Mexico
Images

December 2000

Mexico, color, music.

Rules are just opinions, Exceptions are the rule.
At 8 in the morning, I am looking for the secretariat of the the congress I have to attend. Nothing. The organization commitee (that should be there), is not there. But a boy dealing with the maintenance of the campus abandons all his activities and takes me around chasing for somebody, obtains the home phone number of the Departiment Head an at that time (that would be extreme even in the cold Scandinavia, you can imagine in Mexico...) calls him, asks for information for me.

Rules are just opinions, Exceptions are the rule.
The "collectivos" are not buses, are not taxis. They don't have fixed stops (a Rules: just an opinion...), but only stops-upon-request, in whatever point along a certain route, in or out of the city (Exceptions: the rule).
The driver stops, lets me enter, throws away an empty can out of the door before closing it. Calculates the price, gets the money, gives me change. All this while driving.
I ask where I can find a bus to go back to Puebla. The boy, a glassmaker, abandons the workshop open. He takes me to where the "Collectivo" will pass, waits with me for the right one, checks with the driver if this is really the right one, lets me in, goes back to his workshop.

Images run. people, simply met. Speaking Italian and smiling is enough. They answer in Spanish. And we understand each other. Just this way. My taxy rides transformed into Spanish lessonts: I say a sentence in Italian, he translates into Spanish, I repeat.

Images, people. wizened faces, short and thickset mexicans with big lips and big mustaches, but also the wonderful women with a clear mexicon origin, with such extremely elegant facial features.

Images, people. Juan Carlos, student of Cholula University, who draws on a piece of paper the profile of the mountains around and tells me their history. The tourist guides, mexicon origin, so proud even in their daily prostitution to tourism.

The shoeshine, the street tapas vendors (in the night, one wooden board on a shoulder as a tray, one lamp on one side and some tapas on the other to balance its weitht), the street vendors of juices, or of coffee, with a supermarket trolley as shop.

Cacaxtla, frescos with the bloody mythologic fight between jaguar men eagle men. Ritual pyramids on the hills around. Me, alone on top of the Flowers Pyramide, all the plane under me, caraibic rythms, salsa and merengue, playing from a radio hidden who knows where.

Yesterday's Religion.
Teotihuacan, majestic, impressive. From the depths of 4th century the giantic Sun Pyramid, the wonderful Moon Pyramid, where all the holy routs converge (who knows, maybe, as always, male spirit dominates but female spirit receives). Great dignity of a "terrible" place, violated by the superficiality of the infinite tourists and by the insistence of the street sellers (but maybe it is us, Western people, who have exported the "Temple merchants"...)

Today's religion.
Guadalupe Virgin, patron saint of Mexico (it was being celebrated exactly in these days). Pilgrimage place, well-known all over the world, with the contraddictions of any pilgrimage place, whenever in the history. Pilgims by bus, on foot, by bike, on their knees. Superstition and Faith, inseparably mixed. Groups, sinle persons, couples, families. Well dressed rich people, poor people camping somewhere in a corner. And street vendors. Yes, the Temple merchants again.

Finally, a last image. The plane leaving Mexico City, swarming anthill covered with a thick layer of smog, and crosses Mexico upland plane, hot during the day, icy during the night. This too, a place of neverending contrasts.

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