Warmth and Chaos

Mexico City, 8:30 am. There's brilliant sun reflecting off a large white wall down the block, and it's shining into our room this morning. The loudspeaker "good mornings" have already been completed, and the kids have gone inside for the beginning of their school day. We've eaten a tangerine and are getting going slowly, taking advantage of the internet access that seems much more reliable in the morning than at night.

I don't know what I had expected, actually, but Mexico City is already shattering any preconceptions I had. There are so many layers -- the obvious historical ones, the social and economic ones, the very old, beautiful, often crumbling buildings teeming with new uses: fabric stores, paper stores, toy stores, shoe stores, gold, cameras, books.

Rising above all of this is the "new" Mexico -- shiny, proud, and affluent -- symbolized by some astounding architecture and modern design, which builds on motifs and styles that go all the way back to the land and the visual language of its first inhabitants. The traffic is relentless and chaotic; the city almost incomprehensibly vast; people crowded, extremely warm, somehow managing to keep things going in a place where there are few rules and difficulty applying those that do exist. Cairo comes to mind -- another dry hot city teeming with people and marked by pyramids -- and I wonder about parallels, but I haven't been there in person.

And in contrast to the teeming streets, there are pockets everywhere of calmness, oases of green in the shade of trees, small gardens and courtyards where people sit quietly, talking, or just resting from the sun, from life.

We're going back to the Centro Historico today, to look at churches and murals, and the ruins of the Aztec city that Cortés destroyed. In the center of Zocalo this week is a military exhibition - tents and tanks and planes and Mexican soldiers - and there are demonstrators shouting outside the presidential palace, police vans parked on the side streets and phalanxes of riot police near the palace, wearing helmets and carrying thick plastic shields; even more ominous are the police trucks with mounted machine guns and black-garbed troops that drive through the streets as a show of force and authority.

Meanwhile the hurdy-gurdy players simply turn their cranks, the tortilla-makers slap wet tortillas on their street-ovens, children munch fried cactus leaves, the blind man in his fuschia shirt miraculously taps his way through the traffic, vendors hawk their small assortments of colored hair elastics, hats, bandanas, cards and cigarettes, and men and women step off the street into a shrine smelling of hot paraffin, where they kneel and cross themselves in front of a shiny black Christ hanging on a cross.

Comments

[Martine]

I love the smile of the girl in blue :) (And I'm having a great time following you on your trip!)

[marly youmans]

Oh, I needed that today, with March coming in like a snow leopard. Like two or three snow leopards! I especially love the rosy courtyard--would like to sit there, watching the world slide by.

[Rachel Barenblat]

I love these descriptions and these images. Thank you, dear Beth, for bringing us along for the ride!

[Vivian]

OH. Had I really thought I would not want to travel again? You are changing my mind, Beth. Is Jonathan taking photos also? How are communications in Spanish? Do you meet people?

[Andrea]

How nice of you to share this with us, Beth. I needed that shot of coral and ochre.

[Leslee]

Looks like you found the color you were craving. I can smell those tortillas from here. :-)

[Vivien]

Really interesting to read about your Mexico stay: all we hear in the news about the place concerns drug gangs. It's a nice surprise that you can wander round the streets and go to museums etc.

[Beth]

Thank you, all of you, for reading and for letting me know you are there! More tomorrow...

[Hattie]

So wonderful. And to think I too will soon be there! Funny, it is so bright, and Lima, another megacity south of the border, is drab as can be. It's the climate there, of perpetual overcast.

[Natalie]

Great to have your first impressions, Beth. I recognise and remember the light, the colour, the hustle and the warmth, the whole Mexican ambiente from your words and pictures.

[john]

Thanks for this post. It brings back memories.Mexico City is one of those places where i like to get up early and walk the streets as the city awakens

[Julia]

Goodness, Mexico...
I once sponsored a child there, he was a cheeky little chap, under-nourished and sickly. His parents removed him from the umbrella of my care after a fight with the sponsorship programme.
I digress, I am always startled to see such shiny modernity in places far-away, silly of me, perhaps I cling to the hope that the world will not become a mono-culture and that each place will retain its own character? Is that why I smiled at the pictures of the gardens and painted houses and the people, or is it because they seem more human compared to those shiny, glass towers?