Mexico: Shuttering of Oldest Bar Protested

By REUTERS
Published: January 30, 2008

Hundreds of former patrons protested the closing of Mexico’s oldest cantina, El Nivel, in Mexico City. The small bar, which received the first cantina license in 1855, closed on Jan. 2 after losing a 17-year legal battle against the owners of the building, the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Demonstrators, many drinking beers, protested outside the bar’s padlocked door on a side street near the National Palace. They called for the university to renegotiate a deal with the bar owner or for the city to expropriate and reopen it. Mexican presidents from the 1870s to Ernesto Zedillo in the 1990s called in for a drink while in office, and when the exiled Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro lived in Mexico in the 1950s he frequented the bar with his fellow revolutionary Che Guevara. “I am 80 years old and I used to come here when I was 18,” said Ricardo Ruiz, a local artist. “What is happening here is what is happening to the whole city. They are destroying it, taking away the historic buildings,” he said.

Fuente: The New York Times