SOME AFTERTHOUGHTS

    Maybe it's age showing, but it takes a day or two to recover after even a short (12-hour) travel day. But now, we are able to have some recollections in tranquility.

    First, a correction. In the last of our blog entries, we mentioned the picture of the Spanish burning Aztec books as an example of political messages in the Rivera mural, but we failed to post it. So, here it is:

Now, a few random thoughts on our trip.

Before we researched Mexico City, we'd thought of it as a

dangerous, crowded, noisy place that should be avoided. Although it was, in fact, crowded and noisy, there were heavily armed police everywhere we went, so it felt perfectly safe. And what city isn't noisy? Or crowded?

    And, as I mentioned earlier, the city was clean. People didn't litter, and should something fall to the ground, a street cleaner would be by shortly to pick it up. Nor did many people smoke, and everyday, you'd see merchants washing the street in front of their shops. Ever see that in New York? Or London? Paris? Rome?

    But water, or the lack of it, is a monumental problem for the city. The Aztecs built it on a lake, and they built an aqueduct to bring in fresh water. That worked for a city of 200,000 or so, but now, with 22 million or more, the soft soil under the city and the pumping of water are causing it to sink. The famous statue, Angel of Independence, which we drove past a few times, is now higher than it was when it was erected in 1910. In 2005, 23 new steps had to be added to reach its base as the city had sunk around it. 

    

And they're running out of water. According to a BBC article, the city is sinking 3.2 feet every year while facing this shortage. For heath reasons, we could not drink tap water or use it to brush our teeth so we had to use bottled water, or gamble that the spout on the side of our sink was valid. (We didn't try it.)

    For an excellent article in the New York Times on the city's water crisis, see: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/17/world/americas/mexico-city-sinking.html

    For us, though, as drop-in tourists, Mexico City, and Teotihaucán, just 31 miles from the Zocolo, the whole area was filled with history. Some of it was a mystery (Who built the great pyramids?), and way too much of it was cruel and tragic (human sacrifice, invasions by the Spanish and others including the US). Rivera captured both the magic and the tragedy in his great murals, but overall, he exhibited the spirit of exuberance and joy in the great civilization south of us. Perhaps the wall, that some of our own citizens wish to erect, would be a good thing . . . for the the Mexicans.

Next up for us, a new blog: Sicily in late April and early May. There will be a new blog site for which an email notification with the link will be sent out in early April.

DIEGO RIVERA

    Frescoes by Mexico's most famous artist, Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957), turned up again and again as we explored the city. We first encountered him when we toured Chapultepec Castle, where, along with other frescoes, was one on the

ceiling of the staircase depicting, I think, one of the student cadets plunging to his death rather than be taken alive by US marines. This was just one of many more pictures of outrages against Mexican people by outside invaders. 

   The most famous of his frescoes are in the National Palace, the imposing structure facing the Zocolo. To see them, you have to give the guards a photo ID to keep while you're inside, and once there, other guards keep a close eye on you. 

    The main fresco is on the staircase going up to the second

 floor overlooking a courtyard. It's almost impossible to photograph the pictures, because they wrap around the stairs which divide into two parts as you go up. The overall first 

impression is of color and action, although at the very center is a large eagle perched on a cactus with a snake in its mouth, depicting the myth of the Aztecs selecting this site for their city. 

    When you look more closely, you can identify various highlights (and lowlights) of Mexican history. Bob and I began identifying them as we stood on the staircase, and then again, on the balcony overlooking the staircase, where signs

helped us. To cite just one of many examples, this section shows Spanish priests, after Cortez conquered the Aztecs, trying to eradicate the history of their victims by burning their books, something that actually happened. 

    The staircase led up to a balcony where there were many

more Riviera frescoes. These continued illustrating the great civilization of the Aztecs before they were conquered by the Spanish, and the cruelty and destruction that followed. My favorite section of a panel showed what the City of Tenochititlan (now Mexico City)

might have looked like with the long roadway leading to the Temple Mayor. This section was a backdrop for the main images on the panel, a busy marketplace illustrating all the goods and services available then on a typical day.

    Other frescoes around the balcony showed the ingenuity of the Aztecs as they developed their civilization. One, for example, showed them

producing a kind of paper called amatyl, made from plant fibers. This was of particular interest to me since I have three pictures at home painted by a Mexican artist on this kind of paper.

   

 Today, we visited the Palace of Belles Artes to see even more Rivera frescoes. The palace is a large white building attached to the beautiful Alameda Park. The building itself is a curious mixture of art galleries and a concert hall, and it was a challenge for us to find Rivera's famous, or infamous, fresco,

El hombre en el cruce de caminos (Man at the Crossroads). After we identified which window to buy tickets at, and which elevator and staircases to take, we found it.

