Tepito station
Metro · B Line B
Neighbouring stations
The story behind the icon
The station image is the icon used at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City to identify the sporting discipline of boxing, as a tribute to the world, Olympic and professional boxing champions who were born, grew up and trained in this popular neighbourhood of Tepito.
Tepito is a Nahuatl word meaning "small temple, hermitage or chapel". It is the barrio that has best withstood the onslaught of urban modernisation in terms of new patterns imposed on its customs; with pride and constant struggle it has preserved its character and its deep-rooted commercial vocation. Since pre-Hispanic times the inhabitants of this place were subjected to Aztec rule, which barred them from trading in the great market of Tlatelolco.
In the first years after the Conquest, in the little square called Tepito, today named the plaza of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, there was a small temple the indigenous people called Teocultepiton, which the Spanish called Tepito. It remained outside the city limits and began to fill with inns frequented by the muleteers who came to Mexico to sell their wares.
With the coming of the railways, those inns turned into large tenements whose low rents ended up attracting tenants of modest means. In the 1920s, when the Cristero conflict broke out, many people came to the city from the Bajío, Jalisco and Guanajuato and chose to lodge in Tepito. The great majority were shoemakers by trade, the main reason it became one of the country's great shoe-producing centres.