Otra vez
It’s like we never left. The flight was full with almost entirely Mexicans. We arrived on Christmas night and the streets were empty and eerily quiet but today it’s back to normal. Mexico City is positively heaving with people, happy people on holiday enjoying their family and all that Mexico City has to offer. All of the museums are free for students, teachers and military personnel. By ten we had done the tour of the Museum of Culture and were standing in line at the Palacio to see Diego Rivera’s murals. They were even better than I remembered. Each little vignette a masterpiece on its own and the whole tells such a depressing story of the Spanish conquest.
We stop for tacos at the most packed stand. One man pulls bits of meat off a sheep’s head while the other puts it into doubled-up tacos along with onion and cilantro. The ubiquitous pots of hot sauce (one red, one green) line the counter, along with chopped onions & peppers and tiny little limes cut in half. We ask our neighbour, a man in a suit, if the sauces are hot. “Pican mucho?” Not too much he says, but warns us off the onion & pepper. Henri misunderstands and ends up blowing the top of his head off. As we stand around chomping, the man asks us where we are from and when we tell him he says welcome to my country. Gotta love Mexico.
We go on to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, an incredible Neoclassical building with an Art Deco interior where Wil wanted to see Diego Rivera’s El hombre controlador del universo. The original mural, Man at the Crossroads, was commissioned by the Rockefellers in 1933 but it missed the mark with its patron who objected to its glorification of communism. Rockefeller asked Rivera to alter the piece and the artist responded by adding a portrait of Lenin to the mix. Rockefeller had the New York mural destroyed. Rivera then came home to recreate it here.
We take the metro across town for lunch. The Mexico City metro is designed for the masses. Each station has its own unique pictogram which makes it easier for commuters who can’t read to get around. A woman and her young daughter scramble around under the feet of those seated on the metro, picking up any little scrap of food or garbage. At first I worried they were looking for something to eat but after picking the car clean they asked for money to reward for their work. I mistakenly pulled a 200 peso bill out instead of a 20 and she was off with it. The man in a cowboy hat sitting beside me made eyes at the guy sitting opposite him at my contribution. It’s Christmas, I said. It’s true, he said, and added “she is doing us all a service by making the metro cleaner.” He then asked me where I was from. “Las Vegas?”, he suggested. Not quite. He went on to tell me he’d always wanted to go to Las Vegas but was afraid of the cold.
We arrive half an hour early for our 1 o’clock reservation. We are the only ones in the bright, airy space. Mexican eating schedules are not like our own. Dinners out, for example, seem to be an almost uniquely foreigner affair. We are seated at an open air table overlooking a lush park. As we’re alone we have every single staff member attending our every whim. Amazing clams, oysters, incredible ceviche, tostados with octopus ceviche & nopales, and a whole fish cooked in a salt crust that just melts in the mouth. Lots of hot sauce on the table, fried tortillas, guacamole, cucumber and broad bean salad. Yum, yum and yum.
We walk down through Polanco, a lovely green neighbourhood toward Chepultepec park. Extended Mexican families wander through the park. There are tons of stands selling snacks, bags of popcorn, peanut brittle, chips and soda and leashes for the kids. In the middle of the park is the lake, about the size of Beaver lake, with an artificial island in the middle. Half of the people are in two or four-person pedalos, the other half are in little row boats. Boats are obviously not part of the culture. Most people are rowing with the stern in the front, or one person per oar. The result is a bit comical with lots of good natured laughing and we all look slightly ridiculous with our bright orange lifejackets. Ducks ply the waters for hand outs and the shore is dotted with crisp, white herons.
We take a city bus, many of which are doubledeckers, back to the hotel. We sit up top and watch the world go by, along Reforma and an endless string of stands selling artisanal goods and lunch counters with little plastic chairs and women in aprons doling out food from their steaming cauldrons. Once back in our room, the soundscape paints a vivid picture of what’s happening outside — a baby goo-gooing, car horns, traffic cops’ whistles, brass bands and organ-grinders playing some unrecognizable melody. For some reason, the men who play them all wear identical cream-coloured uniforms and hold out a hat exactly like the one on their head to collect contributions.
We go for a long walk after a quick nap, taking a break at the Tequila museum and some window shopping in the cowboy stores. A quick stop at Garibaldi square where the Mariachi bands entertain the crowds. We stumble into a singalong where granny and grandpa in the wheelchairs are surrounded by family on one side and the mariachi band on the other and they are all singing along. Alice finally finds her elote, a classic Mexican streetfood, a steamed corncob on a stick smeared with mayo, grated cheese and chili pepper.
We keep walking, down to the Zócalo. The Mexico city zocalo is vast and normally quite deserted but the Christmas season has it alight with big plastic igloos, a skating rink with fake ice, and bandstands with colourful folkloric dancers. It’s jammed with families — babies bundled in fleece blankets, grannies being helped along, wheelchairs being squeezed through the crowds. The huge ice rink is packed with people stepping gingerly in their skates and along the edges is the real crowd, each person gripping the boards, shuffling along at the speed of the person in front of them. There is lots of music, fake snow being shot out of machines that leave giddy kids’ hair full of white fluff. There is a line up of many hundreds of people that snakes its way across the square. I ask what they’re waiting for and it seems the Túribus is exceptionally half-price tonight. They are all waiting for a one-hour bus tour around downtown. It is all smiles and families posing for photos in front of the sights. They do family & fiestas so well in this country. We are so happy to be back.
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