    The fresco had originally been commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller for his building on Fifth Avenue, but when he realized its anti-capitalist theme, he had it destroyed. Rivera then recreated it in the Belles Artes building. At the center is a Paul Newman-like man weighing which way to move mankind forward. On one side were pictures of millionaires (the .01%) drinking champagne and playing cards oblivious to people surrounding them looking for food and honest work. On the other side were pictures of what, in the 1930s, Riviera saw as a better political option in the form of Marx, Lenin, and Communist workers.

    Clearly, Diego Rivera was a champion of native Mexicans and working men and women everywhere. What he was against, and depicted in graphic detail, was the subjugation of people by selfless states and greedy individuals. In the National Palace is a special exhibit of somewhere around a dozen rooms tracing the history and genius of the Mexican people up to, but not including, the Spanish conquest. (A condensed version of the Museum of Anthropology) Toward the end of the exhibit was a sign that I'm sorry we did not photograph. It pretty much sums up Rivera's philosophy: What would the Mexican civilization (and the world's, for that matter) have been like if Cortez and his conquistadors had never landed on the shores of this continent?

[Ed. Note: Tomorrow is our flight home. This will be the last posting while in Mexico City for this trip. But who knows? There may be some afterthoughts once we get home!]

PYRAMIDS: Part 2

[NOTE:  Click on pictures for larger versions!]

    Our experience exploring the ruins of Teotihuacán began

at the northern end where the Pyramid of the Moon stands. Just to one side of it is what used to be some high mucky-muck's home, as the carved columns and brightly colored frieze demonstrate. We were early enough that we had this house and the Pyramid almost to ourselves.

    The Pyramid of the Moon, the “little” one, presented a challenge to climb, but climb we did. The stairs were uneven and extremely steep, but there was a modern rubber-enclosed steel railing to help pull yourself up and to hold onto going back down. Once at the top—or rather, the highest level people are now allowed to climb—we had an amazing view down the seemingly endless Avenue of the Dead, so called by the Aztecs who mistakenly thought that the many temples along each side were tombs of kings or high priests.

   Only one couple was on the Pyramid with us then, and Bob obligingly took a photo of them with the Pyramid of the Sun off to the left behind them. Before we descended, I asked

Bob to photograph the climb DOWN, showing how steep it was. Note his shoe at the edge and the street merchants at the bottom setting up shop. Also, I asked him to take a photo of me standing in front of the Pyramid with the rest of it above me, and I took one of him climbing up the steps. These photos should give you some idea of the size of this little pyramid and how steep the climb was.

    At this point, it's worth noting the layout of the whole area as we were able to see it from the Pyramid of the Moon. The shot, obviously not ours, shows the two Pyramids, the long Avenue of the Dead, and where we walked. 

    I should add that the Avenue of the Dead looks from a distance like one long, even walkway, but it wasn't. In addition to all the small temples, or houses, or whatever-they-were on each side, we discovered that there were five

or six sunken courtyards in the avenue that required us to climb down (again, think STEEP) steps and then back up on the other side. But eventually, we made it to the mighty Pyramid of the Sun.

    Here we began running into people, most of whom had started their explorations at the first entry gate, not the one we took. It wasn't too crowded, but note the orange line in the next two photos of the pyramid. 

    It's at the half-way point up the pyramid, and it looks as if it is there for crowd control, like the ones at airports. I can only imagine what it must be like in high season with hundreds of people waiting their turn to climb to the very top of the pyramid to earn their well-deserved bragging rights.
    We did not climb the last half of the way up because . . . Well, it wasn't that we were worn out and couldn't do any more. No way. It's just that we were running out of time. We'd arranged for a driver to pick us up at the first gate at 12:30, and we had only an hour or so left to explore the rest of the site. And that's the honest truth.
    As we continued our journey down the Avenue of the Dead, climbing in and out of the sunken courtyards, we kept

looking back at the Pyramid of the Moon, where we'd begun our trek. As this pyramid grew smaller and smaller in the distance, the magnitude of the site grew larger and larger in our imagination. At the height of this mysterious civilization toward the end of its thousand-plus years of existence, the temples along each side of the avenue were brightly painted as were the pyramids themselves. One example of what the paintings

must have looked like is the jaguar in this house. It's faded now, but imagine what it must have looked like some 1400 years ago.
    At the southern end of the avenue is what they call the Citadel. It was not a fortress, but rather a place for ceremonies (think human sacrifices and other joyful celebrations). Again, to gain entrance to this plaza, we had to climb up a surrounding wall

and back down. On the other side was yet another pyramid, and immediately behind this was the Temple of Quetzalcotl. Why the pyramid and the temple are sitting almost on top of each other with just a narrow walkway between them, I don't know. 
    Anyway, we climbed up the steep stairs to the top of the pyramid and from there we could look across at the wall of the temple. Note the many heads of serpents and the elaborate decorations. Think now what this wall must have looked like when it was freshly painted. 

