Through the Looking Glass

Two Things

I was reminded of two things over the last two weeks, as Patricio and I road-tripped through three American states and six Mexican ones. We went to buy a car for me: a very gently used Toyota Matrix at an even more generous father-to-daughter discount. After a year and a half of internal struggle where environmental ethics battled with a need for personal freedom and safer mobility, Patricio and I took a flight up north to drive back with a car that would call the Mexican roads its new playground.

I remembered all the times driving south on Interstate 25, after shopping trips to Colorado with mom and dad when we'd pass caravans of used cars--some hitched one behind the other--destined for El Paso and the country across the border. Legalizing American cars in Mexico, until recently, was much more inexpensive than buying the same thing within Mexico itself. I wondered at the hoops these traveling car dealers must have had to jump through to make the process work. And wondered even more if it was really worth it.

Now I understand that it was, and often still is. There is a widespread fascination in Mexico with owning American cars, not only for the caché that might come with it, but a more pressing delight in getting a set of wheels for a price more commensurate with the low salaries most people have to settle for. Exactly why we drove south ourselves.

And as we drove, passing through the long, dry, menacingly beautiful state of San Luís Potosí, I remembered the trips my family would take to Kansas, visiting my grandparents on their farm. With wheat fields flanking the road on either side, both growing toward harvest or fallow with wild grass, the stalks and leaves always seemed to bow and wave toward the car. I let myself anthropomorphise, imagining that the wheat was welcoming us there, to a place that wasn't home, but still a place where we belonged.

as humanish beings, like desert Ents who, if one was patient enough to watch, might begin to move around wherever they pleased. As if frozen in some sort of exultant dance, their outstretched arms seemed to welcome us back. The Joshua tree had become the new wheat. Though highway-side plants contain levels of lead that only the constant traffic could contribute, I still stifled the chiding voice of "yet another car destined for a city with far too many." I reminded myself that freedom can be a welcome thing, too.

In San Luís, it was hard not to see the Joshua Trees near the highway

Attuned to Tlatelolco

I mean, really. If walls could talk. And if I had the chance to listen to those surrounding just one place here in Mexico, I now know where it would be. I see it as Patricio and I drive home from the historic Centro, I see it misspelled occasionally on posters, I see its photographs on the covers of historical books--I see it in one of the very dearest movies in recent years. And I saw it up close recently, something I think few people in Mexico City do, whether they're here for a weekend or here the better portion of their lives.

The place is Tlatelolco, easily missed if traffic is flowing nicely up Eje Central, and easily one of the places that impressed the Spanish conquistadores the most. Once a sister city to the Mexica (Aztec) capital of Tenochtitlan, it later fell under the Tenoch rule--becoming the city's crown jewel of commerce and, ultimately, the place of its empire's defeat. It is now also known as the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, or Square of the Three Cultures, for the juxtaposition of walls in what remains of that ancient, island city. The archaeological site of Tlatelolco's ceremonial center sits in front of the church of Santiago Tlatelolco, built of stones taken from the pyramids themselves. Rising above and surrounding the two is an expanse of a 1960's housing complex, also flanked on one side by what used to be the foreign ministry building.

In such a relatively small space, the press of historic juggernaut reveals a chronology's glimpse--three culture's represented by their walls: those of the pre-Columbian, the Viceregal, and the modern independent Mexico that still often holds on to vestiges of the former two. This is where Cuauhtémoc, the last of the Aztec tlatoani, or rulers, was taken captive. It happened after tens of thousands of unsurrendering Aztecs died, here in the last holdout against Cortés and his troops. This is also where a number (likely far greater than the government has chosen to maintain) of political protesters were killed in 1968, shot by military and police forces ten days before the Olympic games began. And then in 1985, many of the housing buildings were severely damaged or destroyed, when that morning earthquake rocked the city and left Tlatelolco's walls to witness huge loss one more time.

And so much of what was documented--or could have been--no longer exists. A few buildings are left. The details are gone. And walking through the plaza on a sunny Friday, with traffic running north and school groups milling in the church, makes it difficult to imagine a market close by that rivaled anything in Europe at the time of the Spanish arrival. Or the fear of being under attack, or under the rubble of what once was a ceiling. The church--one of the oldest in the country--remains bare of its altar since the years of often bloody struggle between religion and the state. Its starkly beautiful chancel of high-reaching volcanic stones speaks not only of the most religious of mysteries, but historical mysteries as well; tragedy has been an irreversible part of Tlatelolco's past, but so have an infinity of the smaller miracles of every day life. Juan Diego's baptismal font rests in a corner of the church as well, a symbol of the area's continual rebirth, the continual resurrection of both archaeological treasures and the residents' quotidian dreams. 

Tlatelolco is, I'd argue, one of Mexico City's most interesting treasures. Come see for yourself, with ears--or at least the eyes--attuned to the walls.

Free Range

It wasn't often that I gave much thought to chickens when living in the U.S. I'm sure fond of eggs cooked enough to make the yolks run messy over a slice of toast. And it doesn't take much for the thought of chicken enchiladas in salsa verde to make my mouth water. That said, it's clear that unless I was thinking of chicken as a metaphor for fits of fearfulness, I usually thought of chicken in terms of something to stick in my mouth. Chicken, the bird, was a feathery shadow of abstraction. A time or two, the words "free-range" would come up, conjuring visions of bobbing heads and leathery-claw feet in the tall grass of, say, Nebraska. But free-range talk always happened with a fork near my left hand, transferring the "c" word quickly back from the bird category to the food one.

But the world has turned, and has left me where a rooster lives on the other side of the Shrek-colored stream bank. More often seen than heard, he hurls out his curdled call with a force an opera singer would likely envy. He particularly enjoys crowing out his pre-dawn sets, but an afternoon can just as easily find him bestowing a vocal moment upon the neighbors. And the house catty-corner behind us has their own hen. Less predictable than the rooster usually is, she clucks loud and clear when she's laid another egg. 

Their sound is a daily, if almost constant presence. I can't help but envision them--solid, feathered struttingness and all, because I always see the likes of them with every drive through town, up into the northern reaches of the municipality, like Cahuacán. Pecking about in their animal-cropped yards, and sometimes venturing toward the edges of the packed-dirt roads, they might not be in Nebraska, but they're as free-range as they come.

Chicken means "bird" to me now, as much as it does "main dish," their presence as unsurprising as a tractor driving down a small town's main street. Still, in the enjoyment of chicken or egg, it's the latter that certainly comes first. María, lovely neighbor that she is, sent a dozen huevos de rancho (ranch eggs) our way last week, and their runny yolks have been the crown jewels of my toast. I'd be lying if I said I could taste a real difference; had I not cracked them myself, I'd believe they came in a store-bought carton.

But it's their uneven sizes and their rosy earth colored shells that make me think of them as more than just food. I remember the early morning rooster, and the happy, maternal afternoon hen. And chicken becomes something more. Something real. Something to really think about.