Regarding D.F.

This written about México by a stranger. 
Comments and corrections very welcome!

In times past Mexico was outside my work vision in Asia, Europe and the USA.

I failed to understand the astonishing complexity of this country.

Like many in developed countries, Mexico was a beach destination (to which I did not go).

Mexico City, Cuidad de México D.F. was not among my notional destinations. I was no Spanish speaker and the air here in D.F. was known to be filthy. But now this city is a prize winner for improving air quality.

I had unenthusiastically eaten what is called Mexican food elsewhere but which is maybe best thought of as TexMex takeout. Not knowing that the vast plateaux of tropical volcanic soil country provides eternal spring for every conceivable food plant and that, largely bereft of bigger animals to eat historically, pre-Columbian Mexicans built into their souls an astonishingly inventive approach to food. Not just masterchefly wanksomeness but with comprehension and pursuit of nutritional value, as with lime treatment of corn.

The problems of air pollution, as also the questions of personal safety, which discourage people, arise from the great size of the city. But to be in the centre of the city is safe and a delight.

Within D.F. there are eight million people; extending into the Estado de México... well, there are numbers varied, from 20 to 30+ million.

The Greater Mexico City has a gross domestic product (GDP) of US$411 billion in 2011, making Mexico City urban agglomeration one of the richest metropolitan areas in the world.^[17] The city was responsible for generating 15.8% of Mexico's Gross Domestic Product and the metropolitan area accounted for about 22% of total national GDP.^[18] As a stand-alone country, in 2013, Mexico City would be the fifth-largest economy inLatin America—five times as large as Costa Rica's and about the same size as Peru's.^[19] 

 ^[wikipedia]

The most dramatic rise in population was from the 1940s to the 1980s with migration from the poorer countryside to the city. By the 1980s and with the 1985 earthquake, the migration target shifted from D.F. to the U.S. [EE UU - Estados Unidos] and the population of the city is relatively stable.

There are a lot of people here and much of the city is desperately poor, so some security issues arise from that... meaning you need to acquire some understanding, not go to wrong places, not act onstentatiously, not act stupidly. This is not the only place in the world where you either shut your head and heart or, with a sense of decency you remain aware of walking among the poor, aware of how lucky you are to be able to buy that modestly priced food item from a person in a small tienda who may envy your wealth and may be hungry.

After many decades in government, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, as is inevitable in any situation of being in power too long, was corrupted. For two six year terms from 2000 Mexico elected presidents from the Partido Accion Nacional, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon. The latter, close to George W Bush, shifted long standing government accommodation with the drug cartels and launched an all out offensive in which many have died and which has made large areas of the country unsafe. The situation is not stabilised with the election of a PRI president Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012. Some issues are local, some national, much also arises because this is corridor for narcotics from countries to the south to the insatiable appetites and failed drug policies of EE UU.

Mind you, if we say that perhaps 80,000 people have been killed in this turmoil, compare with the Iraq Body Count which I embedded at http://aplaceof.info/peace/http://aplaceof.info/peace/ in 2003.

Where cartels or local gangsters have not controlled local government and police directly, threats to life compel in many places. Federal intervention includes removal of local authorities... not easy in a country of more than 120 million with considerable ethnic, cultural, linguistic and economic diversity.

In Australia the federal government angers people with its educational reforms, with far less problems underlying.

Use the links in the right column to get some insight into these problems.



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We went out for several hours just now and did not walk far. A full and wonderful program... for the next blog entry.

A wonderful positive time. Including talking with a group of tertiary English students and later a father and daughter accompanied in school uniform by friends, with questions in English to be answered in English, the father recording a movie on phone.

Martes 26: D.F. lunchtime

I previously recorded a little of 9am. By lunchtime the air risen from around 15c overnight to 25  and as we walked through an hour or so, humidity beginning to rise towards showers or evening storm.

We headed south with two objectives: to get Helen some cold medicine from the Farmacia 'Paris' in Avenida Republica de el Salvador and shop at the Mercado San Juan famous as source of food from the world as well as locally for meals at home (dealing with a very unusual diet issue, not afraid of food out).

In a district with many offices, on the way to el Salvador 95, some smart looking persons going out for lunch.

and the modern global phenomenon of smokers perching on the ledge

Before we got to Farmacia Paris, we bought herbal on the street. Easy to buy for two: for Helen something for a cold caught in San Francisco, for me, a blend seeming to cover all other disorders of mind and body. These big bags (use just two teaspoons or so for a mug of tea) cost $MEX30 each. Mexico uses the $ sign for the peso, as I write $MEX = $AU2.50.