Oh wait! You don't have to imagine it. In the Museum of Archaeology, which we visited at the beginning of our trip, is a display of what the wall must have looked like. 

    Our exploration of Teotihuacán from the Pyramid of the Moon down the Avenue of the Dead to the Citadel, a walk of around two miles, was only half of what the avenue originally ran. In fact, it also stretched another couple of miles to the east and west of the Avenue of the Dead. Now just imagine what the city must have looked like, all painted as brightly as the Temple of Quetzalcotl and populated by as many as 85,000 people—high priests, elite classes, merchants, artists, farmers, tradesmen. What a spectacle it must have been. What a spectacle its ruins still are today.

PYRAMIDS: Part 1

   Today we visited Teotihuacán (pronounced Teh-oh-tee-wa-khan), which means "place where gods were born." This reflects the Aztec belief that the gods created the universe here, because no mortals could have created anything so massive and brilliant.

    But who were these master builders? They occupied the area from about 500 BCE to 650 AD, over one thousand years, but we don't know where they came from, where they went, or even what language they spoke. What we do know is they left an astonishing set of ruins.

    At its height, the city of Teotihuacán had an estimated 85,000 people living in a 12 square mile area carefully laid out in blocks with 2,000 apartments, wells, drainage systems, large public areas, and two huge pyramids.

PYRAMID OF THE SUN

    The Pyramid of the Sun is the third-largest in the world, after the Great Pyramid of Giza and a Mayan one buried somewhere in the jungles of Guatemala. Someone estimated that it would have taken 14,000 men working 10 hour shifts every day for 139 years to build it.

PYRAMID OF THE MOON

    The Pyramid of the Moon stands at the end of the Avenue of the Dead, which is now around two miles long, but was once twice that. At the other end is the Citadel with its Temple of the Quetzalcóatl, an area used for massive events including human sacrifice. The Pyramid of the Sun is part way down the Avenue of the Dead, almost as if they couldn't decide where to put it. It's not at one end or the other, where you'd expect such a massive structure to be. 

AVENUE OF THE DEAD (Looking down from the Pyramid of the Moon, the Pyramid of the Sun is on the left.

    When the city was deserted, its buildings were burned and its sculptures smashed. No one knows why or who did it. And it wasn't until the 1960s that serious excavation began. There is still much left to be uncovered.
   As for what WE uncovered, we're just too exhausted to tell you tonight. Tomorrow, in Part Two, when we've had a good night's sleep, we'll tell you about our experience with this astonishing place.

SLIM PICKIN'S

    Because Bob felt much better today, we went to the Museo Soumaya.

   But first, a note on transportation. We summoned a Uber taxi, which appeared almost instantaneously. So far so good. But how to get back? Since we needed Wifi to summon one, our travel guru, Margaret, sent us an email saying it was simple. Just go to the nearest Starbucks. They have free Wifi. Oh, and the nearest one is right next to the museum. Just turn right when you leave the museum and . . .

   How on earth does she know all this?

   Built by one of the three or four richest men on earth,

Carlos Slim, the building itself is worth seeing. Outside, it's said to resemble the neck of Mrs. Slim ( ! ), but inside, it reminded me of the Guggenheim in New York. You take the lift to the top, then walk down ramps visiting each exhibition space along the way.
    The crown jewel of the spaces, however, is not where the elevator lets you off. Instead, you walk UP a ramp, and gradually the top floor reveals itself. It's one huge, open room lit by natural light from the dome, and each work of art is lit by one or more of a network of spotlights on overhead beams.

   Mrs. Slim, apparently, liked Rodin, so her husband dutifully assembled the largest collection of casts of Rodin sculptures outside of France, more than 300 works in all. These and everything else in the museum came from his personal art collection. On exhibit are works by van Gogh, Matisse,

Monet, El Greco, Claudel, Tintoretto, Renoir, Picasso, Miro, and others. In fact, there's something for everyone including a coin collection, Japanese ivory carvings (amazing!), even a Faberge egg.
    Most of the Rodin sculptures on the top floor are familiar, such as The Thinker and The Kiss, so I won't include photos of them. Instead, I'll mention a collection by the 19^th

Century printmaker, caricaturist, and sculptor Honre Daumier. I remember seeing some of his prints, such as this one of a woman giving an astonished man what-for, and an assembly of notables. 

What amazed me was how Daumier was able to turn what 

could have been a group picture of notables into a collection of 3-D sculptures, each one a masterpiece that would, I'm sure, have been recognizable by his contemporaries, but somehow exaggerated enough to render his chief characteristic satirically. (Google this for close-ups.) You almost knew someone like each sculpture.

