Every year, hordes of us change planes in Mexico City en route to the Pacific
coast, the mountain town of Oaxaca or the hammocks of the Mayan riviera. But
hardly anyone goes beyond the airport.
Mexico City has an image problem. Its reputation suggests that you can’t
venture downtown without being kidnapped for your cash, credit cards or even
kidneys — and you can forget about help from the corrupt police. Then
there’s the pollution, which, on a bad day, will pelt you with dead birds
choked in mid-flight.
But things have changed. There are now half as many gun offences in Mexico
City as in Washington DC — and crime rates are still falling, thanks partly
to a trouble-shoot by Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. Air
quality has also improved dramatically. Every vehicle built before 1994 is
kept off the streets for at least one day per week, and heavy industry has
been relocated.
Give a dog a bad name though... I was twitchy on my first morning in the city.
Speeding past the doorman, I burst from the hotel lobby like Butch and
Sundance leaving a bank, and ran at a crouch into the sanctuary of a waiting
cab. I peered out of the windows. There didn’t seem to be any armed
kidnappers, bent coppers or men with scalpels, just a boy walking his puppy
under a clear blue sky.
As we sped into the Centro Historico, I began to relax. Outside, there were
clean pavements teeming with street life, impressive colonial-era buildings
and elegant city parks, like a grander Madrid.
At the centre of it all is El Zocalo, a vast square. Bordered by the
cathedral, the presidential palace, and fine colonial buildings, it’s just a
cobble or two short of Moscow’s Red Square, and the heart of Mexico — the
city and the country. Back in the 14th century, the Zocalo was used for
Aztec celebrations, and it’s still constantly busy with parades, festivals
and demos.
Entering the courtyard of the President’s Palace, I sidled into some shade,
which revealed Diego Rivera’s colourful, chaotic mural of Mexican history.
Started in 1929, it contrasts a stylised Aztec idyll with the brutality of
the conquistadors, and winds up with Rivera’s vision of a bright socialist
future and fiery Frida Kahlo, his wife, holding a copy of The Communist
Manifesto.
If that’s remarkable, so is its next-door neighbour — the ruins of Templo
Mayor, the foundations of two giant 2,000-year-old Aztec pyramids. They’re
right there, in the middle of modern Mexico City, next to makeshift
mobile-phone and DVD stalls. The stories attached to it are more
bloodthirsty than a Tarantino trailer. A mere 500 years ago, 20,000
prisoners had their hearts ripped out at a ceremony here: the victims queued
four abreast for three miles, and the priests wrenching out the hearts were
overcome with exhaustion.
The pyramids at Teotihuacan, 30 miles northeast of the city, are much more
intact, and only Giza’s are bigger. I made it to the top of the 230ft-high
Pyramid of the Sun and shared the sunset with a group of Californian hippies
— spliffed up, splayed out and chanting. Their suggestive writhings had few
links to pre-Aztec rituals, but their new-age moaning and the nearby Moon
pyramid, silhouetted against the crimson sky, still made the hairs on the
back of my neck bristle.
At Rome’s peak, Teotihuacan, with more than 200,000 people, was the biggest
city in the Americas — a distinction now held by Mexico City and its 20m
inhabitants. But the crumbling central areas of the modern city often feel
too intimate to be a part of a metropolis. I watched scribes writing love
letters for the tongue-tied and illiterate on Plaza de Santo Domingo, ate
tacos with locals sitting under a tree, and twice stumbled on fêtes in
residential squares, where young and old were enjoying silly games and
gossip.
Yet cross the enormous Chapultepec Park to the hilltop palace of emperor
Maximilian, or take a lift to the top of the 1956 Torre Latinoamericano
skyscraper, and the city feels big all right. Its sprawl fills a
7,500ft-high plain more than 10 times the size of Barbados, with freeways
and high rises that stretch to distant foothills.
I headed back to the hotel, Condesa df, and sat with its owner, Rafael Micha,
on its fashionable top-floor terrace, where beau-monde Mexicans sat on green
rattan seats and sipped cocktails under the stars. Yes, you really could see
stars in the night sky, a fact I noted incredulously to Rafael.
