Street Vendors

Oct. 12, 2007

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in Mexico City. Its roots are ancient and perennial. Along every major street you can buy just about anything you want - from food to batteries to porn to hair ribbons - in stands, covered by tarps, that are set up and removed daily. This can be viewed as a convenience or a nuisance, depending on your needs. Do you want to walk down the sidewalk to your destination or do you need to buy something ASAP on your way to work? We live very near the Eje Central, one of the major cross-city routes, which is replete with vendors. Because this is also in the Centro Historico and near the Zocalo, the Eje Central has been targeted for a street clean-up. Vendors have been put on notice that they have to close shop and move to plazas that the city government has set aside for them. Since street vendors have plied these streets since pre-Hispanic times, there is much resistance to the idea. It should be interesting to see how this situation develops. Also hard to decipher, since the clean-up starts now, mid-October, but with a reprieve for the Christmas season. Stay posted!

Our Daily Bread

October 11, 2007

Bread could be our favorite food. We especially love a chewy, tasty, dense bread with a hard crust such as a French baguette, the pan de pueblo of Spain, Cuban bread, any Italian bread, or the round loaves and rolls from Calandra's in New Jersey. We haven't found this type of bread here, despite many trips to the panaderia. But remember the song, "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with"? Mexicans have perfected pan dulce (sweet bread) and have given it as many varieties as the Italians have for pasta. And here's the lucky part: you don't have to know the name of the variety to try it. As you enter the panaderia, you pick up a big round tray and tongs, walk among the displays of tempting treats, and choose what appeals to you. Then you go to the counter where an attendant bags it and gives you a tally, which you take to the cashier, who gives you a receipt to take back to the bagger to trade for your baked goods. The price is very reasonable, and at the end of the day there are twofers. We have the good luck to live near both the Ideal and El Globo bakeries, two of the oldest and most traditional in the city. So, even though we still prefer our bread dense, substantial and crusty, we are steady customers of both the Ideal and the Globo. We can't fault a country that contributed both the tortilla and pan dulce to world cuisine for their lack of heft and crust.

October 12, 2007
El Danubio


One night, craving seafood as Mainers often do, we went to the Danubio on Uruguay Street. According to the guide book, some consider it the best seafood in the D.F., and the seafood soup we had there was really good. The Danubio's walls are lined with framed, autographed napkins, some with drawings. We wondered if they had been signed by famous people or just longtime customers of the restaurant, so we took a closer look. Opposite us was one signed by Gabriel García Márquez (Nobel for Literature, 1982 ) and another with the autograph of Carlos Fuentes. My old students at Hampden should recognize Fuentes as the author of El Espejo Enterrado (The Buried Mirror), a quincentennial look at the transatlantic link between Spain and Latin America. Just above us was a napkin signed by Octavio Paz (Nobel for Literature, 1990). So we concluded that they must be famous. I recommend this restaurant to those of you who appreciate great literature and fine seafood.

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.

Jaripeo

Oct. 5, 2007

These photos are from the jaripeo, a rodeo event, that we went to on Friday. The jaripeo has horses, bulls, and riders in common with a Western rodeo, and the similarities end there. The women, announced individually, gallop full speed into the arena, where they abruptly stop in a cloud of dust. Wearing beautiful long white dresses and wide-brimmed Mexican hats, they ride side-saddle. When all eight women had entered the arena, they began precision riding that I can only compare to an intricate dance. And could you have dance without music? The band, dressed in red and white marching band uniforms, played rousing norteno music and corridos (ballads). After a while, people started dancing in the stands, and after the event ended they filled the arena and danced more. Amparo, a teacher who just retired from the Poli, had invited us, and we joined a group of her friends; one of the women riders was Amparo's god daughter, and many of her friends and family were there to see the performance. One brought a bottle of tequila, another a stack of potato quesadillas; everyone joined in.

