Coyoacán
Old residential borough on the southern side of Mexico City. In Hayden Herrera’s Frida it is the slow, village-like home town Frida Kahlo grew up in and longed to escape.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frida | Hayden Herrera | backdrop | The quiet village Frida leaves for the Preparatoria and complains of, “pasture and pasture”, while kept home. |
Sub-places
- Aguayo Street (Coyoacán)
- Casa Azul
- Casa de la Mujer Josefina Ortiz de Domínguez
- La Rosita
- Museo Anahuacalli
Frida — Hayden Herrera (1983)
Source: Frida - A Biography of Frida Kahlo · Original · Readwise highlight
Out from under the thumbs of mother, sisters, aunts, away from the gentle, slow village life of Coyoacán, she was thrust into the heart of Mexico City, where modern Mexico was being invented and where students actually participated in that invention.
- Role: backdrop
- In the book: Coyoacán is Frida’s childhood world. Herrera reads her painting Four Inhabitants of Mexico (1938) as set on its village square, with the La Rosita pulque bar in the background and the child Frida alone among four Mexican figures. In 1922 she leaves its “slow village life” for the National Preparatory School, and when her mother keeps her home during unrest she writes to Alejandro that she is “sad and bored in this town”, with “nothing but pasture and pasture”. It is also where the bus from the Zócalo was heading on the day of her accident.
- Why it matters: It is the home pole of the early chapters, the quiet place set against the ferment of central Mexico City. Its main stage, the Casa Azul, has its own note.