By Dra. Maria Elena Torres Perez, Architect, UADY…//
The Yucatan peninsula is united in history with the beloved and immortal Pedro Infante Cruz, the idol of Guamúchil, who was born on November 18, 1917 in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. With a restless and adventurous spirit, he spent much of his life in the Yucatan peninsula, until April 15, 1957, when doing one of the things he loved, piloting his Consolidated B-24 Liberator airplane, registration XA -KUN, he had a mishap and crashed in the then outskirts of Merida, losing his life.
Although Pedro Infante was funny and jovial, he also liked privacy, so he lived in a house (built approximately in 1945 with the rationalist functionalist typology of the booming modern movement) located on the outskirts of the capital city of Yucatan and acquired in 1954 where he lived 10 years until his death. This property today is located on Avenida Itzáes Number 587 and since 1959 it has been a hotel, Boulevard Infante, in which there is a room permanently converted into the gallery “Amorcito Corazón”, a kind of museum and mausoleum that displays some of the belongings and photographs of the idol.
The statues in homage to Pedro Infante and his multiple facets of boxer, hairdresser, charro, motorcyclist, worker, among other characterizations in his films, are common in all Mexican territory and more in the southeast. Proof of this is the city of Merida with a bust that marks the exact place where the tragic accident that killed him happened, and close to this site there is another that alludes to his image of charro mounted on a powerful steed and showing off to be an excellent rider when braking at a gallop.
Sixty years after his death, the tributes and the elaboration of new statues still persist, and despite the criticism, it is remarkable that the idols of the people do not die and are transformed according to cultural and recreational interests. Such statues are found in Merida, where one is the center of attention of a traffic roundabout, as well as part of the landscape of a maritime town, as we can see in the three-meter-high bronze statue of a Pedro Infante policeman at rest, which in 2011 was inaugurated next to the museum and the Isla Arena lighthouse in the municipality of Calkiní in the neighboring state of Campeche, and which is part of a tourist attraction within a cultural complex.
–Dra. Maria Elena Torres Perez, Architect, UADY