The men riders were dressed in charro suits and wore wide-brim hats. They did some interesting rope work with their lariats - not as much as we would have liked, but Edith told us that the fancy rope work happened more at an event called a charreada. This was a jaripeo, and the main events here are bull riding and paso de la muerte (the pass of death). The paso de la muerte involves a group of cowboys galloping in a pack around the arena along with an untamed horse. At some point, one of the riders jumps off his horse and onto the wild horse. They all continue to ride until the wild horse stops bucking. It's an exciting event, and we saw three pasos de la muerte. Sorry I have no photographs to show you; the action is far too fast for anything other than a blurred image.

In the end, the president of the Agrupación de Charros Regionales de la Villa drew ticket numbers for the raffle prizes, including a set of spurs. Alas, we didn't win, but maybe that's a good thing since the winner leapt over the wall that separates spectators from arena. As in all things we do here, watching the people is as much fun as experiencing the event. The Mexican joie de vivre adds much to our enjoyment of this place.

Bicicletas y calles

Top: bikers heading toward the Zocalo
Bottom: Scouts at the entrance to Chapultepec Park

Oct. 3

Shopping is an experience here. Wal-Mart, of course, has several stores in the city. The Mercado de San Juan, a very nice market that sells all kinds of meat, fish, and vegetables, is a few blocks away. For artesanía, we go to La Ciudadela or the Fonart stores that sell a variety of hand-crafted items. There are several mom-and-pop variety stores, Seven-Eleven (just called Seven here) and its Mexican version, the OXXO. We also have Waldo's, a store that sells cheap miscellaneous small stuff, similar to Marden's or Bob's, and shops that sell trinkets for just three pesos or just seven pesos. But if you want a bigger item, you have to go to the street that specializes in that product. There are streets with stores that sell mostly shoes, others that sell lighting fixtures, one near us that specializes in bathroom stuff, another that sells things for the kitchen, another for computers. Musical instruments can be found on - fans of Joan Manuel Serrat's version of Antonio Machado's "Guitarra del Mesón" will appreciate the appropriateness of this - calle Mesones.

When we decided to buy bicycles to join the Sunday rides and vary our workout routines, we went to the street that has dozens of bicycle shops, calle San Pablo. But this street has a double specialty. The oldest profession is quite obviously a part of the scene on San Pablo; one or more prostitutes stand in front of each of the little shops! In contrast to the usual hawking that goes on to solicit business, they are silent, merely standing on their clear plastic stiletto heels, provocatively dressed, waiting for customers.

Most of the shops sell the same bikes, for the same price, most manufactured here in Mexico, some advertising "Italian technology", with prices ranging from around $70 to $1000, most in the $100 range. Two Mexican brands are the BR and the Benotto. I bought a BR, and Bill got a Benotto, the Italian tech one, for around $250 total; our friend Cece got one for $70. We were so exhausted by the cacophony of calle San Pablo that we left without buying chains, so they're now stored in Rocinante (the Tahoe). Bill already rode his down the Reforma to Chapultepec on Tuesday, when we were at school, although our students were not (the Oct. 2 demonstrations).

2 octubre no se olvida Oct. 2 is not forgotten

October 2 is a sad, angry, volatile day here. On Oct. 2, 1968 (ten days before the Summer Olympcis in Mexico City) students and union workers had organized a demonstration in Tlaltelolco at the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, demanding reforms including autonomy for the huge university. Exits to the plaza were sealed off and police and military opened fire on the demonstrators, killing many. Reports vary on how many: officially, 30; unofficially, hundreds, maybe a thousand or more. On October 2, most students don't go to classes at all; at 4:00 they organize and walk (sometimes run) from the Casco de Santo Tomás, where the Politécnico is, and from Tlaltelolco through the city into the Zócalo. Police, shoulder-to-shoulder, line the sidewalks, helicopters patrol, granaderos - police in riot gear - are nearby in dark gray buses. By 5:30 the demonstration had reached our area; it probably ended around 6 in the Zocalo. Amid shouts of "Libertad", banners demanding justice, and posters of Che, people with spray paint were busy "decorating" news stands and walls with slogans and symbols, while police looked on without responding.