Big Apples in the CDMX
Big Apples in the CDMX
Mexico #8: Exploring the Big City
The podcast version of this final Mexican piece (and my previous one also about Mexico City) is now available here. This is the concluding part of a series that began back here!
Coyoacán, the place of coyotes (they have statues at a fountain) was buzzing on the Thursday evening we walked round. It was like revisiting Oaxaca; a good, manageable beginning in the big city! Another beautiful baroque church, and nearby a little history: Frida’s blue house, lit up in the night; a cultural history museum (with another fantastic tree of life design outside), and Cortés’s house (boo hiss), featuring sculptures of Diego and Frida in the courtyard (hooray). The whole legendary story of Cortés and La Malinche - his interpreter/ his mistress/ the mother of their son Martin (the first Mexican mestizo)/ an abandoned woman when Cortés moved on etc. is rather centred around this whole barrio, quite a way from the historic centre of both the Spanish and Aztec cities. There were also plenty of big bookshops around; once again I was feeling a little overawed at how much reading of actual books many Mexicans apparently do. On another day I came passed the Biblioteca Mexicana, which rather cutely has lots of reference reading rooms containing the personal libraries of renowned Mexican writers. As a contrast, in Garibaldi Square there were old photos of dozens of famous Mexican lyricists and song composers, with their names and their most well-known compositions. Mexicans certainly know how to meaningfully celebrate and acknowledge their creative history.
We also passed many upmarket educational buildings, and my host David explained that there are an outsized number of private high schools in the city. The public high schools that do exist are enormous, tertiary-campus style places, and hugely competitive to get into. There aren’t nearly enough of them, so Mexico City residents who don’t get good enough grades going into high school and want to carry on with their schooling have to pay. Seemed like an interesting lacuna in a country that is often remarkably localist and socialist in its approach. At the same time there are serious quantities of students around; getting on for half a million at UNAM, the biggest single old-style in-person university on the continent. And also the oldest. Big and Old are frequent words when dealing with CDMX, you’ll notice. (Oh, and the large blocks between streets are called manzanas in Spanish, apples. So New York is just a big street block!)
Everything in Mexico City was at another scale, not surprisingly, compared to the rest of the country, and indeed compared to most urban areas of the world, and I’m glad I already had climbed plenty of cultural steps elsewhere to be able to take at least some of it in. Take the enormous National Museum of Anthropology, for example. By now I knew that ‘anthropology’ makes probably more sense in Mexico than anywhere else: ordinary people as much as scholars, want to try and make sense of both current day rituals and practices, and their origins, both in pre-Colombian society and in the wonderfully messy syncretism of the last few centuries; anthropology is about living, evolving history. The massive central square features a fountain/ artificial storm pouring from an actual solid stone totem pole dedicated to the Aztec god of rain, and apparently when they moved it here, in the middle of a drought season, there were brief but torrential downpours. And so the myths and magic of the past continue into the present. I enjoyed seeing the ancient Mayans again, who felt like old friends, so many weeks after my Chiapas trips: including Pakal’s elaborate jade death mask, then a mockup of his whole funeral outfit, and then a mockup of his whole flippin’ sarcophagus thing with its supersized stone lid that caused all the fuss. And in the Mayan garden, reconstructed monuments, including the three decorated chambers I’d seen at Bonampak. And it was good to get a sense of what I’d see at Teotihuacán, only in reconstructed full colour; and see what I was missing at Tula, which is seen as the centre of Toltec culture.
I didn’t get to Tula, and I guess the Toltecs remain rather mysterious; the word means ‘artist’ in Nahuatl, which I rather like, though archaeologists tend to show us rather how aggressive they were, perhaps as predecessors of the Aztecs. My own access to the Toltecs is the same as everyone else’s: Don Miguel Ruiz’s ‘Four Agreements’, that handy post-Castaneda Mexican New Age shamanic Bible that’s been the basis of many a certificate program in practical shamanism. If you google “Toltec wisdom”, you get Don Miguel, and if you ask google where he got his info from, you get “Toltec wisdom”. So perhaps it’s a bit like the Olmec sex secrets whose existence I'd read of, plucked from the ether through dreams and secret communications. Excuse me while my left brain raises an eyebrow. My right brain would still love to know more but it wasn’t going to come in this particular museum visit. There were other exhibits on a range of cultures I hadn’t encountered out there, including the desert cultures in the north that piqued my interest a little more for the future: ancient mud towns and cave complexes and things. I was worried before I hit Mexico that the whole Hispanic cultural mélange would all be fading under the influence of the Big Mac, which certainly wasn’t true in the south or in the city (we down here in SA are definitely more affected on that count). I’m told sometimes it’s the internationals (especially the large number of wealthy US immigrants to Mexico City) who take advantage of the cheap access to art exhibitions and concerts that the government encourages and provides; and there are definitely places where English is heard a lot, which is disturbingly similar to bits of the Spanish and Greek coastline! But Mexican culture is strong, so in the long run it’s going to influence US immigrants whether they like it or not. Perhaps there’s a little more US influence in the desert north, closer to the border – images of downtown Monterrey look as clean and skyscrapery swish as, I imagine, Houston might be – and that region is where Pancho Villa was once operating, the bandit-turned-revolutionary leader that is the average US American’s idea of a Mexican caricature (mine is of a credentialed and bespectacled bookworm spending his nights at the salsa club, but perhaps that’s the average user of the Couchsurfing app). Still, I’m now more interested in exploring that northern part of the country if I get to go back.
