Re-entry

Between singing at yesterday's services, I walked the quiet streets of my city. Queen Victoria stood coldly on her pedestal, the sun -- wan, but at least palpable -- shone on pale faces, but in the cafe where I finally stopped, a coach on the video screen was explaining hockey plays to little boys, still eagerly piling out onto the ice.

We'd been back from Mexico City for just two days. I felt disoriented, bereft. I missed the vast swarms of humanity at street crossings, the noise and exuberance, their luxurious black hair and relaxed faces; the riotous colors; the smells of frying meat, onions, chili, potatoes, corn, spices; the excessive surface decoration, the effortless mix of elegance with the popular street. We're so tame up here, I thought. So reservé, so diplomatique indeed.

In the cafe, I thought about how my choir would be singing Orlando Gibbons in a few minutes, with his tightly coiled but always-contained emotion. I love that music: it's part of my heritage, after all. But more and more, I find important parts of myself released in the warmth of Latin cultures, and it's hard both to leave that exuberance and largeness behind, and to preserve my discovered self in this much cooler and more private place.

--

Avenida Francisco I. Madero, in the historical center

It's always a shock to come back to Montreal from Mexico City, that maximum metropolis of 22 million people which fills the vast Valley of Mexico. After six trips, we've come to know it fairly well, and to feel comfortable there: we know where to go, how to get around, where to buy what we need, what to eat and what to avoid, where to get information, who to trust. There are favorite places we return to each time -- favorite paintings and artifacts, restaurants, public plazas, churches, markets, streets -- and there is always exploring and adventure. It's intense but no longer intimidating, so long as we don't take foolish risks, and accept the fact that unexpected things may happen. Over the years we've had bike accidents, and tripped on the uneven pavement; we've had phones stolen on crowded metro platforms; dealt with the altitude and pollution and figured out what to do in case of an earthquake; we've gotten sick and been helped and survived. What we've gained has vastly outweighed the problems. Some people probably wouldn't like that learning curve, or maybe they just want travel to be more comfortable, relaxing and easy, but they're missing one of the world's great cities and cultures, and they're missing interaction and relationship with Mexicans of the present, and their long, difficult, and proud history.

Chapultepec Park, Mexico City

Each year we've gone, there have been fewer white tourists, probably due to American politics and the spread of fear of violence by drug cartels. I often hear Canadians expressing a desire to go to Mexico's capital city, or telling us they've already been, but most Americans look horrified. There are large parts of the city where we would not go, for sure, but it's also true that Mexico City is not where most of the drug-related violence is taking place. Pickpockets operate in every big city: I had my wallet stolen in Rome; it also happens right here in Montreal. I feel sorry that so few people travel there. It certainly hurts the Mexican economy, and doesn't help dispel misconceptions and stereotypes. But I freely admit that it's not an easy place to visit or to become comfortable with. Someday, perhaps, we'll feel like it's too much for us, but I hope not, because it allows us to access a different side of ourselves, it offers challenges for both the body and mind, and gives us an opportunity to learn something about humanity in general that seems repressed in these colder, more formal, and privileged cultures further north.

Saturday salsa dancing, a regular event in the public park near the Ciudadela.

On a personal and even spiritual level, I find it encouraging to go there, because in spite of their terrible government, and the poverty and corruption, many of the people manage to live with a buoyancy and vibrancy, warmth and simplicity I seldom see in our own culture. There is a sense of pride that gets expressed in innumerable ways. Every single evening, the street vendors near our apartment scrubbed all their pans and stoves and then the pavement itself until it shone; people washed the windows of their shops and swept the street; the subways are extremely crowded but clean, with the floors made of glistening marble (beautiful stone is one resource the country has in abundance.) And there's constant music, noise, and color, and attention to design, in minute detail, everywhere, in spite of the hard lives so many people lead. Cultural attitudes, at least among the common people, seem less individualistic and more collective than ours; people look you directly in the eye, they smile, they say buenos dias and buenas tardes, and always return your greeting. Family is still extremely important, and positive, realistic attitudes toward aging, caring for the elderly, death and dying are deeply embedded in the culture. When people hear that we come every year, they smile with pride -- they love their city and their country, and are delighted that we do too. We got into a political discussion with a cab driver, who complained a lot about the candidates in the upcoming election and the general state of things, but then, after having exhausted the subject, he smiled and said, "Pero, yo soy Mexicano!!" "But, I am Mexican!" It spite of it all, he identifies himself as Mexican, not with a political party, or a current government or current problems: being Mexican is so much more than that.

Part of a huge mural by David Alfaro Siquerios about the Mexican revolution and workers' struggle, at the Castillo de Chapultepec

This is an attitude I've observed among other people -- Iranians, for instance, or Chinese -- with a long history who've seen governments, dynasties, dictators, emperors and kings come and go; they are united by language, place, culture and shared history, shared suffering. Mexican history goes back to the Olmecs, the first Meso-American civilization, dating from 1000 B.C., in the region near modern-day Veracruz. In America and Canada, we have nothing comparable: our national histories go back only a few hundred years, and the indigenous cultures were younger and less developed than in Latin America, and so decimated by genocide that few of us share that heritage, while in Mexico, a majority of the people are mixed-race. So here in the northern New World, we are left to piece our identities together from the fragmented histories of the places we, or our ancestors, came from. But it is never entirely satisfactory to understand oneself that way -- at least it hasn't been so for me.

