The City of Mexico in the Age of DíazMexico City assumed its current character around the turn of the twentieth century, during the dictatorship of Porfirio Daz (1876 1911). In those years, wealthy Mexicans moved away from the Zcalo, the city's traditional center, to western suburbs where they sought to imitate European and American ways of life. At the same time, poorer Mexicans, many of whom were peasants, crowded into eastern suburbs that lacked such basic amenities as schools,