The central exhibit of the downstairs section was, predictably enough, devoted to the Aztecs, and given a massive room for it. What made them arrive in history so ferociously, so close to the time the imagined white “gods” from the east turned up and got all ferocious themselves? Who exactly is playing dice out there somewhere? Certainly the centrepiece is the huge stone disc thing that everyone thinks is the Mayan calendar, though there’s plenty of them elsewhere. It’s actually a rejected part of a zone to watch people fight, and its discovery led to the Templo Mayor in the centre being uncovered again in the seventies. More curious was Xochipilli, Aztec male god of flowers, dance and homosexuality, in a sculpture surrounded by images of hallucinogenic substances. It’s suggested that the Aztecs actually inherited him from the Toltecs, those ‘artists’ who ruled over a ‘soft’ age of flowers and eroticism ruled by Xochipilli’s female counterpart Xochiquetzal; this seems somewhat plausible especially since the macho Aztecs and Spanish exchanged playground-style insults with each other over who were the bigger homosexuals. The Toltecs become, therefore, even more mysterious. I headed upstairs to the rooms looking at current Mexican traditions, including lots of fun devils created for Carnival ready to be burned; and some very freaky paintings and tapestries produced by shamans under the influence of, er, well, I’d lost track by now.
The final extraordinary bits of current ‘popular arts’ I saw weren’t there though: they were in the Ex-Convent of Carmen in the upmarket barrio of San Ángel. Here were wild variations on that classic theme of the nativity. An extraordinary one featuring the holy family as skeletons made from icing sugar; Puebla-style pottery urns with the whole detailed scene sculpted in front; one miniature just in wood but with the most intense delicate pieces; a version based on the back of a multicoloured hippy VW camper van; and a bunch of other media and modes you’ve never thought of and neither had I. This was perhaps the cherry on the whole cake of my Mexican experience: proof that traditional crafts, even when limited to a strict Catholic theme, were capable of wild originality. I felt better about missing the Christmas festival in Oaxaca, where the craftsmanship is limited to being made out of radishes (all because one year there was an excess of the root vegetable and so someone came up with a plan, and in true Mexican style everyone ran with it from then on).
The Carmelites who arrived in San Ángel were a little late on the Mexican Catholic scene but they still found a beautiful spot to create an enormous convent there. They were given their original name thanks to another sighting of the Virgin, this time on Mount Carmel in Israel during the Crusades, which included being gifted their signature ‘Scapular’. That sounds painful but is actually a funky little over-the-shoulder accessory worthy of Xochipilli. They’d then been given an intellectual boost in the 16th century by St Teresa of Avila who reformed the whole order – sometimes confusingly called Carmen herself though Carmen is actually Mary. If you’re following... wakey wakey! John of the Cross followed Teresa’s ideas, and he’s pretty well known as a spiritual teacher even beyond modern Christianity. And Sor Juana, the great Mexican nun-scholar-writer-musician I previously mentioned, quoted Teresa when anyone tried to tell her she should shut up and leave it all to the men. Anyway, the end result here was a great convent and garden, and loads of baroque stuff once more. I had already spent the afternoon popping in on a seventeenth century merchant’s house (featuring a massive altar made from ceramic telavera), and so was really relieved when it got to exhibitions on modern stuff: at some point all that fantastic oil painting in the same style would drive me nuts. And I was already a little freaked by the other ghoulish exhibit in the ex-convent: mummies. Not ancient Mayan or Aztec ones or anything, but late nineteenth-century ones in Catholic costumes, and famously nobody knows why they were all mummified, or at least nobody’s telling. That Mexican death cult thing jumping up again in unexpected places.
