Mexico 2025 Week 7?
The past week has been spent in Mexico City with my mom. I lived in Mexico City from 2015-2016 but this was my mom's first time visiting. This week involved a lot of nostalgia visiting old places and seeing how much they have changed (and not changed) and realizing just how different Mexico City is from Guanajuato.
We visited all the main touristy spots. The hotel we're staying at in Coyoacán is really nice, Casa Moctezuma, and the staff has been really kind. We explored Coyoacán and got our nails done the first evening after I picked my mom up at the airport on Tuesday. Wednesday we visited Chapultepec Park, the Museo de Antropología, and went and saw Ballet Folclórico at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Thursday we explored the Centro Histórico and saw the Zócalo, Templo Mayor, the Museo de Arte Popular, and the Diego Rivera murals at the SEP (Department of Education) building. On Thursday we also had lunch at this really fancy restaurant my mom wanted to visit called Pujol. It's one of those restaurants where all the dishes are like high art and are another level of fancy. I think it was the fanciest place I have eaten at in my life. The food was really good, and they even gave me a little cake because my mom kept telling the staff that I had just finished my first year of grad school, which was sweet.
On Friday we visited the Casa Azul (Frida Kahlo's house), and Xochimilco. Apparently while we were in Xochimilco which is south of the city there was a huge storm that caused flooding and hail damage in the rest of the city which we didn't even notice until it had already ended when we came back. On Saturday we stumbled across an Indigenous Languages Fair in Coyoacán which I was really excited about and got a lot of kids books in Indigenous languages. Then we went and had lunch at the Porrúa bookstore overlooking the Templo Mayor in the downtown and we visited the Museo de Tolerancia. It was pouring down rain again afterwards but we hid out in La Casa de Toño (a pozole restaurant).
Saturday evening my mom had wanted to see a musical that she had heard about called La Malinche. I've learned about La Malinche in classes before, she is a very controversial and deeply misunderstood historical figure. She was a Nahua woman from the Gulf Coast of Mexico who was sold into slavery to the Maya people as a child in the 1500s. When Cortés arrived to Mexico, she was given to the Spaniards and due to the fact that she was fluent in several Indigenous languages, became Cortés' translator. She is often viewed as a traitor to her people, as she was instrumental in the Spanish conquest of Tenochitlan and of the Aztec empire. However, it is often overlooked that she did not have much if any power in her circumstances and that she had been treated badly by the Aztecs as well. What did she owe them? It's also often overlooked that while the Spanish did contribute to the fall of Tenochtitlan and were responsible for the ensuing genocide of the Indigenous peoples, their conquest would not have been possible without the support of many other groups of Indigenous peoples previously conquered by the Aztecs who were unhappy with Aztec rule, not just the Malinche.
She's an interesting historical figure I'd like to learn more about. But the musical we saw was absolutely terrible. It was mainly about Cortes rather than La Malinche, and it romanticized Cortes and his killing of hundreds of thousands of people and honestly I was in shock with how the characters and storyline were handled. The show's main point was that Mexico should be "grateful" that Spain "saved them" from the Aztecs and brought Christianity, and at one point compared Cortes to Jesus? It was appalling. Later we found out it was produced and directed by Spaniards who had attempted to show the musical in Spain first but had been driven out due to protestors. I am shocked they thought it would be appropriate to show in Mexico.
After that....experience...on Sunday we went and visited Teotihuacán and thus began a series of unfortunate events.
One of my friends told me earlier this summer that is sounded like Guanajuato was trying to kill me. Mexico City certainly made some valiant attempts this week as well.
On our way back from Teotihuacán, which is about 45 minutes from Mexico City, apparently a motorcycle hid a bus and caused the bus to catch fire. This resulted in the highway being closed for almost 4 hours, and we were stuck in a bus waiting for it to reopen. We saw cars attempting to turn around on the median and one almost tipped over.
When we got back to the city, we visited the Basilica of Guadalupe, and then a huge rainstorm hit so we started heading back to Coyoacan. The rain and lightning and hail was so intense, I've never seen anything like it. We saw a metro station that had caught fire due to lightning, and we saw on the news later that the streets and metro and the airport had flooded.
The following morning, Monday, we were supposed to start heading to the airport to go home. I had reinjured my ankle from walking so much the past few weeks ( I injured in back in 2017 and it never healed properly) so I decided to take advantage of the accessibility of Mexican healthcare and had made a last minute appointment with a physical therapist to get it looked at. When I came back from the appointment to go to the airport I realized my mom was really sick with what we think was food poisoning. There was no way we could get to the airport with her that sick, so I brought her to the clinic. I can't say enough good things about Mexican healthcare. We showed up at the clinic with no appointment or insurance and were seen within 15 minutes and paid about $3 total to be seen; and $20 to pay for a total of 5 different prescription medications. My mom was feeling better within the hour.
Then we headed to the airport, we got there 2 hours before our flight but we didn't realize how badly the storm last night had impacted the airport. I have never seen an airport that crowded and chaotic before. Parts of the airport had flooded and over 120 flights had been cancelled the night before. When we got there there were thousands of passengers who had been waiting all night to try to reschedule their flights. Our flight hadn't been impacted but there was no cell service in the airport and the airline's website was down and since we had to check a bag we had to talk to someone. We spent 90 minutes talking to a total of 8 different representatives across 2 different airlines just to get our boarding passes and check a bag. That left us 30 minutes to get through security and find our gate.
At security I was selected for random additional screening, which resulted in us having only 3 minutes to get from security to our gate before it closed. We ran across the airport and got there only to have it be announced that the flight no longer had a pilot and would be delayed. I went to try to get a bottle of water and they wouldn't sell it to me without my passport and boarding pass and I lost my patience with the employee and was rude. I finally managed to get some water and we got on our flight and made it home.
While it seems like we had a lot of bad luck, I honestly feel like given the circumstances we had a lot of good luck. There were terrible storms and accidents but we were fine. We were sick and injured, but we got treatment quickly. The airport was chaotic but we made our flight.
I've been back home a week now and have been missing Mexico a lot. It's always hard to adjust after coming back from a trip. But more than anything I really miss the sense of community in Mexico. Of being able to walk down the street and see people and sit in a café or go to the park and see people living their lives and spending time together. You can step outside the front door and be in a community. Here, it's just cars and highways and empty apartments. It's a big shift.
I'm glad I'll be back next summer,
Until then,