¿Dónde está el museo, señor?

¿Dónde está el museo, señor? 

El museo está en todas partes, el museo está dentro de nosotros, y nosotros estamos en el museo. 

Estamos en México.

Where is the museum, sir? The museum is everywhere, the museum is within us, and we are in the museum. We are in Mexico. [my words, D.A. May 2015]

So also I felt in Rome, the more so living there in the end of the 1960s than visiting in 2010 and 2011. The energy and vivacity, the emotion, the colour of Mexico City is greater than Rome. There is the same interweaving of old and new, here with a powerful presence of pre-hispanic and current day multi-ethnicity.

From Calle Bolivar along Av Madero to the Zocalo,
turn left and go up Republica de Brasil
 to the Inquisition turn right and go east on Venezuela

This is Friday morning. We arrived Tuesday morning. We leave Monday midday for Guanajuato. I haven't finished the San Francisco blog. I have 1500 photos or film clips. I have in my head several blog stories but our feet bring us home so full of impressions and delight; we rest. But the story must be told, not lost, the mind is being altered and the reshape needs to be articulated; I do not want to return to life at home and be swallowed back by that. This is told just as my story, no presuming beyond that. Which also seems to be Mexican-minded, a powerful individualism, strength, energy.



*****


I at last got my shoes cleaned  yesterday.

Jorge-Luis, who cleaned my shoes, is 82 years old. He came to D.F. when young, he has four children, he has what is necessary to survive and smile warmly. He is the same age as the governing party:

The governments that ruled Mexico from 1921 to 1933 are known as the Northern Dynasty. The governments of Obregon, Calles, Portes Gil, Rubio and Rodriguez were all from the northern part of Mexico This regime sought to establish order while developing the economy and increasing the internal market by land reform and higher wages.
There was bitter opposition during this period from the clergy, landowners, foreign investors and ambitious generals within their own ranks. The government brutally crushed two military revolts and the Cristero rebellion of Mexico's militant Catholics. The northerners achieved many of their objectives through executions which created political peace and formed a new political party, the PNR (National Revolutionary Party) which unified pro-government forces and destroyed opposition parties.

[from this useful summary history of Mexico]

*****

Within a history of considerable internal ferocity and struggles for ideas, it is a non-judgmental country in its foreign policy, a perspective like the non-aligned movement, but for much longer. A lurch to the right, towards the US in 2000 was not sustained. The US and Australia are push-out states, Mexico and Indonesia have different mental apparatus.
The legacy of that period is NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Area, which brought export industry zones many of which have since fled to China. And a drug war. And anger and debate.

There are lots of smiles. but this is a country with reason for deep distress in current life. Those streets of Mexico City on which we walk may be safe, but the people on them share the life of people in other states of the Mexican federation as well as other parts of this widespread city in the Valle de México, subjected to poverty and death threats and the primary availability of life, work and money sticking with the bad guys. This runs through the heart in the city too.

People as nice as they look
... all photos will be enlarged if you click on one.
These are tertiary students, one of them works in the
Tepito Market. This is not far from here
 at the corner of Madero and Eje Central
but we are advised we would be at great risk going there.

Young people ask us about Australia and then ask us if we know about The Fortythree. 

Please do not come to Mexico without reading the current history by such as Francisco Goldman.

People look at each other, people look at us, talk to us. People are interested in life. And colour...

As Jim Johnston observes in his excellent book, in cafes here people sit beside each other, not opposite. Here people cuddle.

This is not Japan, we here are among Chilangos, as the inhabitants of DF call themselves, not Anglos.

There is a European-ness in the streets stands of newspapers and books,
plus the presence of religious and deep traditional dress-up-ism, even for icons

Compare the bigs, as I see them:

• Tokyo: people invisibly leave space around each other even when crowded
• New York: people create space around themselves by invasion of other people's spaces
• D.F: people cuddle and touch and weave and smile, in utterly individual bright colours and styles.

We continue to be engaged in impromptu English conversation lessons.

The handsome 15 year old high school student 

asking Helen questions wants to study (of course) IT.

His friend records the lesson.

¿Dónde está el museo, señor? 

