Desierto de los Leones National Park

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Desierto de los Leones ("Desert of the Lions") is a Mexican National Park (created November 27, 1917), located in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, between the delegaciones (borroughs) of Cuajimalpa and Álvaro Obregón. Within the park there is a visitor's center and the ex-convent of Carmelite friars that can be visited.

[edit] History

This construction pertains to the orders of the Carmelite monks, who arrived in México in 1600 from Italy with an evangelical mission targeted towards the indigenous people of America.

Their mission was also one of penance and spiritual rest, with a "calling" to inhabit “the Desert”, a phrase taken by them referring to isolated, wooded, colorful and far away places of the human movement. In these sites the friars made penances like the self-flagellation and the "ayuno", as well as vows of silence.

The Desierto de los Leones de Cuajimalpa was the first construction project that the order decided to raise from its foundations.

The person who paid for the construction was Melchor de Cuéllar, ensayador of the House of Currency, that in his youth thought about taking the habits of the order, but his life took a different path. He married doña Mariana del Águila and without having any heirs, his fortune was left to the Church.

There is also a "cell of silence", where you can speak from one corner and it can be heard from the other, supposedly it was there where they gave confessions, as their faces need not be visible. It is also said that no woman could enter, as if she had tried, she would have been refused access automatically. There is also a sort of cellar, where you must enter with a guard or a lantern, in which they probably bathed, as it passed by a brook, although, they also say that that's where they put the bodies of dying monks.

It is also said that during the Mexican Revolution, it served as mlitary quarters. The name "Desert of the Lions" is due to their need to isolate themselves, although there was certainly never a desert there, and the "Leones" ("Lions") referred to lions originated with a lawsuit, which the "Leon" brothers won, after a Spanish man claimed the land, despite living in Spain, and having died without ever visiting the convent. January 26, 2000 marks the 400th year of the convent's existence, without consideration for the fact that it was only two floors at the time, and only a few years afterwards, the structure's second floor was destroyed.

[edit] Park uses and Mycology

The park's forested characteristics have served as a large space for educational activities and for exercise. The forest is considered a "lung" aiding in the fight against Mexico City's legendary smog problems. Some of the park's trees were infected with a harmful fungus, but unfortunately, in applying a combatant spray, other types of benign fungi were exterminated as well.

Previous to this, the park enjoyed a great diversity of mushrooms, including edible mushrooms, which were used locally for cooking mushroom quesadillas and mushroom soups, established parts of the the local eating establishments' menus, and, as such, of Mexican cuisine.

From the mushrooms that were widely used, the common names "patas de pájaro", "llemitas", etc. have come into use. Although soups and cheeses from mushrooms continue to be served, these have been extended by cultivated mushrooms and not from hongos silvestres and, by consequence, the risks associated with that variety are avoided.

Among the poisonous mushrooms, the famous amanita muscaria mushroom can be found, which has been illustrated in various stories in Mexican children's literature.