Miercoles 27 Mayo: gracias por todas las vidas... en un dia

We went out to go to several places we never reached, never walked so far. But instead, walking less far, we experienced different lives. This blog item too long on the desk, must publish covering just two places in one street.

The music for this blog entry is Violette Parra's Gracias por la Vida, as made popular throughout Latin America by the Argentinian Mercedes Sosa; others will know this as a Joan Baez song.

"Cancion de las Simplas Cosas" - so this blog celebrates individual moments.

Translations into many languages here.

1: La Vida Espiritual: Templo de San Francisco de Assisi

The church is down those stairs, down below the street, because like so many churches it is sinking in the soft muds of Tenochtitlan

as we sat in this beauty, the gentle sound of a blind man's harmonica came through the door.

This is a country with church at centre or swept from centre. Sweeping changes in national policy, aggressively anti-church, then fight-back and civil wars: you could start your reading here or, to back to  through trade and began to shape liberal ideas contrary the deeply conservative core of the Spanish ruling class. Or go back further, to the sudden expulsion of the Jesuits in June 1767. Jesuits who earned hatred and jealousies throughout Europe for the commercial and other power, Jesuits who in Mexico included many who were themselves Mexicans and had never been elsewhere, Jesuits in Mexico who had distinguished themselves by bringing care and education to the poor. We go next week to Guanajuato, see here the magnificent school the Jesuits had built for children there, now the university, see how the early history is obscured in wikipedia with just a cute name change in 1767 - to the Real Colegio de la Purisima Concepcion[royal college of purest conception]. In colonial history, people begin to rise when rulers fall out or demonstrate frailty. The centuries of indigenous anger became the ferocity away from which the independence hero Miguel Hidalgo retreated after the murder of the Spanish community in Guanajuato in 1810, in the wake of his call for independence. Here's the long story there... Hidalgo and others in a reading circle in Santiago de Queretaro, where we have one night next week, armed with enlightenment ideas, armed by the shift to liberalism in Spain as a result of Napoleon's invasion and installation of his brother as king... a change which strengthened the conservative resolve of royalists in Mexico. Hidalgo, a middle class thoughtful priest, finding himself leading an army of indigenous people angry at three hundred years of abuse. This is an intelligent and complex country. The issues associated with religion are complex. They are also complex because of the ease and persistence of syncretisms between traditional beliefs and practices and those imported. ............ Maybe I can justify this paragraph by saying it provides food for thought while you use the church for contemplation and calm when out on the busy streets of D.F.

2: La Vida Elegante: La Casa de los Azelojos

A step across and down the street, away from the quiet church into the somewhat hushed, piano playing elegant Sanborn's in the Casa de los Azulejos. I leave it to you to chase the details of the building at Wikipedia. The downstairs and even more genteel and quiet upstairs would seem with its uniformed waitresses gliding the floor with wings must surely seek to evoke a style of 250 years or more ago. Over to pictures, shot from the hip.

The Sanitarios (Restrooms) accessible through the middle of Omniciencia, the Orozco mural,
are also also elegant. Interestingly they are much used by the Policia Auxiliar.
Methought this a generous gesture to men cast into boredom,
standing all days with shields and helmets in the sun...
but then it occurred to me that perhaps the management
may have not been keen to stand in the way of this patronage. 

Upstairs, away from the tiles, great refinement.

the bar upstairs, not open at lunch

I expect that many of the guests below are not in general life looked down upon

detail

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.