The Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres is a monument in the city of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, located in the block flanked by the avenues Paseo Alcalde, Miguel Hidalgo and Liceo and Independencia streets, in the heart of the capital of the state of Jalisco known as the historic center, surrounded by the Municipal Palace, the Regional Museum and the cathedral. It pays homage to the memory of the people of Jalisco who have transcended through the history of Mexico. The monument built in 1952, by the architect Vicente Mendiola, under the initiative of the then governor of the state José de Jesús González Gallo, consists of seventeen fluted columns without base or capital and that support a ring of quarry that has engraved in one of its sides the legend “Jalisco to its enlightened sons”; In the center of the monument there is a cauldron, in addition in the rotunda, there are ninety-eight niches to house the bodies of the most illustrious men and around it there are also twenty-two statues of illustrious Jalisco citizens.
JALISCO TO ITS ENLIGHTENED CHILDREN
During the governorship of José de Jesús González Gallo from 1947 to 1953, as part of his great urban renovation of the historic center, he hired the architect Ignacio Díaz Morales to create new public spaces and improve traffic in the area.
They came up with the idea of creating a cross of plazas in the historic center. From the already existing Plaza de Armas, three more would be created, the Plaza de los Laureles, the Plaza de la Liberación and the Plaza de los Hombres Ilustres. At the beginning it was named as the “Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres”, since it only housed the remains of men until the incursion of Irene Robledo and Rita Perez Jimenez, which changed its name to the current “Rotonda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres”. For its construction, a Post Office of Mexico and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Solitude had to be demolished, projecting it as a building that would end in the form of a dome and with a mural by Jose Clemente Orozco, but the project was never finished due to the end of the governmental period. The construction of the rotunda was in charge of the engineer Miguel Aldana Mijares, who collaborated in finishing and refining Mendiola’s project.
The monument contains a total of 98 urns to house the remains of outstanding personalities in art, literature, science and city improvement work.
Some of those honored are:
Antonio Alcalde y Barriga, Clemente Aguirre, Luis Barragán Morfín, José Clemente Orozco, Agustín de la Rosa, Enrique Díaz de León, Manuel M. Diéguez, Gabriel Flores García, Jacobo Gálvez, Marcelino García Barragán, Valentín Gómez Farías, Efraín González Luna, Rafael Preciado Hernández, Enrique González Martínez, Heliodoro Hernández Loza, Manuel López Cotilla, Pedro Moreno, Leonardo Oliva de Álzaga, Mariano Otero, Ramón Corona, Rita Pérez Jiménez, Luis Pérez Verdía, Alfredo R. Placencia, Irene Robledo G., Francisco Rojas González, Francisco Silva Romero, Gerardo Suárez, Ignacio L. Vallarta, Agustín Yáñez, José Guadalupe Zuno, Jorge Matute Remus, Juan José Arreola Zúñiga, Guillermo Chávez Vega and María Izquierdo.
