The Thing About Mexico City
The Thing About Mexico City
Encanto y Elegancia en Latinoamérica
Everyone warned us about Mexico City—everyone in our comfortable southern California beach suburb, that was. Stay clear of the buses and the gypsy cabs. Never walk about alone and never venture out at night. Avoid the markets and back streets, especially around la Merced and Tepito. Leave your watches and jewelry at home. Run from approaching cars. Stay away from the red lights of the Zona Rosa, and watch out for the crowds on the Zócalo. Watch out for earthquakes. Don't drink the water or eat the food.
What surprised us was how many of our suburban Latino-American friends joined in the chorus. The lone dissenter was our housekeeper, but she hailed from Guadalajara and had never spent much time in the capital. Yet, when we checked the more accessible statistics on the internet, they tended to back her view.
Mexico City suffers fewer assaults than Toronto or Montreal. As for gun deaths, major US cities like New Orleans, Miami, Philadelphia, and even Boston (but not Los Angeles!) leave the Chilangos of Mexico City in the dust. As long as we weren't rich celebrities or drug dealers—and we were assuredly neither—all we needed to do was keep to our normal low profile and mind our own business.
As it happened, our boutique hotel sat on a quiet street just inside the infamous Zona Rosa. On our first night in town, the room was elegant, but small, while the rarified evening outside was warm and balmy.
Next thing we knew, we'd forgotten all of the cautions. We walked for hours on streets with names like Insurgentes, Reforma, and Revolución. We ate at a crowded, but elegant Tex-Mex tourist trap (and yes, the Mariachis insisted on playing "Bésame Mucho" at our table), but only because we were tired, and it was the first busy venue we came to.
It wasn't until the next morning that we really felt like we'd arrived. With a longtime interest in Russian history, we naturally wanted to find the house where Stalin's NKVD agent Ramón Mercader stabbed Leon Trotsky to death. At the time, Fridamania was in full swing, so we wanted to poke around Kahlo's Casa Azul in Coyoacán. Beyond that, we really—and uncharacteristically for us—had no idea. So we decided to just let the city come to us. And that meant riding the dreaded buses anywhere they took us.
The city that came to us was an explosion of color—the Thing about Mexico City being how the intense artistic sense of its citizens spills out of the architecture, both sacred and profane, into the streets, squares, and alleyways of even the poorest neighborhoods.
There is art everywhere:
In the thousands of eccentric, occasionally even bizarre, civic sculptures.
In the choices of paint colors for dwellings and offices, grand and small.
In the arrangement of food, flowers, and furnishings in the markets.
In the artful design of food on a plate in a beautifully decorated restaurant.
You could spend an entire vacation just tracking down the murals of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Alfaro Siqueiros, and their acolytes. But a simple stroll through Mexico City is as artistic an experience as a visit to any art museum.
The drama of this aesthetic extends to the citizens themselves. They dress practically, of course, but with as sophisticated and innate a flair as our favorites, the Parisians. The immaculate police direct traffic with loud blows of their whistles and the grand gestures of orchestra conductors. The lush parks overflow with art students at their easels and bemused entertainers in ancient Aztec costumes. Even on the dry, dusty balconies of el Templo Mayor, we found ourselves surrounded by the exquisitely dressed contestants of a Miss Universe pageant.
As a country, Mexico came by its innate sense of style and drama—and its reputation for violence—the hard way, in the upheavals of the Aztec Empire, the Spanish Conquest, the Wars of Independence and the Reform, the French Second Empire, and above all, the Mexican Revolución.
The ferocity and durability of those struggles was perhaps inevitable, given the staggering inequality in the country—an imbalance never imagined in the United States, that rivaled the Chinese and Russian regimes of the same period. So fierce were the arguments, that the Revolución saw every President between 1910 and 1934—along with two of the more colorful Mexican leaders, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa—either exiled or assassinated.
The unbalanced wealth earned Mexico City its reactionary sobriquet as the City of Palaces, while the Revolución contributed its determinedly centrist political structures and a host of provocative, avant-garde street names. These make for an odd juxtaposition that, much to our surprise, seems to work.
We did weave in and out of a demonstration around El Ángel on Reforma—a protest by peasants from the countryside against a Senator who was dispossessing them to make way for his cattle ranch—but the carefully staged event looked more theatrical than threatening, and made a point of not interfering with the surge of Sunday traffic in and out of the nearby Bosque de Chapultepec.
One topic where we arrived with a host of preconceptions was Mexican cuisine. And yes, in a capital as dominant as this city, you’ll find every regional variation, even the faraway Baja and Sonoran specialties we knew. In a tourist mecca, you'll also find every exported Mexican hyphenate returned to satisfy the untutored whims of foreigners.
But once you get past the junk and casual foods of the markets and street vendors, Mexico City boasts a cuisine every bit as sophisticated as any European culinary capital. In neighborhoods from la Condesa to Polanco to the crowded Barrio Chino, local and imported chefs infuse the foods of the world with a Mexican sensibility that is every bit as distinctive as the Parisian.
And yes, we keep coming back to thoughts of Paris in this city. Because either Mexico City is the Paris of Latin America, or Paris is the Mexico City of France—we don't know or particularly care which. But we can't imagine a greater compliment for either.
Beautifully expressed! Transported me back to all the reasons for my passion: the sights, foods & culture! Very appropriate for this time of year. Viva México!!
Very interesting and entertaining! Definitely a different side of Mexico City than I would have expected.