Coyoacán refers to one of the 16 boroughs (
delegaciones) of the
Federal District of Mexico City as well as the former village which is now the borough’s “historic center.” The name comes from
Nahuatl and most likely means “place of
coyotes,” when the
Aztecs named a pre-Hispanic village on the southern shore of
Lake Texcoco which was dominated by the
Tepanec people. Against
Aztec domination, these people welcomed
Hernán Cortés and the Spanish, who used the area as a headquarters during the
Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and made it the first capital of
New Spain between 1521 and 1523. The village, later
municipality, of Coyoacan remained completely independent of Mexico City through the colonial period into the 19th century. In 1857, the area was incorporated into the Federal District when this district was expanded. In 1928, the borough was created when the Federal District was divided into sixteen boroughs. The
urban sprawl of Mexico City reached the borough in the mid 20th century, turning farms, former lakes and forests into developed areas, but many of the former villages have kept their original layouts, plazas and narrow streets and have conserved structures built from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. This has made the borough of Coyoacan, especially its historic center, a popular place to visit on weekends.