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.