Disturbed Places

8/23/2024

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Mexico City was built on the ruins of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, and humans have lived there dating back to prehistoric times. If one wonders if there are ghosts in Mexico City, you only need to recognize that tales of skulduggery and murder abound in this ancient city, and the answer should be obvious.

It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able to leave their photographs on surrounding scenes and objects and whoever heard of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful and lovely ghosts revisiting the glimpses of the moon?
--Algernon Blackwood

The Templo Mayor and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City c.2008

All places have their history, and the passage of time leaves an indelible mark with the signature of the humans which have trod its streets. The older the city, the more life and death have played out, and such is the case of Mexico City.

Long before the Conquistadores arrived, the Aztecs consecrated the land with the blood of sacrificial victims, culled from virgins within their population, captured warriors, travelers and children. Wraiths of conquest, revolution, suicide and natural disasters perhaps exist in a moment where time has not moved forward, and occasionally the living have glimpses of them.

Posada del Sol, Mexico City

POSADA DEL SOL (INN OF THE SUN)
The Posada del Sol on Avenida de Niños Heroes in Colonia Doctores was a creation of Fernando Saldaña Galvan (1896-1953), an engineer who was at one time in charge of Mexico's newsprint agency, and a powerful political figure.

Architect Juan Sordo Madaleno, (1916-1985) designed Galvan's vision, where he hoped to create a meeting place for artists and intellectuals.

Building of the hotel started in 1937, and by 1945 when it was inaugurated it was only half finished, at least by Saldana Galvan's standard, since he planned other additions to the structure which has a schizophrenic flavor mixed with genius.

It opened with over 500 rooms surrounded by fountain-decorated gardens, spread out through several, seven-story buildings. There was a casino, theater and its own distilling plant for pure water. Each room had an iron grillwork balcony overlooking the patio. The trimmings were of decorative tile, and the furniture was of hand carved primavera. The windows were of stained glass, and the pillars of marble. In the middle was a small circular chapel, and the Fountain of Youth in the center of this.

A statue of Saint Francis of Assisi and his wolf by the compound's bell tower.

Despite being opened only a few years, some time between 1949 and 1950 it closed. Miguel Aleman Valdes headed a government process that expropriated the property to settle Galvan's debts.

It's suggested that Saldana Galvan had redirected public funds to finish the hotel, but the misappropriation of funds did not go unnoticed, which his political opponents took advantage of.

Another theory is the use of masonic symbols designed throughout the building like the repetition of the number 33, staves, pregnant virgins and a cryptic alphabet that alludes to esotericism, brought about the closure. It's believed that Galvan was urged by his lodge brothers to incorporate them in the design. Freemasonry has always been linked to Mexican politics, but perhaps he went rogue in performing rites his Lodge brother did not agree with, or perhaps the pressure came from other religious groups, which resulted in the closure of the hotel.

Present day the only part of the building that has not been abandoned is the chapel. On the floor is a five-pointed star that extends over the entire area. Beneath the star and behind the altar is a hidden piping system that could have been used either as illumination, or to clean the floor after some type of blood ritual.

There are stories that the bones and skull of 40 people were found between the double wall of tunnels in the building. Some believe this is proof of ritual human sacrifices carried out at La Posada del Sol.

Twelve statues of owls ring the top of the chapel as they watch the room below that is decorated with signs of the zodiac.

Outside of the chapel a grand winding staircase adorned with gargoyles, snakes up through the building.

Chapel floor inside the Posada del Sol

Galvan died on March 19, 1953 three year after the hotel was closed down at his home from pneumonia. He was 57 years old.

There's another more sordid version, in which he committed suicide by hanging himself from a patio at the Posada del Sol, in front of a statue of Saint Francis de Assisi protected by a wolf.

In a variation of this scenario he killed his entire family, which is more myth than reality since in 1953, his daughter Catalina was 32 years old, and his son Luis Fernando was 29 years old. Both of them were already married.

Regardless of how he ended his days, Galvan's ghost is said to haunt the hotel which through the years has deteriorated, and present day is leaning under its own weight.

Advertising for Hotel Posada del Sol c.1946

In the years following the abandonment of the building it became by turns a home to the Instituto Indigenista Americano, El Consejo de Recursos Minerales and the Procuraduría General de Justicia.

