Later....
We took a stroll to the Zocalo... all the vendors were setting up shop... at little stalls, from stands, from super market trolleys.... they cooked up on little piles of coal, hot plates, frying pans... tacos, burritos, quesadillas... the patrons stood munching... picking from bowls of onion, pepper, olives. The stalls were everywhere... two or three or four a block... they cooked up great vats of broth.
The buildings in the centro historico were unpretentious... regular... two or three floors... evenly spaced and square windows... curling balconies... hues of orange, pink and brown. We’d look down this street, then the next...buildings set with tiles... or incredibly carved doors that writhed under gaze. Some streets were bordered off... stretches of wall half crumbled, demolished, devastated. Abandoned structures seemed to sag inwardly... at the middle... they caved toward the earth........
We took in some murals at the Secretaria de Educacion Publica... the colonial courtyards... bordered by balconies. The themes of science, fellowship and revolution were exponded by Rivera et al. Figures occupied the foreground... often grotesque... the capitalist dinner, dinner on wall street, death of a capitalist. Then the army, the workers, the conquistadors. The peasants would stand most human... serving up their sacred maize. Somewhere among it all... as the oppressed bore arms... Frida Kahlo administered bayonets...
At the Sonoron Market... a store of esoterica... brujeria implementa. In the streets they unloaded the trucks... bundles of branches... the air aromatic. In the narrow passages... huges sacks of bark, herbs, roots... ground, raw, dried... various remedies of earthy hue. The women sat winding together flowers... several witches rushed at us... we continued on... through incense, walls of lotions, prescription candles... various renditions of the saviour... wax and plastic and porcelein. The corridors weaved like a maze... tied with vegetations... dimly lit... faces called out at every
turn.
Later...
We meet a woman at the hostel... she's been on extended sojurns... knows all the cuaranderos... all the mosiquitoes too... had the dengue by all accounts. She gives me names of the shamans... in Guatemala and Nicaragua... the locations in the little villages...
Then the National Anthropology museum...
Chapultepec Park.... the museum divided to academic conceptions of era and geography.... we moved through the preclassic... onto Teotihuacan.... the scale model, sculptures, funeral masks, fragments of mural. Then the toltec... the great solid statues... warriors to hold up a temple. There
were anthropomorphic bowls... little statuettes with extended brows... various recepticles of religious significance. In the Aztec room... the great calendrical disk... terrifying deities abound... the mother goddess... twin serpant heads... a skirt of snakes. Everywhere the cult of Quetzlcoatl... the plumed serpant. ....................................
Outside the musuem, four voladores performed their routine.... amid a carnival of candy floss and balloons. They circled a great pole... marked out the sacred ground... played a little flute, beat a little drum. Then they climbed the thing... one by one.... they sat themselves at the top... pulled up the ropes... tied the things around themselves and wound. There was an infinite wait and finally they fell... upside down... they circled suspended... strangely graceful... holding a pose... they descended like eagles before the sun... they fell with slow easy spirals.
Then we took in the Conchero dancers... they stamped it out to a maddened beat... somewhat pounding... it worked on the heart. They moved their feet rattled... twisted... circled. They wore exuberant head dresses... great long feathers shaking under them. Through it all sweet incense burned at the centre. At the end they came to collect money... the audience ran away.
AT TEOTIHUACAN... the city stands stark in the hills... grey... fully overgrown with grass, paddle cacti, flame like agave. Little red ants ran over the stones, crickets leaped in the vegetation. There was a real breeze (despite the hawkers) a real isolation.
The site is bisected east west by the avenue of the dead. It is flanked on either side by the remains of palaces... the dwellings of nobility and the higher caste. The grey platforms are made by square layers... set upon each other... they form a pyramidal base... a ramp of steep steps reaching up the facade. They are all perfectly spaced... they provide some aesthetic symmetry.
Aside from the pyramid of the moon, there is the temple of the sun.... 70m high... set with run offs for the blood and bodies. The monument is something grand... reaching up like a grey mountain... 248 steps to ascend it... at some steep gradient... 3 million tons of stone to build it.........................
ON MEXICO CITY GENERALLY.... Immensely confusing... continually roaring with movement... an endless barage... faces, voices, traffic, music... the pavement suddenly disappears... blocked by stalls... you at once emerge where your route began. All the while people... moving in and out of the
path... food cooking... traffic anarchic... they drive with cracked windscreens... continually beeping the horn.