Mexico (City), Mexico (State), Mexico
Mexico City is one surrealist dreamscape after another. To wander it by foot is to discover a myriad of juxtaposed scenes: an Aztec temple dating to the 14th century, prominently overlaid with a 16th century Spanish cathedral. A naked protest. A protest that very conscientiously uses crosswalk signals (spanning the street during the red lights, retreating on the green — escorted by a police officer, of course). A mural of revered Mexican artist, Diego Rivera, casually perched high on a city wall above ignorant tourists hustling towards the fancy galleries where you can see his work for a fee. A street with dozens of secondhand bookstores stuffed floor-to-ceiling with the discarded literature of twenty million people — more like incoherent tombs than codified libraries. The free concert of a famous Mexican pop singer (think torero costumed Neil Diamond rather than Justin Timberlake) with, as a casual estimate,100,000 people in attendance — all singing along. An Art Deco theatre on a nearly forsaken city street — into which we happened to wander at intermission, only to discover the most exquisite and bizarre street theatre-come-Cirque du Soleil performance, set against the paintings of Salvador Dalí. Yes, surreal is the word.
It all adds up to a marvelous and dizzying experience of North America’s most populated city — a place we very nearly bypassed for all the stories of its manic traffic and piecemeal accounts of its horrific crime.
So how did we end up there?
For one, I had been determined to visit Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's home, but not for the usual reasons. Yes, I had known Kahlo’s provocative paintings, but the root of my desire came from reading Patti Smith’s travel memoire, The M Train. Smith visits the artists’ home-turned-museum and very memorably naps in Rivera’s bed to wait out a migraine. Something about her magnetic tug toward Kahlo as a truly avant-garde artist and her own audacity, proximately attracted me.
My own determination to visit wouldn’t mean squat, however, if I couldn't persuade my city-loathing, traffic-scorning, somewhat misanthropic travel companion. I needed a sound pitch and for that, I needed stats. So I systematically polled Mexicans throughout Baja and northern Mexico, asking them whether their country’s capital was worth the effort and the risk. The resounding answer was indeed, sí.
We settled on two locations from which to scratch the surface of the city that Mexicans simply refer to as, Mexico. First, we chose Coyoacán (the indigenous Nahuatl language for "place of the coyotes"), Frida Kahlo’s birthplace and the site of her and Rivera's home, Casa Azul. Present-day, it is an art-rich intellectual hub. It strongly evokes an outer borough of New York, though it is far more picturesque, with a distinct Spanish flavor — treed plazas, light-filled patios and Baroque cathedrals. It has fabulous murals, coffee shops and street food galore, outdoor markets and indoor markets. Casa Azul is beautiful, if a bit busy nowadays, providing a vivid glimpse into Kahlo and Rivera's intense, creative lives. I was tickled to discover the little song Patti Smith wrote when she visited, meekly printed on a wall near a bathroom.
The best part of Coyoacán was our affable, generous, Zen-minded AirBnB host, Rudy. He swiftly introduced us to his neighborhood and his friends, not hesitating to invite us out on the town on our first night, then eagerly hosting and steering us throughout our stay.
Our other entry point into “Mexico” would be its navel and the Aztecs’ centre of the universe: the Centro Histórico. Arriving via the subway we emerged from underground onto a crowded city street. A few times we lost one another, though never more than a few meters apart. The city is filled with elaborate facades that I might have expected to see in Rome or Paris, but (underscoring my ignorance) not in the Americas. We made our way to our next AirBnB host through the thrumming schools of pedestrians, finding the apartment’s entrance between two glitzy Christmas supply stores. Down a corridor, through an open-air patio and up an elevator with an accordion gate, we found Roxy’s apartment — a most tranquil, exquisitely decorated inner-city haven.
From this little oasis (in fact, a huge apartment by any city’s standards) we explored the museums and the restaurants, the neighborhoods and the parks. Visiting Templo Mayor was the most memorable of our outings — finally Mexico’s Pre-Hispanic history displayed in all its glory. To see it, you walk behind the largest cathedral in the Americas, Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de la Santísima Virgen María a los cielos (or, The Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven). From a certain vantage you can see the Aztec ruins, the Cathedral and Torre Latinoamericana (once the tallest building in Latin America). The ruins were only fully discovered in 1978 and are still being unearthed. There are over a million artefacts made of clay, bone, rock, precious metals and stones — objects from the sea even — showing the Aztec’s dominant reign throughout Mesoamerica. It is an incredible picture of a complex, pious society and the city’s original founders that was literally buried by colonial rule.
It would have been a pity to bypass Mexico City. Here, contemporary and ancient history are so strangely
wound. Our picture of Mexico without it would lack the intensity of Kahlo’s art and the drama of stratified civilizations.
