Sent: Friday, March 8, 2013 6:12:20 PM
Subject: Centro Historico
I spent the afternoon hanging out with a friend who lives here. We walked to the Historic Centre which is kind of like Vancouver´s Gastown except huge with five hundred year old churches and other beautiful buildings, and extremely crowded. The highlight of the tour was a museum art gallery called Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. The building is at least four hundred years old and was previously a monastery and school. It has some beautiful stain glass windows and many murals with themes of greed, corruption, murder and exploitation by various artists depicting Mexico´s sad history of violence and cruelty towards its indigenous people. It is particularly ironic and poignant that these murals would be painted in a religious building given the abominable treatment of the native people by the church. One feature particularly stood out to me and I´ll tell you why: it depicts a robed friar bending over to embrace an emaciated Indian, kneeling and naked. The first time I saw this image I was ten years old. It was in the Painting article of our family set of World Book Encyclopedias. Without understanding why at my young age I found this image particularly disturbing. Now, seeing for the first time the original one could say it particularly resonates with me.
We also saw an art exhibit, quite huge by a local painter, Pedro Diego Alvarado:
Pomegranates from Chabela, 2007 (oil on linen) by Pedro Diego Alvarado (Contemporary Artist) Private
This is a sample of one of his big paintings. It turns out he is the maternal grandson of famous Mexican artist and muralist Diego Rivera. It runs in the family. We also had the pleasure of meeting him in person. While I was commenting to my friend, all in Spanish, how I think he could have made more generous use of a certain shade of green in one of his paintings we were viewing while also commenting that I really could stand to learn from him and that really as an artist he kicks my ass, well just when I said that he came over and introduced himself to us.
While we were in the area my friend indicated to me how much of the Historic Centre Carlos Slim, the billionaire tycoon I mentioned in a previous post owns it just seemed downright repugnant, especially the amount of power and influence he has in Mexican politics. He also explained to me when I asked about the many indigenous children begging with their ¨parents¨ on the sidewalk when they should be in school that in many cases they are not their children. They are from poor farmers in the countryside where there is still a lot of hunger who sell or trade their children with others who then farm them out as begging slaves in the big city and the proceeds go to gangs. I cannot even find the words to convey how this makes me feel.
I really don´t enjoy being in neighbouring Zona Rosa after dark though it is often a necessary evil while returning to my hotel. It is not a dangerous area but several times already I have been solicited by pimps and I don´t always restrain myself from replying my disapproval though I probably should and just weave a wide berth around them. They could be and probably are, armed and possibly dangerous. I promise to be more careful in the future. On the other hand, if I just detour a block or two and take Refora instead I can avoid them altogether. Please hold me to this in case I forget!
Saturday, March 9, 2013 6:46:45 PM
Subject: A Vegetarian in Mexico City
Finding adecuate food when you are a vegetarian is quite a challenge in this city. I have found one place, about a twenty minute walk from here but it is not always a practical destination time-wise and other places generally put meat or chicken in everything or try to get you to order salad instead (most of which are also laced with meat) Since I was returning a bit later than usual from Coyoacan after hanging out there with a friend I thought it would be more paractical to eat at the hotel where I ordered their one meatless option, the Fettuccini Alfredo. The waiter, who badly needs an attitude check, knows I am a vegetarian. I reminded him of this at least twice this evening. After a very long wait (I was the only customer in the restaurant and given the quality of food and service here should we wonder why?) he brought me a plate full of steaming Fettuccini Alfredo laced with ham. He of course returned it for me, then later brought me what I had asked for. After eating more than half I discovered something pink buried underneath the pasta. That´s right, a lovely piece of ham. I told the waiter that they had better reduce the price otherwise I am not paying anything. So he brought me a revised cheque where I paid only for the salad.
The weather has been particularly beautiful today, warm with cool breezes. I am noticing that on the Metro still, young people never give up their seat for the elderly not even for an elderly woman with a cane.
In a conversation I had with another friend who lives here, yesterday, it came out that Mexicans are often so obsessed with survival (and they have to be given the low pay and long and hard hours they have to work) that this also has a detrimental impact on the whole social fabric and collective wellbeing. Yet otherwise I have found many of them to be extraordinarily kind people.
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