David and Patti had flown in a day earlier and had already had a day full of Rivera murals; they were waiting for us in the breakfast room when we all came down. The conversation was full and furious–no one is at a loss for something to say!
Patti and David had eaten at the restaurant the night before and had a wonderful meal; and the breakfast lived up to their review. Fresh pressed orange juice, tropical fruit, and a wide choice of Mexican breakfast entrees; I had wonderful enchiladas verdes while several of the crew had huevos rancheros.
The hotel sits on a lovely small square, the Rinconada de Jesus, with a colonial era church facing the hotel.
The square is less than five minutes south of the Zocalo, the city’s most important public space. Here’s the group setting out on the day’s adventure
What a relief from the gloom of the New Jersey winter: a cloudless blue sky with temperatures in the mid-seventies. The Zocalo is b0unded by the National Palace (the seat of the Executive branch of the Mexican government and, since 2018, the residence of the Mexican president) on the east, the Metropolitan Cathedral on the north, and arcades that originally housed fancy stores on the west.
The cathedral is an enormous baroque heap, built to assert the power of the Spanish throne and the church in Mexico.
Even though every attempt was made to attain the gaudy standards of European baroque ornamentation, the nave is so enormous that it gives a sense of sparseness.
The main altar, though, corrects for any false impression of simplicity and humility.
The exit from the Cathedral leads directly to a long plaza that ends at the ruins of the Templo Mayor, the main temple in the sacred precinct of the great Mexica city Tenochtitlan. A word of explanation is perhaps in order here. The vocabulary regarding the Aztecs has changed over the years; while the Aztec empire included not just Tenochtitlan but the independent city-states Tlacopan and Tetzcoco, all within the valley of Mexico, the residents of Tenochtitlan called themselves Mexica. In the last few years, the government has increasingly called everything formerly known as Aztec “Mexica.” This only serves to further the way that Mexican racial ideology turns things on its head. While Mexicans with white skin and European features continue to control the economy and large swathes of the government, the discourse of the elites continues to pretend that the country is focused on its indigenous population. Just as the Aztecs claimed that they were the heirs of the Toltec empire, so the Mexicans suggest that they are the heirs of the Mexica.
Immediately after the Conquest of Mexico in 1521, Tenochtitlan’s great temple and indeed the entire city was destroyed, its building materials reused in the building of the colonial capital. Over the centuries, the temple was essentially forgotten. Especially in comparison to the exploration of the other Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Maya or the Zapotecs, the ruins of the Temple Mayor were excavated very late: some work had been done in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the site was more fully excavated only beginning in 1978. What remains is a small fraction of the temple’s great pyramid.
We then walked along the lovely Calle de la Republics de Guatemala, with its long rows of restored colonial buildings.
We made our way to Calle Francisco Madero, the pedestrian zone that links the Zocalo with Alameda Central, the city’s “Central Park.” Although the 1985 earthquake brought down many of the oldest houses here, it still preserves a number of magnificent colonial mansions. It ends at the beautiful Casa de los Azulehos or “House of Tiles,” a mansion dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The Talavera tiles from Puebla that cover the edifice makes it one of loveliest in the city.
Across from the Azulehos is the Torre Latino, for many years the only skyscraper in the center. Alongside the tower is a cultural space given over to changing exhibitions. It turned out that the current exhibit offers kinetic sculpture by the contemporary artist Marysole Wörner Baz. None of us had heard of her, though her last name was very familiar to the Bradleys and Jennings. She is the sister of the prominent architect Juan Wörner Baz who came to Tucson Arizona in the early 1960’s to build a gloriously beautiful home for John and Helen Murphey on the highest hill in the Catalina Foothills. Murphey had developed the foothills, making it the most exclusive community in Arizona. My mother was office manager for Murphey and I met Wörner Baz several times when I was 11 or 12. It was only much later that I learned that Wörner Bay had taken on a number of other projects in Tucson..including a group of condominiums at the corner of Campbell Avenue and Skyline Drive. Patti and David now live in one of those homes, as do David’s brother Kim and his wife Mary Lou and our good friends Thom and Michelle Larsen!
Just around the corner rises the Palacio de Belles Arts, the main cultural center of Mexico City.
The building was planned to commemorate the centennial of Mexican independence from Spain in 1910; Porfirio Diaz, who was elected Mexican president seven times and was the de facto dictator from 1876 until 1911, laid the cornerstone in 1904. The initial plan called for a combination of neoclassical and art nouveau elements. The Mexican Revolution intervened before the structure could be completed; it was redesigned in art deco style and opened in 1934.
Our interest in the Palacio, however, lay inside: it houses a remarkable series of large murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Rufino Tamayo. The Tamayo murals on the second floor are the first ones seen by visitors.
The Palacio also includes a large exhibition on Mexican modernism, which looked fascinating as I ran by in search of more murals!
