Parque de la Luz, Chapultepec

The Parque de la Luz (Park of Light) is one of the most isolated parts of Chapultepec’s Section 2. Beloved by area residents, the park offers broad expanses of green and lots of shade amidst the area’s rather notorious highway interchanges.

Importantly, the park is the site of a major 2008 plane crash. Mexico’s Federal Secretary of Governance, Juan Camilo Mouriño, died in the wreck along with eight other passengers in the plane. A further seven people on the ground died when the plane fell from the sky.

The 16 victims of the crash are commemorated in the Mouriño Memorial at the northern entrance to the park. Circular benches placed within the park also record the victim’s names.

In 2014, the builders of the Torre Virreyes undertook a complete rehabilitation of the park. They planted trees and re-landscaped and gardened. Today the park is nearly contiguous with the grounds of the complex. Just one particularly comfortable stretch of the Cuernavaca Railroad Bikeway now separates the tower and grounds from the park. It’s one of the greenest parts of the bikeway before one continues on across Chapultepec proper.

Today the Parque de la Luz is also an important neighborhood park for this side of Lomas de Chapultepec and for the tiny Molino del Rey neighborhood. Wonderfully crooked and on highly uneven territory, it’s just across the bikeway to the south of the park and the tower.