However, the other things of note in San Ángel were the houses of Diego Rivera and Frido Kahlo, built as modernist artworks in their own right by Juan O’Gorman, the painter, who even signed his name in one corner, and connected by a top floor bridge. Diego’s was bigger, principally because he was always working on massive murals which weren’t so much Frida’s thing. Seeing her ‘Two Fridas’ in the Museum of Modern Art was intense and moving; Diego’s work tended to be rather bolder and public. You could quite easily spend a day or two searching for all his work in the city (rather less looking for hers, as a lot of it’s been bought by international galleries). I saw more Rivera murals when I finally tackled the Centro Historico another day. There were plenty of skyscrapers, but not overwhelmingly so: it’s like the modern statements could be made but didn’t have to be forced. The nineteenth century buildings are already colossal, like Chapultepec Park and castle; the Palacio de Bellas Artes is solidly, tastefully beautiful, though I was once again not there in time for the concert or theatre season. Outside it is a massive statue of Beethoven: many of the folk I spoke with said that Mexico caught on to Romanticism and didn’t let go, even while Europe moved on. I’m not sure that’s entirely true: Romanticism is very much associated with individualism, and there’s a lot more of a sense of the collective, to me, in what I’ve seen and heard about Mexico. But what is certainly true is that with the Romantics came a rediscovery of the fantastic, and clearly that never really went away in Latin America. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the most famous author of the region, and although he was definitively Colombian, he also lived in Mexico for a long time. One older woman in Oaxaca insisted to me that there was a Oaxacan woman writer who’d influenced Marquez’s original development of ‘magic realism’ which is the Latino genre par excellence (and definitely my personal favourite form of novel). I can certainly see how Mexico would inspire, where there is magic and history and twists and turns around every unusual bend
The national flag in the centre of the city is the biggest I’ve ever seen, big enough to be worthy of the zócalo, which of course is up there with Red Square as the world’s largest city plaza. And after all the baroque I’d seen, I kind of knew what to expect with the Sagrario and the cathedral as further massive examples of church/state power symbols. But what really distinguishes the centre of the city from other parts of the country (or other great capitals) are those murals. Taking their cue from the Mexican ancients, post-revolutionary artists like Diego Rivera took on projects that were much more dynamic and exciting than the kind of Soviet poster-boy stuff being done at the same time in Russia. And I’m rather a fan of Russian creativity in the 1920s so this is saying something. Orozco’s work led it off, and it carries on today of course: some breathtaking modern examples were in galleries, taking what I’d seen on walls to a fresh point of exaltation, in many different ways.
I probably have Russia on my mind because of a certain Leon Trotsky. The residual old-school leftist in me (I’m not quite sure where he is these days, but he knocks around from time to time) felt the need to pay homage to Trotsky’s house before my last night in the city. It’s in Coyoacán, close to Frida and Diego; Diego got him asylum; Frida was briefly his lover. The post-revolutionary Mexican government gave him a place to stay after Stalin had already killed pretty much everyone he loved; the bullet holes from his eventual assassination remain in the wall, but so do the rabbit hutches – Trotsky was an animal and nature lover. His garden is full of lovingly tended indigenous plants from the mountains; it remained in the possession of his surviving grandson who passed away last year. It was a Spanish Stalinist who finally did for him, after the Republicans had already lost the Spanish Civil War and when the brief pact between Hitler and Stalin was in effect. Mexico’s role in the revolutionary left was not something I knew a huge amount about before, but it had certainly been there, just south of the USA, as the CIA moved into full ‘destabilise-the-Americas’ mode during the Cold War. Although by no means everyone in Mexico was leftist. Outside the Franciscan church in Cholula there was a nice sign from the 1950s thanking the congregation for rebuilding parts of the church so it could ‘stand strong against communism’... I left Trotsky’s place and wandered through the nearby impressive government-funded national film archives and cinema.
You can probably get that I did indeed stack up a lot of steps through different parts of the city. Some days I turned strange corners and found unexpected food, like in the one-street Chinatown. There I had something like a cross between dumplings and sweet Japanese mochi: far too dough-y though they had been given fun Mexican colours. Better to stick to the ample Mexican street offerings: often cheap and delicious tacos, with mushrooms or spinach sauce or eggs or stuffed jalapenos or some other variety, leading to some good banter and much satisfaction. I also had more tamales. David had found the muñeco on three occasions on the day of Los Reyes (January 6th , which is still when Hispanic kids get their presents, from the three kings rather than Santa Claus. Except of course these days they know all about Santa Claus, so mostly they get presents two weeks earlier as well *sigh*). He revealed that this meant he needed to make loads of tamales in February for his friends. I too had eaten a small rosca de reyes, the traditional Spanish Catholic fruitcake, though after the date. As it was just me eating it, I too found the muñeco, the small white plastic doll of baby Jesus hidden inside, and as it happened that was the day I first ate a tamale myself, from a street stall. This one had spicy green pepper inside and was remarkably tasty for such a basic piece of street food. Tamales are basically a bit like a lump of polenta, boiled up using the corn leaves as a pot (or sometimes plantain leaves instead for a different flavour), with whatever filling is chosen - then unwrapped for eating. David’s mother made some for my final breakfast with them, with cheese, and with mushrooms; all were very delicious. With it she had brewed up alote, a malty hot maize drink. Yet another variation on a theme: and quite a contrast to the cold maize/cacao tejates that I had drunk in Oaxaca (which are not to be confused with the local beer with a similar name!)
On my final night in Mexico City I had my last nieve – a “snow”, a much cuter name for a sorbet, sometimes offered alongside helados (traditional ice creams) but often on their own and in much greater variety than usual given the enormous range of Mexican fruits. As I ate it I wandered through some park areas. It was great to see how full they were in the still warm-ish but by now dark evening; people learning salsa dance or skating, couples meeting on benches, and women comfortably sitting alone too. I would be sad to leave this place which gave me such food for the soul, but it was time to get back to the Cape summer, digest the many tastes and colours I’d experienced and let it all sink into my dreams.