Day 7 - Big Trouble in Little Xochimilco
We said goodbye to Greg that morning, and wished him a good trip. He was San Fransisco bound, and then there were three.
Glen and I started the morning with some coffee at a popular coffee joint and a walk around the neighborhood.
On our walk, we stumbled upon the oldest church in the Americas,
And the fabled, La Malinche house. The place where she reportedly lived in the years following the conquest.
There were no signs, no plaque, there were no people, it had been bought by a private investor and it lay lifeless. We wondered if we were even in the right spot. After some researching, we verified that she did indeed live in this neighborhood until 1524, and since no other house claimed to have belonged to her, once more we have to defer to silence. It was unsettling how much of our investigation of her has resulted in silence, shrugs, or lack of any answers or any significant information. Here we were, at the foot of the door she must have walked through on a daily basis, and yet, there was nothing to preserve her memory here.
The street to the north bears her name, Malintzin. Her name, in fact, is everywhere. Sadly, not many people know what it means. It’s almost as if it has become devoid of meaning.
Across the square was a more decorated and visited building: the Cortes Hacienda.
It was bright, almost gaudy, and filled with a mishmash of anachronistic iconography and decor. There were regal lions posted up next to Aztec shrines, friars next to Mayan calendars. It was a tortilla soup of Mexican culture, and then it hit me. Here we were, in the home of a ruthless conqueror, a man known for decimating the natives’ way of life and butchering millions, an invader often seen as public enemy number one by Mexicans, in a place that he once lived, a place that was once the Spanish seat of power in the transition to the colonial model of New Spain, and yet… it was a quaint exploding palette of quintessential Mexican culture. It was a shrine to mestizaje, the often times contradictory mixing of all of the traditions, bloodlines, and cultures that still call Mexico home.
Cortes is probably rolling in his grave since the “savage” gods he tried so hard to eradicate now stand proudly in the courtyard of his former home. Here is a man who used to demolish ancient temples to build Catholic churches. The irony is that this space: his own home has been swallowed up by the very own mestizaje he helped create. After all he and Malintzin had Martin, the first well-documented mestizo in the history of Mexico.
I cringed a bit at this revisionist history. Do people walk in here and nod happily, not seeing what’s strange about this landscape? Is it easier to swallow the truth that Mexico is more Frida Kahlo than Martin? What does it mean to be rewrite the horrors of indigenous oppression and the racial caste system in favor of a Mexico where a shared culture is celebrated? Is it possible to celebrate our mestizo culture while still holding a light to the divisions that once existed and still continue to exist?
Next, we went to Xohimilco,
a section of the city that is as close to how the old Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan used to be: a series of man-made islands called chinampas. These were used to farm or build on. Canals ran alongside the islands that the locals use to get around, much like the Aztec once did.
As we approached the entrance to the docks where the gondolas waited, a guy on bike warned us that the road ahead was closed due to construction and that we should take a right up ahead. We thanked the man and turned. Another man on a bike pointed us to the same new route, he showed us a Mexican board of tourism badge on a lanyard and told us to follow him to the best route to the boats. We followed him to the docks
where we parked, and were lead down to the boats that were tied together on the water to hear the prices of the trips.
The for the mini trip: 1,500, the medium, 2,500, the full trip, 3,000 (all in pesos of course). The prices were steep, reeeallly steep, especially considering the fact that most other costs regarding tourist attractions and museums were very low. We almost said no, but then realized we had come this far and Xochimilco was one of the most important places to see for our research since we could see chinampas up close and use the pictures and videos as sources in our classroom.
We almost left to shop around but they insisted that these were the prices. They were hardworking boaters and they were offering an exclusive tour of Xochimilco that would allow us to disembark on all the good spots. They even offered us 2,500 for the full trip, and we budged and agreed to it, but said we’d have to take cash out.
“That’s okay, we can walk with you to the nearest bank afterwards and you can pay us there!”
Great! It was pricy, but we were excited to ship off.
A mariachi boat immediately pulled up to us and started playing music. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves now.
