History,  Independent travel,  Mexico,  North America,  Photography,  Travel Blog

Mexico City: CDMX #1 

July 28, 2022 /

It’s fascinating how the sounds of a city can be a part of defining its character, it can be a charm or a challenge, a boon or a burden. Earlier this year we were in Cairo, where the constant ear battering of traffic noise and raised voices soon becomes tiresome. Mexico City, in contrast, though just as loud and just as constant, has a soundtrack which is for the most part one of carnival and music.

Streets of Mexico
Streets of Mexico

Chatter and laughter fills the streets, music drifts upward from every corner. It’s the sound of fiesta rather than frustration, joy rather than jams, an immediately exciting and enticing environment where the wall of sound is matched in intensity only by the riot of colour. Underpinning it all is the continuous rhythmic drumbeat of the tribal dance troupes down on the streets, whirling barefoot amongst the appreciative onlookers.

Tribal dancers
Tribal dancers

So here we are in one of the largest cities in the world, the largest in North America, the second largest in the western world (all on certain parameters), and the oldest capital city in the Americas, looking out from our room directly above the zocalo with magnificent views of the cathedral and the presidential palace. 

Cathedral, Mexico City
Mexico City Cathedral at night

It doesn’t take us long to get a feeling for the size of CDMX, as they like to call it. Magnificent palaces, the largest cathedral in the Americas, huge squares, vibrant streets, but even the ordinary streets are grand – as unceasingly grand as, say, London or Paris, every turn bringing something else to marvel at. Walking the streets of Mexico City is simply a succession of wow moments.

Zocalo and Presidential Palace
City Hall, Mexico City

As if that’s not enough, we’re 7,350ft (1.39 miles) above sea level, the air is thin up here and the temperature is a few ratchets down the scale, particularly after sundown. Mountains and volcanoes loom around the city on every side, blurred by the renowned haze of pollution which dogs the whole area. Summer brings rain here too – though it comes in relatively short heavy showers rather than anything constant. We view our first such torrential downpour from our balcony, amused by the scattering of the crowds and the power of the rain. It’s not long before we get our first taste of it and we’re running for cover too, you don’t hang around when the first spots fall here, you get moving.

Cathedral
Grand buildings of Mexico City

Standing in the zocalo, one of the largest squares in the world, flanked on every side by majestic buildings, is fabulous: the gigantic cathedral ahead, the Palacio Nacional, home of Il Presidente, to our right, the majestic city hall behind us. Inside the cavernous cathedral, with its gleaming solid gold altar, a Sunday service is in progress, the beautiful choral songs bringing goosebumps to our flesh as we file quietly through behind the congregation.

Inside the Cathedral

Outside the cathedral the tribal dancing continues, the throbbing drumbeats echoing off the palace and cathedral walls. Yet beneath our feet is another story, a centuries old story which took a major twist as recently as 1978, a tale of history, legends and wanton destruction.

When the Spanish first arrived on these shores and set about creating the “nueva España”, they did so with a taste for obliteration. Hernan Cortes, working his way across country from Veracruz, razed any Aztec settlement which stood between him and the new vision, successfully destroying city after city in order to impose Spanish rule. The sacred Aztec city of Tenochtitlan disappeared beneath what is now the centre of Mexico City.

Templo Mayor

If anything, Tenochtitlan was more than sacred – to the Aztec race in that pre-hispanic period, this was, literally, the centre of the universe, home of temples to the Gods. It was on this very spot where, according to legend, a wandering Aztec tribe witnessed an eagle perched on a cactus, a snake in its beak, the very sign they had been seeking as their instruction to build a major city. That cactus-eagle-snake emblem is still the symbol of Mexico today – take a look at the national flag.

Templo Mayor
Templo Mayor
Templo Mayor

But Cortes rampaged through it all, destroyed the history, and buried everything beneath “nueva España”. In 1978, Government electricity workers laying new cables beneath the zocalo came across a statue of an Aztec goddess, beginning the process of uncovering part of the ancient city which sits beneath all the modern day activity. Some colonial buildings were then dismantled, and what is now Templo Mayor was unearthed: a large and enthralling section of the remnants of Tenochtitlan, alongside a fascinating museum housing a great number of artefacts recovered during the excavation.

The rest of Tenochtitlan still lurks somewhere beneath the zocalo, and beneath the cathedral and beneath the presidential palace, and will in all probability remain down there.

Inside the Museum
Inside the Museum

All around the city, the majestic buildings of CDMX confuse the eye with crazy angular distortions. Churches, palaces, towers, all lean at a death defying angle – that tower in Pisa has got nothing on these guys. The city, truly, is sinking. Built on unstable ground in the first place and suffering the effects of the water demands of a population of over 20 million for decades, subsidence is a major issue. The locals, though, seem amused by it all and will merrily point out the precariously positioned structure teetering above your head. Even the lopsided cathedral hasn’t been spared.

Away from the centro historico, the Basilica Guadaloupe is a further extreme example, with its leaning towers, sloping floors and chandeliers whose support cables hang on a straight vertical which only serves to enhance that nothing else is upright. Next door to this majestic Basilica is the new version, a source of great pride for locals but for us it feels a bit like a consecrated conference hall, heathens that we obviously are.

Study the sinking effect in these two photos…

The old and new Basilica

This city of “biggest-highest-most” (for instance, the university is the biggest in Latin America with 330,000 students), is also home to one of the world’s biggest and most iconic football stadiums, the Estadio Azteca or Aztec Stadium, site of both the 1970 and 1986 World Cup finals. I try not to be too upset on our tour of the stadium when we are greeted with a giant graphic of Maradona’s goal against England in the ‘86 tournament (no, not the “Hand of God”, the other one). Yep, that happened here – and so did our first sight of the Mexican wave, remember seeing that for the first time?

There are so many wonderful sights here that it’s impossible to do anything like justice to it all in just five days. As well as the magnificent buildings, green parks with striking statuary decorate the city, every spare corner houses music of some kind – walk along Madero and there’s something going on every hundred yards or so. It might be a rock band, a soloist, a folk singer, mountain music or even opera – but, whatever, we are continually entertained and amused.

Madero is a pedestrianised thoroughfare, so busy during the day that it looks a bit like London’s Oxford Street from above – which makes it even funnier to see the crowds running for cover when the first spots of the next downpour start to fall.

It’s impossible to avoid being swept up by this city of verve and colour – the days race by as we try to take in as much as possible. Being in Mexico City is a bit like being on a carousel which never stops.

Too much in fact to embed in just one post, more to follow in our next one.

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