@Photo credits are Alcaldía Iztapalapa

Iztapalapa, a borough located in the east of Mexico City, is the second largest municipality of all Mexico (116 km²) and has a population close to 2 million inhabitants. The city is also densely inhabited with approximately 16000 hab/km².

Geographically, the municipality is mainly flat, sitting in the basin of an extinct lake. The rest of the borough consists of one main mountain ridge of volcanic origin that was once a peninsula in in the lake, and one outcrop which also once sat in the lake. The western part of the borough is made up of towns that were once part of small islands such as Tetepilco, Aculco, Atlazolpa and Nextipac.

The settlement history dates to 32000 years ago and to 1355 years ago for the first human settlements in Culhuacan, although proof of human presence in Acatitla and Aztahuacan is dated from 11 000 years ago.

On the top of Huizachtepetl hill are the remains of the pre-hispanic era pyramid where every 52 years a new fire ceremony was organised in Aztec times. During the New Fire ceremony, priests observed the sky from this temple to determine whether the world would be destroyed by the gods or saved for another 52 years. If it was saved, the priests performed a sacrifice by lighting a new fire, which was then carried to every city in the Aztec empire. The last one was back in 1507 interrupted by the colonisation period. In 2027 we will light the new fire once again.

Iztapalapa is nowadays a place where Mexicans and migrants live together, with more than 230 colonias, built by historical gentrification process and migration of people coming from localities as far as Chiapas, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz, Guerrero, Mexico and Hidalgo federative Sates, as well as from different nationalities.

Iztapalapa’s cultural diversity is very high. The modern borough is made up of 11 neighbourhoods, considered to be part of city of Iztapalapa (city centre), and 16 other “communities” outside of it. In those neighbourhoods nearly 42 indigenous communities live, alongside 14 migrant communities, mainly from Colombia, Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, Cuba, Congo, Senegal, China end other Asian countries. Also, there are a large LGBT+ community.

The borough of Iztapalapa included intercultural principles in law, through an Ordinance, and has an Intercultural inclusion policy, a Commission on Intercultural Inclusion and Human Mobility and a specific government policy on intercultural inclusion that includes three main programmes to respond to the demand of its diverse identity.

In its territory are located the Office of the National Refugee Commission, a National Migratory Station and five religious and civil organisations that give shelter to migrants.