The Farmacia Paris is elegant.

We found ourselves first in the homeopathy department.

... the smaller conventional department just along the street labelled alopatia.

We then headed west for the market along Salvador, which became louder and busier. There is specialisation in products in different street districts in the Centro Historico. Had we gone west a longer distance we would have entered an area of Jewish and Lebanese immigration where the family of world's richest man Carlos Slim began to amass its fortune. Coming west it was, with constant amazing interleaving of history, wisdom, museums, etc, electronics all the way.

At the Eje Central, what does seem the normal array of police on the side roads from this 'Central Axis'. I suspect it's boring and thankless work for people who live in other parts of the city. I asked the sergeant of this squad which way to the market, he shrugged and said he had no idea.

Two blocks west, there are three things: the San Juan Artisans' Market, the San Juan park and the Mercado Carnes Exoticas.

We bought beef, chicken, vegetables.

The beef we bought from the gentlemen of La Olivia

From the market we plunged north into Victoria and a world of laiting

if you did not recognise the word laiting you surely now have illuminacion!

turning back east and north again along the Eje Central it gets even busier

... and we arrive back where we first walked from the Metrobus, this the crossing of the Eje Central at Francesco Madero. A policeman with a yellow jacket is a busy man.

Here in the middle of the day as not before dawn, we look up to the Torre Latinamericano and the increasing humidity of the afternoon.

Variously people wait to cross the Eje... if you can draw your eyes away you will see a corner of the Palacio di Bellas Artes just to the north...

lights change and with the added force of manner and whistle of the policeman in yellow

cars stop and we plunge across

and past the line of policia auxiliar whose task looks really miserable in the daylight.
Tis but the church spire of St Francis he has on top of his head.

...and we approach the fabled Casa de los Azulejos. The fable goes that a Spanish nobleman said to his useless playboy son a commonplace utterance of derision: "You couldn't build a house of tiles."
And so in the way of sons irritated and doubtless meeting also a clear need for a deep pocket, he built a House of Tiles. We did not go in for lunch, we had shopping from the market to get home, another block or two.

and almost home, we are back in a world of executive life, tourists, including those in the Australian uniform of work safety jacket stamped with the name of a pilgrimage company, the leader with a religious flag

past bronze musicians

and if you look just there above to the right and in the corners of pictures to come, you will see that had my old shoe laces lasted in the Estados Unidos [EE UU] where the shoelace was elusive, I would have been bedazzled by choice here.

to arrive in beauty

The flight we took to Mexico City was ideal. A 737-800 with lots of spare seats, departing on time at 11.15pm, clocks forward two hours, quick snooze, arrive half an hour before 5.25 ETA, bags by 5.30, on Metrobus Linea 4 Norte zooming down fairly empty streets in its exclusive lanes with only four passengers by 5.50, by 6.30 walking the pre-dawn through the park past the magical Palacio de Bellas Artes and into the no-cars Avenida Francisco Madero named after the first President.

After two short blocks, turn into Calle Bolivar, named (I think) for the most renowned independentista of the western hemisphere, Simon Bolivar, open the big front door opposite Dolce e Gabbana into this our courtyard.

and arriving at our front door in the Casa Borda this is the view back

and inside our airbnb studio apartment, our host's style makes for great comfort... and it's actually more intimate and warm that the cool elegance displayed at airbnb.

I went out for breakfast things to where the world was scrubbing up

past the no-such-intense-sanitisation outside the junk food on the corner

and around into Madero, with all its history now overseen by the Torre Latinoamericano

It's a gentle place to sweep into, although abundant police presence.

I had a muy rapido conversation with the smiling man in the Aero shirt as he flew by.

Welcome to Mexico! 

Gracias señor!

Google has responded, providing responses in Spanish now, to all this magical sliding into a nuevo mundo... which is how it feels. There is a rhythm that just is, even if it's not always the same rhythm, it rhythms. I have to go back at 6.30 another morning to capture not only the haunting Bellas Artes in its pre-dawn silence but also the row of slightly nervous (or jumpy-tired from night shift?) young police with shields protecting the end of Madero.

I asked the jefe:

Esto es normal, o es un problema, senor?
Es normal senor

Whether that's good Spanish I'm not sure, but it's what was said. You have to dive in. And I have to find out how to do the Spanish style of placing a question mark at both ends of the question, the first one inverted. And how to put the wavy over the n in senor. This is going to be packed with questions, senors, senoras and senoritas! Ai yai yai!

I stood on the corner of Madero and Bolivar at 9am to make this tiny (and trembly tiredy) movie.