13.Mexico City

13.

Mexico City

The country people have all come here--Mexico City--of course!

Exactly one year ago I was a tourist here with two weeks of vacation time and a pocketful of money.

I like Mexico City. It’s old—built on Pre-Colombian ruins—and it’s got everything including classy places for the rich and the tourists with a pocketfull of money like I was--but nothing much for the vast majority--the several million poor people from the country.

The big old pyramids rise in a nearby meadow so as soon as I can I go over to stand on top of the Pyramid of the Sun--I've been here before.

Far below me, tourists amble among the ruined stones of the old people’s city. Right beside me on the top a gang of cheerful Mexican teenagers enacts the bloodless “human sacrifice”of one of their giggling members.

I wait for the interesting (and probably imaginary) vibrations I sometimes feel in these old power places. Yup. There they are. Zap, zap!

(Well, maybe so--"pyramid" has something to do with "fire" after all.)


Enough of Mexico City!


In another bus heading south, I discuss life with Senor Santana. He says he is a Mixtec/Yaqui from Tonala, which is translated: “Land of the Sun, Land of Fire”, if I have understood his Spanish. He says there are petroglyphs in the shape of spirals near his house—very old, he says.

We pass through Pueblo Matamoros, “Moslem-Killer Town”—I guess they were still remembering the good old crusade days here in the colonies when the town was founded.

The highway-- so twisty it’s called “Cat’s Quest Road”-- winds through fields of sugarcane. “This is the land of eternal springtime.” Senor Santana says.

There are no other American tourists on my bus, but at a village stop I meet four hungry, dirty and broke ones heading back to the states without a peso. The Mexican baggage-man snorts in anger when they noisily refuse to tip him.

Good luck to them and their Ugly American attitude.

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