A replica of the “Island of Dead Dolls.” As much as I wanted to see the original, it was still an 8 hour boat ride away.
We interviewed asked the boat drivers about La Malinche, neither of them knew who she was, but had heard the name many times. Later, one of them mentioned legends about La Llorona having lived here in one of these Chinampas and that her ghost still wanders here.
Looks like La Antigua and Xochimilco are going to have to fight for her.
His story was unique in that his reasoning for her drowning her kids was because she wanted to protect them from her Spanish husband’s constant abuse and beatings. She eventually snapped for the abuse and killed her children, then herself.
He added a particularly skin crawling detail, which is that the closer you hear her weeping, the farther away she is, but the farther you heat her weeping, the closer she is. Also, if you see her, or hear her scream close up, you will die immediately of the fright.
On our way back, the ever resourceful Glen looked up the prices online. He showed me that the prices were far lower, and the government protected price for ANY Xochimilco boat ride was no more than 350 pesos an hour. We grimaced, but we’d agreed to the initial price and felt like idiots.
We hopped off the boats and the drivers hurried us along a back route, away from the main pier and back to the main street where they would take us to an ATM. I stopped, snooped around, and saw this.
The woman at this booth made silent hand gestures, warning us not to go with them. I went towards the booth and the men told me to stop and follow them. The women explained to me that they could not leave the booth, but they handed me a flyer with the government protected prices. I told her we took a 2 hour trip and she told me “Don’t pay more than 700! It doesn’t matter what you originally agreed to!”
That’s when things started getting hairy.
I saw a lot of commotion around the parking lot, and men started to communicate to each other. I walked over to Glen and Roberto and told them what was up, then I told the boat driver that he was ripping us off and that we’d pay 1,000 since that was still a hefty tip on top of the maximum amount they were allowed to charge tourists.
He refused, and said he would call the “dispatcher” and I could deal with him.
Then I saw the bike guy again, the guy who was “nice enough” to show us the way and realized this was all a racket. They saw our Guadalajara plates and diverted us away from the main entrance and towards their own parking lot. He also said we’d have to wait for the dispatcher since he didn’t deal with the money.
When the other men were distracted, I told Roberto to get the car out of the parking lot and wait for us on the main street while Glen and I walked the other way toward the booth and said we’d wait for the dispatcher there. They tried to pull us away but we stayed in front of the booth where the women were also calling for backup. They told us these guys operate on intimidation and that’s why they couldn’t leave the booth to warn tourists, since last time they did, they got threatened to be beaten.
The boat driver was getting nervous, he saw that we were not budging form the booth and I heard him talking to other people that we might leave. They were all trying to call others on the phone telling them to “come quick.”
The boat driver finally approached and I told him I should not pay him more than 700 since they lied to us from the beginning and were intimidating us, but that we’d give him 1,000 since we did originally agree to a bigger price (like the pendejos we were).
He looked around, and accepted, taking the money and we bolted. As Glen and I walked towards the car where Roberto was waiting at the wheel, a man in a chair lifted a cell phone to his ear and said “they’re leaving, they’re leaving!”
We bolted through the muddy streets and laughed our nerves away. We fell for a very elaborate racket and were lucky enough to get out of it thanks to some solid teamwork.
Afterwards we went back to Coyacan and walked around the streets and markets, had some amazing tostadas, and some of the most elaborately crafted coffee I’d ever seen.
Afterwards, we had to stop by taqueria la Malinche.
We asked the woman who was running it what she thought about La Malinche and she said: “Me encanta!” I told her that was the first positive opinion we’ve heard about La Malinche, and when I asked her why, she froze.
She thought I was talking about her taco shop.
On closer inspection, I see that it was named after the women who fought against the Mexican government during the revolution.
These women fought, cooked, healed, and were all around badasses. They are most commonly known as adelitas, but in many instances are also referred to as “las Malinches,” a title many bold women wore proudly for their bold defiance of the powers that be in their attempts to overthrow them.
But once again, we are left empty handed in terms of the original Malinche.