined median that runs the length of the Avenida Orizaba. The park lends its name to the campus of the Universidad de Londres across the street. But there are also installations of the UAM and the Universidad de la Comunicación within the surrounding couple of block. The plaza thus acts as something of mini-urban quad for students too. That’s not to mention the hospital workers from the Medex installation on the corner. Park goers in white frocks are a common site too.

• Luis Vicente Cabrera Lobato (1876–1954) was a lawyer, politician, diplomat, critic, essayist, and poet. He’s mostly remembered today for the work he did in securing peasant rights. The proposals he put down formed the basis for the 1915 Agrarian Law established by Venustiano Carranza. Having joined the Constitutionalist Army in 1913, by 1914 Carranza appointed him Minister of Finance. He strongly campaigned against the course of the later Mexican Revolution, in particular against the regimes of Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles.

The Plaza Luis Cabrera came about when Roma was a far more working-class neighborhood. But in recent years, it’s hosted giant works by Javier Marín from the Terreno Baldío gallery, just south on Orizaba. In the thick of the Roma Norte gallery scene, it’s a pleasant patch of green, a beloved fountain, and a spot where a few lucky trees reach for the clouds.