    Like this example, there were many other supportive collections of sculptures and many more collections of artists on the floors below, but according to Bob, no museum could lay claim to world class status unless it included at least one Saint Sebastian (our on-going joke). No sooner had he

mentioned this, than bingo! There it was, one of the most graphic renditions of the saint who ended up being a target for archery practice.
    I cannot conclude my survey of this amazing museum, Slim's gift to his native country and the world, without including the following statue. I don't remember who sculpted it (NOT Rodin), or who it represents, but isn't it fabulous?  

[This text is all in bold. I have no idea why, but I've tried to undo it. BlogSpot won't let me. Please forgive...]

PLOT TWIST !!!

    Last night, Bob came down with something. We don't think it's Montezuma's Revenge, but whatever it is, it caused him to spend the day in bed, not wandering around Zona Rosa, an interesting neighborhood I'd scheduled for today. So, in addition to doing a run to the local 7/11 for liquids for the patient, I took a couple of excursions around the Zocolo and its adjourning streets. Below are some observations and a few of my excursions into photo journalism.

    Although the square and streets are swarming with people, the streets themselves are remarkably

clean. Generally, people don't litter. And for those who do, there's a small army of street cleaners in bright uniforms.

    And talking about armies, there's a much larger one of

police. In fact, they seem to be everywhere, not just in public areas, but also in front of stores, restaurants and shops. This may explain why the crime rate in Mexico City, at least in areas we've seen, is much lower than many US cities. Chicago, anyone? 

    Around the cathedral are a dozen or so Aztec shaman healers who, for a donation, will rub you with herbs and

blow smoke in your face to cleanse you of evil spirits. Some areas were downright smoky.

    Also around the cathedral are a couple dozen Aztec dancers, mostly men, who perform in elaborate costumes, some of them extremely skimpy, to the accompaniment of drums. You have to wonder how they manage to keep warm.

    There are also beggars and loud-mouthed promoters of who-knows-what, but not as many as I've seen on the streets

of Paris or Rome. And, of course, the ubiquitous selfie takers, and the noise-makers. (Sadly, I don't have a photo of the guy singing “New York, New York.”) 

    In the square itself are parents with young children playing ball much as they must have done five hundred years ago. And everywhere, families with kids and grandparents and relatives eating, laughing, blowing up balloons, having a good time. That what a zocolo is for!

TOWN SQUARE

    Today was Zocolo, Mexico City's town square. 500 years ago, it was also the town square,the most sacred place in all of Aztec Mexico. Happily, it was only a couple of blocks from our hotel.

    The Templo Mayor, or main temple, was the Aztec version of St. Peter's Cathedral. The Spaniards, of course, destroyed it and used the stones to construct their Catedral Metropolitana, so what we visited today was the remains of the original temple.

    And what a temple it was. The ancient Egyptians built ever larger pyramids to out-do each other, but the Aztecs did them one better. Each Aztec chief simply built a larger pyramid over the existing one, and archaeologists have uncovered no fewer than seven bigger-and-better pyramids, as can be seen in this photo.

    The Temple Mayor museum is astonishing, and we spent three hours there, until our backs gave out. There's an out-door section about a city block large showing various pieces of the seven layers of pyramids. My favorite was two enormous snakes on either side of the grand staircase leading, supposedly up to the great alter. The indoor museum is modern and beautifully laid out with explanatory notes in Spanish and English tracing

the history of the Aztec's building their beautiful city of Tenochititlan. One of the most striking exhibits was a stone goddess (forget her name) who was chopped up in pieces (representing the death of the moon and the triumph of the sun). Note that the people next to the stone show how large the stone carving was.

    I can't help feeling great sadness for Montezuma, the poet/philosopher emperor who surrendered to what he supposed was the promised god (Cortez) with his strange animals (horses) and means of killing people (guns). Yes, the Aztecs were a war-like people, and yes, they sacrificed humans (who thought they'd be sent straight to heaven, so it wasn't all that bad), but his civilization was in many ways more advanced than that of his Spanish conquers. The museum is a testament to the greatness of that civilization.

    Since we were so close to the museum, Bob and I came back for some R&R before heading back out to view the rest

of the modern Zocalo. We strolled through the Catedral Metropolitana which the Spaniards built after destroying the Temple Mayor. It's an over-the-top confection with a collection of dusty saints. Then we tried to visit the Palacio Nacional (formerly Montazum'a palace) with its famous Diego Rivera murals, but there was such a long line waiting to enter that we gave it a pass for today. Besides, we'd grown weary of the streams of people flowing in and around the Zocolo. What we yearned for was some space and quiet.

    Back to the hotel for a nap and later, thanks to a thunder storm, we dined in, giving us time to bring this blog up to date.