Mexico City 4

Posted on January 25, 2003 in Photos Vacations

The man who sold me the shadow box filled with calacas and pictures of Frida Kahlo laughed merilly when I told him that I was from Los Angeles, “the second largest Spanish speaking city in the world”.

“You know,” he said, “when I go there to see my friends, I say ‘What is this? I thought this was America. This is just like Mexico.'”

When I looked for women wearing rebozos and men wearing sombreros, I saw instead Calvin Kleins, Gecko, Nikes, and Reeboks. And, yet, I could never escape that I was no longer in the land of the men and women who seek their individuality by buying brands which the more common people can’t afford. I need look only to the houses and offices lining the streets: everything was right up against the curb. No parking lots created separations between passersby on the roads and the people in the stores. Plenty of people dared to offend taste with brazen displays of art. And there was less grafitti. The marks appeared in the same places as in America: on blank walls with no character.

The man was wrong: Mexico revelled in bug-eyed walls and kitsch. American citizens thought the smooth walls of Walmarts for the poor and the blandly tiled walls of Neiman Marcus to be the epitomy of civilization. Our parking lots are pretty much like our cemeteries: flatlands with no heart.

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And I haven’t even got past day two! Photos are from my walks in Chapulpetec Park and near the Zocalo.