The three of us in the photo are standing in front of McDonalds (behind the camera), where once stood the house of the conquistador Hernan Cortes. Behind Helen is the Cathedral of Mexico City. Inside the 1580s cathedral hangs a pendulum to show which way it's going as it slowly sinks into the mud. This place used to be an island in the lakes of the crater of the valley of México, when it was the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan ... until 1521.

Underneath the cathedral are some remains of the original church Cortes built and underneath those ruins are some of the ruins of the palace of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma. When Cortes tore Moctezuma's palace down he used most of the stones to pave the great square in front of the cathedral (and now also the presidential offices) which compares in size with Moscow's Red Square and Beijing's Tiananmen. Building on top of old buildings was a pre-Columbian habit too. Hidden behind the cathedral is the place where men, digging for electric cabling in 1978, unearthed the Aztec Templo Mayor, over which Spaniards had built the city four hundred years before.

El museo está en todas partes, el museo está dentro de nosotros, y nosotros estamos en el museo. 

source wikipedia

North from this place we sought out the Secretaria de Educacion Publica [SEP], the federal public education ministry. In the early 20th century such as the elegant Jose Vasconcelos championed the development of a movement to use murals to tell the wider public the story and principles of the revolutionary nation.

NOTE ON 2 JUNE: I mentioned Vasconceles to two taxi drivers yesterday, both owners of their own taxis both from families long resident in D.F. for generations. Their historical statement was that Vaconceles "established the SEP". Which is a reminder that while Australiam colonies had been establishing public education, shifting education away from churches some time earlier, the establishment of public education was in centre of revolutionary objectives in Mexico.

The courtyard walls and more at higher levels are covered with murals, most by Diego Rivera, some by David Siqueiros. Such artists, of such times. Rivera and Frida Kahlo took in (and embraced) Leon Trotsky. Sequeiros, who embraced politics even more dramatically in his art, was the first to try to assassinate Trotsky.

I read an art history comment that Sequieros allowed himself to be distracted from his art by politics, including the Spanish Civil War. Such a comment is only possible from an art wonk who cannot understand the complex interweaving of politics, philosophy and art in Mexico.

It is perhaps (personal opinion) among the lazy terrors of modernism and beyond that art and life become so separate. Giving rise to the sidelong comment by Glenn Gould ... link to extraordinary Bach performance, interrupted by a please-vote commercial (here, now – far away the ad will be for toothpaste or Tobago) for a local government elections 7 June ... in a documentary about him:

"I can only give you one piece of advice, stay away from the arts crowd."

There is fire in the Mexican belly. Art is engaged.

----

Um, but back to the walk... to get to the education ministry we had to go past the headquarters of the Inquisition.

I am not quite sure what to think of the fact that the old HQ of the Inquisition now houses the Museum of Mexican Medicine.  Viva las Aztecas?

It's Mexico,
aiyaiyai,
it's Mexico
.. and as foreigners we are supposed, according to the media, to see the armed police and their vehicles arrayed outside the ministry and say:

"Oh Dios, oh Dios, sálvame!"

So ever so politely you approach the guards on duty at the door.


The older guards turn to us and the oldest of the old ones points to the younger guard and announces to me:

"He has a big nose,"

 and they watch, grin... and await my remembering of the password?

From somewhere some instinct grabs me and I exclaim:

"Es muy guapo!" 

and I lift the camera and shoot.

Everyone falls down laughing and we step serenely inside.

Rule 1 of the street: Act like you are fearlessly in charge and full of purpose! :-)

es muy guapo = he's very handsome

-----
The idea of the public entering the courtyards of an education ministry in Australia! The idea of a radical education minister!

La vida no es de nadie, todos somos la vida

–pan de sol para los otros,

los otros todos que nosotros somos.

Life is not no-one's, we are all life's, 

life-bread from the sun for the others,

the all-the-others of which we all are.

We could have spent three day inspecting the murals. Had our Spanish been good, we could have joined one of the tours. We did not go to higher floors, sufficient to walk around the courtyards.

Only later from the Jim Johnston (be honest, hands up those who read the tour guides after) did I realise we had missed seeing Sequieros's murals there too. We did enter the surprising Auditorio Miguel Hidalgo on the ground floor, the door half-heartedly open, the guard deep inside waving us in, one photo below.

In the entry foyer to the ministry, a plaque with a quote from a poem by Octavio Paz. How nice to have in the such a place in the education ministry this quote from a national hero who won the Nobel Prize for literature AND resigned in indignation his post as Mexican ambassador to India when his government murdered and disappeared many students when tidying up for the 1968 Olympic Games.

