Chapultepec

October 7, 2007

Hope you are enjoying your long Columbus Day weekend at home. We spent yesterday biking in the Bosque de Chapultepec, the huge park in Mexico City.

The park includes a zoo, a botanical garden, lakes, walking, jogging, and biking paths, stands selling antojitos (typical Mexican food),
souvenirs and trinkets, and the Castillo, which played a role in the Mexican-American War and now houses a museum. The great Museo de Antropología, the Museo Tamayo, and the Auditorio Nacional flank it. On weekends the park is filled with people enjoying its many treasures. One of the pathways is called the Paseo de Quijote; it has a modern sculpture of Don Quijote on Rocinante, lance pointed skyward, surely tilting at those famous windmills.
There is also in this section a small plaza with benches around a fountain and sculptures of Don Quijote with the face of Salvador Dali and Sancho Panza with the face of Diego Rivera. The Paseo de Quijote intersects the Calzada de los Poetas, which loops around a lake. Along this path are sculptures of famous poets, each with a plaque quoting a poem.

As we were reading some of the poems, we heard drum beats and the gentle rattle of the anklets of Aztec dancers, smelled the intriguing aroma of copal (an incense), and went to investigate. A group of about twenty dancers of all ages was performing, not for the public, but rather for themselves. Some were playing a mandolin-type instrument made of what looked to me like an armadillo shell. We had seen Aztec dancers before in the Zocalo peforming purification rituals

for paying customers who stood there while a shaman circled them with incense burners and switched them with some bouquets of herbs, a sign on the pavement stating that the ritual could clean your aura, attract health and peace, cure arthritis, ulcers and stress and chase away mal de ojo (the evil eye). While those rituals in the Zocalo seemed commercial, this dance seemed genuinely spiritual. At one point two dancers blew into a conch shell, making a haunting primeval musical sound. As we were really getting into the spirit of the performance, two young boys, video camera in hand, approached and asked if they could interview us (in English) for a school project. How could we refuse?

On the way out of the park, we passed a performance of mariachi music and traditional dance. The musicians were all dressed in white mariachi suits while the featured singer, América Zapata, was dressed in a long brown mariachi skirt suit.


The dancers, two men and two women, were in beautiful, colorful folkloric costumes. This performance was part of a series of events planned by the Secretaria de Cultura to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Bosque. Just in case our senses were not quite yet on overload, a display of antique automobiles caught our attention as we exited the park.