Getting acclimated to one of the world's biggest cities

Letter from Cindy:

At the National Palace in the heart of Mexico City, where we saw Diego Rivera's murals.

Our neighborhood is densely packed, part of a suburb of 500,000.

 

Dear Friends and Family,
 
Jim and I are still wandering the globe. We are in Mexico again, as some of you already know. Jim has accepted a one-year appointment as visiting professor of Communications and Digital Arts at Tecnologico de Monterrey's campus near Mexico City. Tec is an innovative private university with 13 branches around Mexico.

 

We are living in Ciudad Lopez Mateos, 30 to 40 minutes northwest of the capital. This is quite different from life in Guadalajara, where we lived in an upscale neighborhood with plenty of shops, restaurants, parks and a car. 

Balloon launch over the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan

Morning balloon launch over Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan. We got to the site at just the right moment.

Cindy and I have been to Teotihuacan (tay-oh-tee-wah-KAHN) a couple of times before, but the scale of the place never ceases to impress us. So when the staff at the university invited us to join a Sunday tour with other international students and professors, we said sure.

We had a pleasant surprise when we got to the site, which is about 30 miles northeast of Mexico City. A balloon launch was under way. It looked at first like an invasion of the aliens.

A swing through Toltec ruins and provincial towns

We had a couple of days free and decided to swing down toward Mexico City. We made a big detour around the state of Michoacán, which has been a hotbed of drug violence, and stayed in Querétaro, which is famous for, among other things, its 275-year-old aqueduct.

On Sunday it provided the venue for sculptures of fanciful creatures.




The town of Bernal is noted for its crafts market. We went on a recent Sunday and bought our quota of lovely things.

Mexico has hundreds of charming towns, 35 of which are given the official designation of Pueblos Mágicos, and Bernal is one. We´ve been to about a fourth of these towns and all merit the designation.


While we were there, we saw a group of men marching down the street. The men were singing praise to the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is perhaps a more important figure than Jesus in Mexican religion. The priests might contest that but the people have their own way of worshiping, especially in the countryside.

In the background you can see the huge monolith known as the Peña de Bernal, which rises more than 1,000 feet above the town.


Exorbitant tolls

Incidentally, traveling by toll roads is safer but costly. For a 500-mile round trip mostly on toll roads, we paid about $75 in tolls, which works out to about $15 per 100 miles.

Americans would rebel against tolls that high. Rates on the Ohio Turnpike, for example, are about one-third as expensive.


The four imposing Toltec warriors are among the attractions at the archeological site of Tula, about 60 miles northwest of Mexico City. We hadn´t seen any statues like these before.

This site sprang up in the 8th century after the collapse of Teotihuacán, the massive cultural center to the east. It´s notable that these statues are of warriors. Historians say the warrior class replaced the priestly class as the dominant one in many Mesoamerican societies around this time. Prayer was less important than making war.

The Tula site is like a park, with lots of cactus plantings leading from the parking area up to the pyramids and ball court.


Marching like young warriors, a Scout troop takes in the sights. We saw an awards ceremony for a troop the next day on top of a pyramid.


Cindy is my tour guide. She figures out itineraries, reads the history to me in the car and takes a lot of the pictures.

Getting to these sites is complicated by the fact that signage is spotty and inconsistent. You´ll see 10 signs that say, "Don´t leave rocks on the roadway", for every one that gives you a hint about where a major historical site might be.

Back to Teotihuacán and the huge pyramids

We had visited the city of Teotihuacán almost two years ago but both wanted to go back. The massiveness of the pyramids and the sacred plazas takes your breath away. This one is the Pyramid of the Sun. The specks on top are people. We climbed to the top. That also takes your breath away. The stairs are very steep.

In their original state, the stone surfaces of the pyramids were covered with a thick plaster that was painted white and red.

Not much is known about the people who built this place. It thrived from around 2,000 years ago to its collapse in the 7th or 8th century. Historians think it might have been a combination of drought and then an uprising against the ruling priestly class that led to the city´s demise.


In the palace of Tetitla are impressive murals of priests and gods that are about 1,500 years old.

All around the sacred city are residences that are still being excavated. Depending on who is making the estimate, the city might have been home to 80,000 to 250,000 people at its peak.

Pagan, Catholic religions blend in Mexico

Cindy and I took a trip about an hour north of Mexico City and got to experience an interesting contrast in religious beliefs and observances.

Pilgrims to the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe show their devotion by approaching the cathedral on their knees.

First we stopped at the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which is a major pilgrimage destination for Mexican faithful. Legend has it that it was here in 1531 that Mary, the mother of God, appeared to a Nahuatl named Juan Diego, spoke to him in his native tongue and told him to build a church on the site. There are now six churches there, Juan Diego is a saint, and thousands of people pack the site daily. These are not the well-to-do Americans and Europeans who visit the sacred temples of the Aztecs, Mayans and other pre-Columbian sites. These are the common faithful.

The Sunday we were there, several thousand people packed the main cathedral, and thousands of others lit candles at various shrines and asked for miraculous cures of their physical and psychological ailments.

The Catholic religion has blended with the ancient pagan religions so that Mary is often identified with the earth goddess or other female deities, and Jesus and the saints are identified with other gods and goddesses of the pagan pantheon. They´re blended together in a uniquely Latin American form of Catholicism that still feels very medieval.

This little girl sought the blessing of the Virgin of Guadalupe.


The next stop was Teotihuacan, an enormous ceremonial center in what was the biggest city in the Americas 1,900 years ago.

The place was called Teotihuacan by Nahuatl speakers several centuries after the city's fall, but its original name, the language or languages spoken there, and the ethnic groups who built the city are still unknown.
-- Arizona State University Department of Anthropology

You can get some sense of the scale of the place from the size of the ants (people) walking around. Each of the platforms once housed a temple. The pyramid of the Sun in the background is a couple of hundred feet high. The main avenue follows a north-south axis. The whole site was buried under dirt and trees until excavation began in the 19th century. There is still a lot to be uncovered.

Cindy and I marveled at the design of the ceremonial city. In their original state these pyramids were covered with a smooth stucco that was painted red, and carvings and murals decorated the fronts of the platforms. You can see traces of some of the colorful murals in a museum on the site. It is all quite impressive. At the time of its greatest flourishing, it was the sixth largest city in the world, the ASU researchers say.

The central plateau that today includes the site of Mexico City had a population estimated to be 25 million people at the time Europeans arrived. My source for this is a very interesting book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.



The pyramid of the Moon is behind us in this picture. Cindy and I climbed to the top of both the pyramids. They´re quite steep.

The Aztecs who passed through the city after it had been abandoned and partly destroyed gave their own interpretations to the meaning of the place. They were equally awed and recognized that it had sacred significance.