The source of another haunting supposedly started during the 1970s, when the offices of the National Institute for Community Development and Rural Housing (IDECO) had a nursery there. This is where the workers' children were cared for. A small girl was lost, and eventually her body was found in a hidden cellar that could only be reached by a tunnel. Who killed her and why was never known, but her ghost is said to haunt the tunnels and Room 103.

Where the truth lies about this aging structure is not really known, but perhaps it is most haunted by the possibilities of what it never became.

THE TACUBA STRANGLER Gregorio "Goyo" Cárdenas Hernández

THE TACUBA STRANGLER
Gregorio " El Goyo" Cárdenas Hernández (1915-1999) was a spree killer who was given the moniker of The Tacuba Strangler. His victims were three prostitutes and a student, who he killed between August to September, 1942.

He was a short, thin man who like other psychopaths displayed cruelty to animals as a child. He was still wetting his bed as a teenager and had problems controlling his sphincter. Despite the turmoil of his psyche, he earned a scholarship to study chemistry at the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM).

Perhaps it was the culmination of unfulfilled fantasies, but on August 15, 1942 Maria de los Angeles Gonzalez, 16, a young prostitute was raped and strangled at his home at Mar del Norte in Tacuba. He buried her body in the garden. In the following days he raped and strangled Rosa Reyes and Raquel Martinez de Leon, both 16 and prostitutes. They joined Maria in the garden. His last victim was Graciela Arias Ávalos, 19, a fellow chemistry student, who he claimed he loved, so he raped her body after he killed her.

The Tacuba Strangler in his cell

It was Graciela's father who contacted police about the disappearance of his daughter. Sensing that perhaps his best defense was insanity Cardenas checked himself into a local psychiatric hospital, even though there is a version where he was committed by his mother Vicenta Hernandez, after he started acting crazy. The authorities quickly determined he was faking insanity.

Police arrested him on September 7, 1942 after exhuming the bodies in the garden.

Cardenas pled guilty to the charges of homicide, clandestine burial and necrophilia. He said about himself, "The man disappears and the beast comes out: I cannot refrain the tremendous hate I feel against them, and that impulse has taken me to the sad condition in which I am in."

Dr. Gonzalo Lafora who studied Cardenas described that he always showed pathological signs that were most likely inherited from his father and grandfather, which contradicts a story that his behavior was a product of a childhood bout of encephalitis.

Lafora described where Cardenas was obsessed with prostitutes and contracted several venereal diseases as a teenager. In 1940, he met Virginia Leal who became his lover, however a short while later she left him.

He was then forced to marry Sabina Lara (Gabina) Gonzalez, after her parents reported him to the courts for raping her. The marriage was short-lived since Sabina started to have extramarital affairs and left him. She also let out the secret of his incontinence.

"El Goyo" as he was known, also had an extremely dysfunctional relationship with his mother who was aggressive and reprimanded him even as an adult.

Cardenas confesses newspaper clip c.1942

He was sentenced to life and was sent to La Castañeda Psychiatric Hospital. Authorities were to learn that he was as much a manipulator, as a killer. Cardenas made friends with the hospital personnel, and was allowed to open a store where he sold sodas and cigarettes to inmates and employees. In a case of misplaced trust, he was allowed to go to Mixcoac to pick up supplies. In December, 1946 he escaped with a nurse to Oaxaca.

He was apprehended, but this time he was sent to serve his sentence at the notorious Lecumberri prison. Dr. Quiroz Cuarón reported that once at Lecumberri, El Goyo displayed feminine mannerisms, and he found several photographs of him dressed as a woman. Goyo was finally diagnosed while in prison with paranoid schizophrenia.

While behind bars he studied psychiatry and law. He also married and had four children. In 1976, President Luis Echeverria pardoned him, after his lawyer argued that at 62 years old he lacked sexual and criminal appetite. Afterward he was invited by interior secretary Mario Moya Palencia to give a speech in the Congress of the Union, where he was celebrated as a hero.

In the years following his arrest there were reports of several copycat murderers, and a pornographic movie based on his story was made.

Ironically, once he was a free man he practiced law, after he received a law degree in 1985. He died in 1999 in Los Angeles. Alejandro Jodorowky the eccentric Chilean filmmaker made a film about him titled Santa Sangre (Holy Blood)(1989).

The murder house in Tacuba still stands, haunted if not by the murderer, then by his victims who were cheated of justice since their killer went on to live a full life and experience all they never did.