Olmec sculptures, c. 1000-300 BCE, Museo Nacional de Antropologia

I'm interested not so much in nationalisms, but in what makes us human, and the shared qualities that give rise to civilizations. While these questions have been common to cultures for millennia, I find them harder and harder to grasp in the modern political landscape, which seems to me extremely destructive  -- perhaps even opposed -- to what we have historically called "human culture" and expressed in different and deeply valued ways. Perhaps that's why I appreciate the experience of going back, for a time, to live in an older society which hasn't yet been taken over by globalization, materialism and greed, and where people are still resistant to the whitewashing of their own culture. Yes, there are some franchises and global brands, American movies and tv, and people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with "Abercrombie & Fitch" and English slogans; there's wealth, multinational corporations, sleek skyscrapers, and a desire for modernization, but the reach of mass media has not yet destroyed the past, or altered people's innate sense of themselves as part of a whole complicated constellation of histories, meanings, and relationships that occurred in that particular place. "Yo soy Mexicano," says the taxi-driver, and he knows what he means.

Comments

[Roderick Robinson]

Surviving all those personal upheavals and still remaining faithful to Mexico City does you both credit. But it is, surely, a place for holidays, for contrast, a place for leaving as well as arriving. And might you already have touched tangentially on one reason for this earlier in this heartfelt post? I won't say it's impossible but hearing Orlando Gibbons in Mexico seems moderately unlikely. Yes there's happy extroversion down there but you've been born to "tightly coiled but always-contained emotion" and wouldn't lightly give it up. Not that you're not also prepared for emotion gushers such as Theodora. Call "Angels, ever bright and fair" to mind and test your reactions.

On another ghastly but nevertheless ultimately upbeat note; the man with the van in Toronto deliberately invited the police to kill him and at 50 metres it might be difficult to distinguish a mobile phone from a hand-gun. But no, the Toronto cop ignored the easy option, moved close, and eventually handcuffed him. In the face of all those dead and injured it may be a small point but it's not insignificant.

[Beth]

Robbie, you're quite right about much of this. I couldn't live in Mexico City because my lungs would give out, but that's not the only reason -- and I'm well aware that I have the great privilege of deciding where to live, which a large majority of Mexicans increasingly do not. The Toronto police have been accused of excessive force and racism in the past, but Canadian definitions of "excessive" are not the same as in the U.S. or many other countries. You're correct that the officer's behavior was a reminder of some of the blessings we take for granted. As for music, though -- yes, it's unlikely perhaps to hear much English Renaissance music in Mexico City, but there is very good classical music there all the time. We went to a magnificent opera benefit for the earthquake victims, at the Palacio Bellas Artes, headlining Javier Camarena (star at the Met and other international venues) who sang an entirely Rossini program with the best stars of Mexican opera, full orchestra and chorus, and it was not only beautifully and generously performed but of very high quality and full of heart and emotion. We missed a piano recital at UNAM - Chopin, Scriabin, and Schumann. We even stumbled onto an absolutely first-rate Mexican bagpipe and drum corps - now that definitely seemed incongruous, but they've been playing together for more than a decade and a half, as part of a commemoration of the St Andrew Society - Scots who joined the Mexican army in the mid-1840s to repel the American invasion of Mexico City! The music during (the mostly Catholic) church services tends not to be of the same caliber as here, but you can find people doing almost anything there -- it is a city with a high emphasis on all the arts.

[Duchesse]

I felt in India as you did in Mexico, vibrating with the intensity, colour, lushness. And at the same time, I entered with much more than the average citizen, starting with the fact that I could buy a ticket to get there. "Ah", said Le Duc when I called to describe the place which I was enjoying in comfort I could not usually afford, "colonial superiority is never that far from us."

So, I remain an uneasy and self-conscious tourist in such countries.

In Quebec City two weeks ago, in the midst of a mid-April ice storm, every single person was in black and navy blue. We constitutionally cannot bear colour until the trees burst forth first, such is our nordicity. But when summer comes you will see people dancing in parks, here. There will be music all night long, laughter will ripple up to my windows. One evening soon, the whole city will buzz with it.

[Priya]

Very interesting read Beth.Like the previous commentator your post reminded me of how I felt when I returned to India. But every now and then I get flashes of Montreal and its cold blue light which I associated with asylums where you get admitted to become sane. I remember deathly white faces that surrounded me in buses, every head wrapped by a circle of fur. I am still taken aback at how much my drawing lines changed there in ways which is unthinkable here. I too wonder what you'll make of India if you ever visit here. The inevitable comparisons with Mexico are sure to arise.

[Marie bourbeau]

Welcome back, I look forward seeing you both!