contains Festival/Fiesta/Art photography.
www.thisfabtrek.com > journey > north-america > mexico > 20111030-teotihuacan
And after all, ...
September was nice in Vienna, "alt-Weiber Sommer" (lit. old-women's summer) dragged on for ever, well into October, blue clear skies and dry 25°C. But then the change always comes abrupt ringing in many months of creepy grey, cold and sad. 3 weeks I spent in Vienna, one of jet-lag, one of sickness, one of trying to make up for lost time...
The lights shine through the rains when we roll out onto the runway in Vienna, I kissed Daniel and David goodbye the night before, they know I won't be here when they wake, they trust we'll see each other again next year, for another journey in the lands where the rains are warm...
Madrid and I have been through this airport with the boys many times, its checks and trains and terminals. I know its architecture as the boys climbed its steel poles, know its fire extinguishers because the boys set one off, remember visits to toilets and snack outlets, spot the toy car that moves when you insert a coin on the way to the gates; which I never did. I sit down now on the floor to charge my computer; these idiot airports that cannot provide for recharging, people almost step on me, I munch an overpriced sandwich, down a Cruzcampo...
I wake during take-off, doze off again. Food comes, I take red wine, the guy in front checks time on his iPhone, still 11 hours to go. I remember my flights with the boys, their curiosity and food intake, I put butter on my bun and remember I did the same for the boys...
This time I fly to the Americas to stay, I ponder, this time will be important, somehow I need to find something that can support us...
The overhead Tube-TVs rattle and shake, interlace, colors that are too bright anyway change to b/w, we go through some turbulences; Iberia has the oldest planes I have been with in many years, it is like in the old days. Flights to South America are still expensive, the boys would come by themselves next year, Iberia and British take them from 5 onwards. They'll fly alone, they said yes; they'll never be alone as they have each other...
Way later arrival in Mexico City and memories of queuing at immigration with my boys recur; such a long queue 3 months ago and my youngsters were so tired. C. picks me up, we get a taxi; the boys and I got a taxi into the unknown 3 months ago, then fetched the van which the boys loved at first sight and drove off into that first night of heavy rains and traffic jam; that mysterious first night with Daniel and David in Mexico where I woke at night to look whether they were still here...
Mexico
In D.F. (pronounced 'de effe', the short for Distrito Federal, Mexico City) we have a room, centrally in the Colonia Roma and we try to connect to the old road, from where we hung out before we travelled Mexico with my children, many walks when weather is all blue skies, we explore a very pleasant city...
After a week we see the National Anthropology Museum, Maya, Olmec, Aztec artifacts on exhibition, very interested especially after the grand tour we have just undertaken. Just I wonder about the curators' ignorance; the English demonym Maya is always wrongly spelt Mayan.
Frida and Diego, Montezuma and Márquez.
On another day we go back to the Chapultepec park to the Museum of Modern Art, for my first ever encounter of Mexican impressionists, cubists, surrealists, modern and and post modern artists. Above all of them Frida Kahlo (wiki) stands out, anything I have seen by her husband Diego Rivera cannot compare. The Austrian can't help but being reminded of Egon Schiele when looking at Frida Kahlo's sliced up bodies and mutilations, her stoic facial expressions in self-portraits; the similar suffering? Frida Kahlo was her life long in physical pain, went through some ill fated operations, near her young life's end she conducted many of her works while lying in bed.
We go twice south to Coyoacán (wiki), since long an integral part of Ciudad Mexico, but at Revolution times when Emilliano Zapata rode through here 1914 on his way to meet Pancho Villa in the National Palace, it was still a village, its fame steers from being the place where Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived. In Coyoacán, apart from tourists, a very different crowd hangs out, actors, writers, TV people, musicians, intellectuals. The bars at night are full, we meet friends of a friend, Julian, a young writer, and his father Fernando, a famous and known theater and TV-soap actor. Fernando, being pretty well travelled surprises us again and again, Montezuma's feathered headdress, the original, he says is in Vienna, "Give it back!", the Mexican Anthropology museum only has a copy. He's also been to Peru and Columbia, soon we talk Gabriel García Márquez, Julian has met the famous Nobel Price winner a few times here in Mexico, explains how a formerly poor man came to fame almost over night, but this late night we cannot agree whether he wrote his magic 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' in Mexico (as I argue) or in Paris (as Julian thinks). Father and son, the most civilized and charming drinkers, leave me with the most terrible hang-over, Noche Buena was the most fantastic, but strong Mexican (Christmas) brew.
One other day I go and visit Casa Azul, or the Coyoacán Frida Kahlo museum, former home of husband and wife Diego Rivera and Frida Khalo lived, also Leon Trotsky for a while.
"Frida is the only example in the history of art of someone who slashed her breasts and her heart to tell the biological truth of what she feels in them," Diego Rivera about Frida Kahlo and Frida Kahlo about herself: "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."
It is in the Palacio National where I find the Diego Rivera murals, that recount Mexico's history and struggle of its indigenas, land-less and working class. The National Palace presides over the Zocalo in Mexico City, had originally just one floor, later a second one was added, it served as a building for president, government and parliament until is was converted into a museum. I am impressed by the facade outside and the all symmetric main patio inside. The famous murals decorate the ceilings above the great staircase to the first floor galería which itself hosts a few more grand Rivera wall paintings.
Once entering the old assembly hall there is a lot more security around, photos are strictly forbidden, I am content to see revolutionary hero Zapata's statue next to the entry, Hidalgo's, Guerre's and Juárez's paintings on the other side. The assembly's ceiling is high, the central part shows an eye inside a triangle, the Free Mason's symbol of power. Further around the first floor arcades, inside the presidential offices I find another huge Zapata painting with sombrero and ammunition belt and all, more than life-size in the gallery of paintings of all Mexican presidents from Juárez and Diaz, to Fox and Calderón, just Emilliano Zapata was never a president, but a legendary fighter for his worthy just cause, land reform; he was hideously murdered by the state.
Too bad sección parlamentario is closed as it houses the Mexican history exhibition with a good revolution coverage.
Mexico still.
Teotihuacan.
It has begun, this is the 29th of October sun sets and rises again, also balloons rise over the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon in Teotihuacan, Christina and I have embarked on the great Central America journey; the next 6 months will be out-of-the-way interesting and enthusing. Guatemala, El-Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama; a life-long dream becomes reality. I miss traveling with the boys, but then this trip can be more a study trip, study of history, atrocities, wars and civil wars, indigenous peoples and ancient cultures. This trip will also lead us through natural wonders of grand variety; jungles, volcanos, blue lakes and wild oceans with adjacent white beaches. We certainly will drink all the local beers between the Caribbean and the Pacific and with luck we may participate at some of the upcoming fiestas, Christmas and New Year is near. 6 months will be short as it is in 6 months that I'd like to have my boys come back and travel with me again, wherever this may be.
Teotihuacan (wiki) is not far, a bit north-east, its two famous pyramids, Moon and Sun, are among the biggest in Meso America, the site is of vast expanse and the Avenue of the Dead gives it a monumental layout. The city was built some 2000 years ago and it may have had as many as 200,000 inhabitants, Teotihuacano influence stretched way south into Zapotec and Mixtec areas and east into Maya regions, but what ethnic group resided here, Toltecs?? We don't know for sure. Teotihuacan might have been the first multi-ethnic city in the world. The Aztecs, that Hernán Cortez came to fight in 1520, settled in the region way later.
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