“We know we’ve had a bad rap,” he said, rotating a piece of sashimi with
chopsticks. “But at last it feels unfair and outdated. Look at this deck.
It’s large and it’s full. Even the butterflies are back. Their lungs are the
first to fail if it’s polluted.”
After visiting more trendy terraces at the W and Habita, I’d enough Dutch
courage to face a trip to Garibaldi Square, epicentre of the city’s mariachi
culture. It was Saturday night, too, the busiest of the week, when locals go
for serenades, or to take home a band for an impromptu party.
A mariachi band is like heat-seeking karaoke — it hunts down the easily
embarrassed. I naturally avoid Mexican restaurants, just in case.
Before I’d even sighted the square, the traffic had hit gridlock. There was a
tap at the window. It was a large man in a small bolero jacket. He wore an
untidy white shirt, slicked-back hair and an ingratiating smile. It wasn’t a
car-jacking. It was worse — a rogue mariachi band.
These traditional ensembles, up to 10 members strong, serenade Mexicans
through the important moments of life. They are sent by young men to court
their belles, hired for baptisms, weddings and funerals.
I panicked, paid the driver and vanished into the square’s crowds. Bad move.
Very bad move. I had fled straight into the mariachis’ lair. Bouncy blasts
of brass filled the air as tight-suited players serenaded hundreds of
revellers — like a Tijuana Brass-themed fun fair with sizzling snacks and a
good-tempered crush.
I sought refuge in the El Tenampa taverna. Another mistake. Inside was
mariachi meltdown — six bands at full rasp. Help. I ordered a tequila.
A Mexican student at a nearby table screeched along with the band, chest out,
girlfriend proud, friends thrilled. I ordered another tequila. Then another.
And another. Eventually, it all sounded wonderful.
Next morning, nursing a grim mariachi hangover, I went to explore the city’s
most famous suburb, Coyoacan, a 30-minute metro ride south of the centre.
Last year, it was voted the fifth most liveable neighbourhood in the
Americas, up there with South Beach, Miami. It’s an artsy, villagey sort of
place, with hacienda-style architecture, weekend markets and cobbled
streets. Artisans sell their wares; smart young couples hold hands; and
everywhere people sit out under shady trees.
I watched as a portly man with a bag full of shoes sat at a New York-style
shoeshine seat. He chatted enthusiastically with the ageing shoeshine “boy”
and had his footwear cleaned while he wore it — one pair at a time. Next to
me, a sassy lady in denim and a bandanna rocked her poodles in a pram, and a
small boy in the national football strip commanded a chain of toy-carrying
relatives.
Kahlo and Rivera lived here in the 1930s and 1940s, when they convinced their
political soul mate, Leon Trotsky, to seek asylum and stay with them. He
did, but after an affair with Kahlo, and fearing Stalinist assassins, he
fortified a house a short stroll away.
Both homes are now museums, and in Trotsky’s, the steel doors get smaller and
thicker as you near his bedroom. Being the only visitor was unnerving. His
spectacles lie where they fell one hot summer’s day in 1940, when a Soviet
agent smashed an ice pick into his skull.
At Kahlo’s house, the contrast could hardly be greater. The courtyard is large
and sun-baked, with walls block-painted bright yellow, red and blue. Inside
spaces are hung with her work, bright and vibrant, as are the childlike
decorations in the rooms where she lived and worked.
Further on is Coyoacan’s market square. I sat outside at a busy bar and
watched the afternoon sun dapple through the laurel trees. A troop of
Aztec-style dancers thumped out their earthy rhythms, and I delighted at
being somewhere so exotic yet so relaxed. The slick young waiter placed
another chilled Sol on the table and a cream-coloured butterfly flitted over
his arm.
Travel details: Exsus (020 7292 5050, www.exsus.com)
has a 10-night trip, with three nights at the Condesa df and seven nights on
the Mayan riviera, from £2,180pp, including British Airways flights from
Heathrow to Mexico City, internal flights and transfers. The Condesa df (www.condesadf.com)
has balcony rooms from £150 per night, B&B. Or try Last Frontiers
(01296 653000, www.lastfrontiers.com)
or Trips Worldwide (0117 311 4404, www.tripsworldwide.co.uk).
Richard Green travelled as a guest of Exsus Travel
