Mexico City, Part 1

Mexico City, Part 1

Ted. Judy and I had planned to spend a week in Mexico City two years ago but a large earthquake forced us to kick that can down the road. So, now, we were finally able to visit the largest city in North America. And boy is it big – over 21 million folks live in the metro area. The first thing one sees is the air pollution. It’s the worst I’ve seen. Still, there were a lot of things one can only see here so we decided to suck it up (literally). For me, the pollution and the traffic were about the only negatives. We found the people friendly and the food to be very good. As the old saying goes, it’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live here.

In some ways, it reminded me of Santiago, Chile which also had bad pollution but seemed to be a thriving metropolis. We saw far more construction cranes in both cities than we saw in Buenos Aires, which is a key indicator for me of the prosperity of a city.

We stayed in Roma, an upscale neighborhood made even more famous by the release of the movie of the same name that came out last year. It was everything that we hoped, safe, leafy and walkable, with lots of families, urban hipsters, retirees and digital nomads.  There was an abundance of public transportation but we mostly walked or took Uber. 

An important site for this amateur historian was Templo Mayor, the ruins of the Mexica city of Tenochtitlan, located in the Zocalo, or main square of downtown. One of the many things I learned this week was that the Mexica were one of the groups of peoples known collectively as Aztecs. They were ultimately the biggest group and conquered all of the others but we saw the term Mexica used a lot here and never saw the word Aztec. The city was founded around 1300 AD and this was the capital city that was ruled by Montezuma when the Spaniards arrived in 1521. Modern Mexico City is basically built right on top of the ruins of Tenochtitlan.

One day we took a day trip by bus out in the country to visit the pyramids at Teotihuacan. Archeologists believe that at its peak, roughly 500 AD, this was the largest city in the Western hemisphere with a population of between 125,000 and 250,000. The temples are incredible and the Pyramid of the Sun is allegedly the third largest, (not tallest) in the world. What’s especially interesting is that this vast city had basically disappeared when the Aztecs arrived in the Valley of Mexico around 1200 AD. They had never heard of these people and gave the ruins the name by which it is known today, which means “birthplace of the gods.”

Pyramid of the Sun

A tiny portion of the temple complex

Palace of Quetzlpapalotl

All of this, and more, was explained to us when we visited the National Museum of Archaeology.  This vast collection includes items from all of the cultures that have existed throughout Mexico such as the Maya, Zapotecs and coastal peoples.  I found it fascinating. 

God of Song and Dance

God of the Underworld (not so happy)

Superhero symbol? (Teotihuacan)

New OT for Denver Broncos (Olmec)

Stone of the Sun (Mexica)

Montezuma's headress (Mexica) which looks better on Judy

We had lots of other adventures during our week here. Our visit coincided with a little event called Dias de Los Muertos. But those can all be covered in later posts.