Mexico City 2

Posted on January 23, 2003 in Photos Vacations

Click on the Picture

Guidebooks informed us that the greatest dangers in Mexico City were the pickpockets, the robbers, and the green taxi-cab drivers. An Australian we met at Casa de los Amigos counter-suggested that we should watch out for the cops. He told us the story of two fellows who’d asked some policemen for directions. The cops offered to drive them there. The tourists accepted. Several hours later, the men were found on a street, naked and bleeding from the beating they’d received.

All the spots we’d been warned about as pickpocket havens were crawling with police. They hung about in groups of two to five, deterring by their relaxed presence. A few years ago, the government prohibited officers from collecting fines on the spot — unless they were women. The men we saw played with their transparent ABS riot shields as they mourned the loss of extra income they’d enjoyed from harassing tourists. Mexico City is safer in that way, too.

A few were friendly. One fellow in the Zona Rosa stopped us and asked us what we were looking for. He walked us to the next corner and pointed out the location of the interNet cafe that we were seeking.

The only time I was scolded by police was when I took pictures inside the tombs underneath the Monument to the Revolution. I backed down and apologized on the spot.

Mexicans can now speak freely of past abuses. Few Americans know, for example, of the massacre of 400 demonstrators in the Plaza of Three Cultures that took place ten weeks before the 1968 Olympics. Books and tour guides both discuss this now. Bureaucrats wanted no hint of political strife during the Games. Troops mowed down the dissidents and scraped the flesh scraps off the square. Brisk work with scrub brushes and weeks of news about the weather and the upcoming games erased memory of the affair from the public consciousness. Only the families of the four hundred cared.

Today’s photos were taken last Friday, our first full day in Mexico City. They show life around Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square. The presence of police wearing riot gear imprinted itself as a memory which recalled my journies in Croatia and Serbia in 1992. Unlike the Croatian soldiers who patrolled Zagreb, the Mexican cops carried no machine guns. I suspect that if provoked, they’d use their fists.