On emerging on the upper floor of the palace, the visitor is confronted with Rivera’s “Man, Controller of the Universe.” This is its central panel.
And here is the mural in its entirety.
The mural was originally commissioned by the Rockefellers and given prominent space in 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the main building of the original Rockefeller Center. Conceived as an allegory of technology as it mediates between capitalism on the left and socialism on the right, the mural was attacked even before it was finished as “anti-capitalist propaganda.” Rivera reacted by inserting a portrait of Vladimir Lenin just to the right of the central figure. When Nelson Rockefeller demanded that this be painted over, Rivera refused and the Rockefellers ordered the mural destroyed. Sensing the coming storm, Rivera had had the entire mural photographed; he was able to recreate it, in significantly altered form, in the Palacio.
This isn’t Rivera’s only contribution here: the somewhat cheerier “Carnival of Mexican Life” occupies a less prominent position.
The murals by Siqueiros and Orozco are just as remarkable if very different…and much more violent.
Directly across from Rivera’s “Man at the Crossroads” is Orozco’s “Katharsis.”
The longest wall is dominated by Siqueiros’ meditations on Democracy. Here is the central panel.
We would have spent much more time here, but we needed to call an Uber to take us to lunch at the remarkable Restaurante Nicos. Nicos sits in a working class neighborhood northwest of the center; its founder was also the founder of the Mexican Slow Food movement. Nicos is dedicated to preserving unusual regional recipes and is as close to a “farm to table” operation as one is likely to see here. Too far out of the way to see many tourists, the clientele is largely Mexican families. We started with their traditional Guacamole, made table side on a cart. We then split six different dishes from the comal: the highlights were the sopa seca de nata, a layered crepe dish; the pork belly taco; and a kind of empanada. Then the main dishes arrived.
Connie and Patti had chicken in a deep, spectacular mole; David had an unusual roast chicken (hidden beheath the pottery chicken above); Vladimir had beef ribs; Sue had a wonderful octopus dish; and I had an incredible rabbit stew with potatoes. Here are the mole and the rabbit.
We were stuffed to the gills, but it had been a memorable meal. We took an Uber back to the Alameda Central in order to walk off a bit of our lunch, and then turned south toward the Museo des Artes Populares (folk art).
There is a good bit of performance art around the Alameda.
Of, um, rather mixed quality.
Our friend Sandra Brown had strongly recommended the folk art museum, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of this or any trip.
The museum is built around a soaring atrium; near the ground, the space if filled with brightly colored fantasy animals made of papier-mâché. Papier-mâché constructions–cartoneria in Spanish–became popular in Central Mexico already during the colonial period, used in religious ceremonies and popular festivals, and for domestic decoration. After the Second World War, the artist Pedro Linares began creating fantastic animals (creatures with features of two or more animals) out of papier-mâché. He called them “alebrijes”–supposedly a word that came to him in a dream.
Higher up, kites float freely. This is the Merry Pranksters in an elevator, flying with the kites.
The museum’s collection is housed in galleries around the atrium. I can’t recount here the room after room of absolutely remarkable objects. Vladimir walked through each gallery rather quickly, seeking an overall impression. And he had it right: we don’t know anywhere else where one can find such an explosion of the imagination. Often in subversive, disturbing forms.
Patti and David have a wonderful collection of Mexican folk art, and they found a number of the artists whose work they hold represented here; to my delight, I found both of the artists who created my raccoon and snake that some of you know well prominently represented in the museum. There were a half dozen animals carved by Jacopo and Maria Angeles (raccoon).
And a marvelous dog by Manuel Jimenez (snake).
There is an important continuity here. Manuel Jimenez, a woodcarver from the village of Arrazola near Oaxaca, met Pedro Linares in the 1980’s in the context of a Mexican folk art tour of the United States organized by the British filmmaker Judith Bronowski. Jimenez saw the possibilities of alebrijes when they are carved in copal, a tree indigenous to the Oaxacan valleys. His was the first workshop to produce wooden alebrijes…though the practice is now prevalent not just in Arrazola, but in San Martin Tilcajete as well.
It was Saturday night in the (Very) Big City, and the streets in the Centro Historico were teeming with life. We dove into the rapidly changing scene on our way back to the hotel, reveling in the sense of joy and anticipation all around us.
After an early evening siesta, we rendezvoused at the hotel’s rooftop restaurant. The space is vibrant, with an entire wall open to the outside, and warmed by a lady at a large comal.
This fabulous hotel is typified by its “welcome drink:” mezcal infused with a kind of hibiscus tea and warmed with burning herbs–they call it the “Hernan Cortez” for reasons best known to them!.
None of us could eat more than a few mouthfuls after our gargantuan lunch: Vladimir had some wonderful raw tuna with green salsa; Patti had a salad, David a bowl of ceviche, and Connie, Sue, and I a quesadilla with cheese and squash blossoms. But we spent two and a half hours over drinks and lively talk, a fitting conclusion to a great day.