quote:

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TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Burning incense and sounding a conch shell horn, residents of an ancient Mexican city protested on Saturday at the construction of a Wal-Mart store on the edge of the ruins.

The sprawling warehouse-style Bodega Aurrera, a unit of Wal-Mart in Mexico, is due to open in December in Teotihuacan, a major archeological site outside Mexico City.

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If it already can, then what's the concern about another store being built? If the view from the Pyramid of the Sun already includes a swath of urban sprawl, one more store, even a Latin American Wal-Mart subsidiary, isn't going to radically change the view..

edited 'cause it's Sun, not Moon.

[ 14 September 2004: Message edited by: aRoused ]

Especially considering that Mexico City is about 30 miles away, and some 500,000 people live in the vicinity of Teotihuacan..

quote:

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The citadel originally covered about 8,600 acres. But with the passage of time, settlements grew up around it, leaving unoccupied only the main ceremonial centres, where the pyramids are located, and a “buffer zone” where construction is limited.

But that zone, where Wal-Mart is building, has gradually shrunk.

Most of the area that was once Teotihuacan, a city that at its height had a population of 200,000, is now covered by houses and roads — and, soon, a giant Wal-Mart hypermarket, if the Civic Front’s efforts are unsuccessful.

Within the 8,600-acre area occupied by the ancient inhabitants, towns have cropped up like San Juan Teotihuacan, Santa María Coatlán, San Martín de las Pirámides and San Sebastián Xolapan, which are already home to more than 500,000 people.

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Especially wonderful is the fact that it lies about 1 and 1/2 hours by bus outside of Mexico City; it is reachable by anyone, whereas all other prehispanic ruins are much more remote.

Generally speaking, no construction of any size can be seen from Teotihuacan. Of course, from the top of the small mountain called the Pyramid of the Sun, one can see a vast distance over the plains, and it is dotted by irregularly spaced thatched huts and small businesses where trinkets are sold. Commonly, the businesses will be a few adobe walls and a corrugated steel roof.

There is no way that 500,000 people live nearby, or even 50,000. The site is quite isolated, though the Mexican countryside has a sprinkling of peasant homes within view of the larger pyramids.