An expression of national spirit, close to the earth.

One wonders about the debate over what of whom to quote, probably a doctoral thesis for someone.

I venture a translation and would be pleased to have comment and correction from somewhere.

Some photos from inside. These are quick photos in difficult light of murals which are, I think, much faded.

I've just found a commentary here.

"True civilisation will be harmony of man with the earth and of men with each other."

and this is a part of the Auditorio Miguel Hidalgo

My companion makes all this so rewarding

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.



----

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.

travelwonderment arises from what sits together

Things that you never even saw sitting together. Typing a little essay, uploading a little movie from the other day, about Haight-Ashbury, I looked sideways (very important in travelling through life) and saw three things that seemed to be huddled together. They had never known each other, never known what they shared: thrust together by airbnb and travel.

LOS TRES ELEMENTOS:

1. Las cosas that airbnb hosts leave on the kitchen table for use and delight
2. Las cosas you rush out and buy when you've arrived at dawn and need breakfast
3. Las cosas that previous guests in your airbnb place left for you to use.

And so these three companions in photo:

1. Our airbnb host's bookshelf ranges from Pirro's L'Esthetique de Jean Sebastien Bach to Bob Dylan: MTV Unplugged. He had placed that supercute vase on the kitchen table, I call her Nuestra Senorita di Cozumel, there being a map of the beautiful island of Cozumel on the wall behind her. A lissome tropic beauty, shoved by my typing and cooking up against the wall to stand with...
2. ... the 'Bimbo Integral' brown bread I bought for breakfast from the Oxxo round the corner. With its marketing-target family constantly still eyeing me as I type. But are they the market target or the notional pallid aspiration of marketing targets? They do look a bit 'whitebread' to me those people, a term discussed way back in Oregon, also defined here.
3. And to which incongruous couple I added the little spice jar I had reached for, left I imagine by an earlier guest, as I cooked breakfast and could not see pepper. I tasted and said 'mmm' and put the powder on the eggs and ham at breakfast; then 'mmm' put it with the chicken, tarragon, ginger and mango cooked in coconut oil for lunch, oh yes and 'mmm' also the tiny potatoes and zucchini with rosemary. 

There will be a lot about food in this blog. Go also for a primer on Mexico City (I will henceforth be saying D.F. as in the D.C. of the capital of the USA, D.F. meaning Distrito Federal) and food, by D B C Pierre.

Eventually time to find out what was in the little pot. Which is how this blog gets writ. See the thing, take the shot, have the wonder, do the research.

The label on the pretty pot says:

MEZCLA DE CHILES

SECOS CON GUSANOS

DE MAGUEY

OAXACA-MEXICO

Some bits easy: a blend of dried chilis with something of something.
From Oaxaca, very interesting food and human diversity place in the south (there's a wondrous Spanish-hearing lesson at link too!) a travel distance beyond us on this trip.

So what exactly is are gusanos de maguey? A first run at the translation of gusano gets 'worm'. OK.

More exploration reveals that this is one of the archetypical elements in Mexican cuisine (cocina Mexicana): the larva of a butterfly (mariposa) that lives inside the maguey plant that is, the agave cactus, from which also comes nearly everything you could want, houses, cloth, pulque, distilled to be mescal, cousin of tequila. And inside the plant, the little grub, which young people in far away places bring up in late night conversation because they've heard this little grub is sometimes in the mescal bottle.

Here from Wikipedia a bowl of roasted Comadia redtenbacheri, the gusano de maguey.

But if you don't put all the grubs in mescal bottles (and there's surely a hugely greater number of grubs relative to mescal bottles) you have surely to do something with those grubs, if they are, because you've ruined their home, never going to be pretty mariposas.

So you eat the gusanos, if you are a wealthy Mexican... an observation from the blog Naturalista Ireverente de Tehuacan from which the photo of the mariposa is taken.

And of course if you don't eat them thus fresh they taste terrific ground up and mixed with chilli and added to anything, or just tasted pinch by pinch.

Which is like travel. 

I rest my case.

... since writing this have been informed that gusano de maguey is an aphrodesiac. 

So is travel. 

These brain foods, you can't beat 'em.