The pavement of paradise
The meaning of the Zócalo, the founding myth of Mexico, and a tour of the murals
This is the first of ten articles intended for printing in Julian’s Handbook for Curious Travelers: Mexico City, and the one that will begin the handbook. Each article highlights an attraction in CDMX, revealing its surprising cultural context, and each will be published here in the order it will appear in the handbook. You can find the full list of articles here, at the bottom. This article is a revision of a piece first published last year; it has been changed to add more detail, context, and at least one humorous turn of phrase.
There is a common saying, in English, about dancing on graves: it means to gloat. But in Mexico City the biggest celebrations happen directly above the heads of the dead, and the frantically ambulatory this side of the dirt are, about that fact, enthusiastically unconcerned.
Consider the starting place for this handbook, El Zócalo. A priority destination for Mexican politicians, foreign music acts, and unattended children, the Zócalo is an immense slab of pavement that was built above the previous civilization’s immense slab of pavement. That prior slab, the ceremonial center of the Mexica1, constructed circa 1325 AD when the city stood on an island in the middle of a lake, was surrounded by canals, aviaries, temples, ball courts, canals, a lake, and white-walled, lacustrine cities that lay resplendent across the shimmering water. Today that same patch of earth is surrounded by remorseless organ grinders, cheerful tour guides, and 2 for 1 taco lunch specials. On a clear day you can peer from the tops of nearby buildings and see the city’s grey concrete sprawl, in grim remembrance of the long gone Lake Texcoco, splashed up against the sides of the surrounding mountains. So it’s not inappropriate to be reminded of a certain Joni Mitchell tune. The Spaniards paved paradise and put up a Zócalo.2
But this is Mexico’s seat of government and the center of Mexican public life, and accordingly there is much to see. To the east is the Palacio Nacional, with its murals by Diego Rivera.3 To the south is the Supreme Court, with its murals by José Clemente Orozco.4 During the World Cup, games are shown in the plaza on giant screens. Over the years, musical pilgrims like Justin Bieber, Roger Waters, and Fatboy Slim have made the journey to this public square, which owes its name to a pedestal which stood unoccupied in the center of the square for four years, beginning in 1796, waiting for a status of Carlos IV of Spain to be installed. People became accustomed to calling the plaza zócalo, or plinth, and now central plazas around the country share that lacuna of a name.
In previous decades, El Zócalo was organized with pathways and palms and fountains, not unlike Alameda Central, the stunning park just west of Centro.5 But as the age of television and mass spectacle arrived, that layout no longer lent itself to broadcasting images of large and madding crowds. So they paved it. Now, it’s here that the nation’s patriots come, every September 15th, to celebrate the country’s independence in a shoulder-to-shoulder, sardine-tight crowd of families eating sweet potatoes, tooting plastic horns, and painting their faces red, white, and green—festivities which culminate in the national custom of El Grito, aka the shout. In full, it’s known as El Grito de Dolores, referring to the town where Father Hidalgo yawped the citizens to attention and inaugurated the war of independence.6 All of these celebrations occur beneath a truly immense state flag that is not dissimilar in size to the stars and bars that are waved, in over-compensatory fashion, by your average North American car dealership. I mean this sucker is that huge.
In the United States, the flags above car lots celebrate something nationalistic, though who knows exactly what—“fuck you”, probably. The men and women who own the dealerships are among North America’s richest, and they fly Old Glory over a deadly culture of convenience and speed.7 I am reminded that citizens of El Norte have drive-thrus for everything: in Los Angeles, for funerals. In South Carolina, for beer. Across the 48 contiguous there are even drive-thrus for coffee, which means you can go as fast as you can so that you might drink something that makes you go as fast as you can. America, the vibrating.
The bandera monumental in the Zócalo, on the other hand, celebrates something more layered, something more complex, and something that is still in the process of being born. As Juan Villoro writes, Mexican nationalism is not based on demands or confrontations, “but in the awareness, decidedly contradictory, that what we see around us is deficient but magnificent.”
Take a close look at the tri-color flying above. The coat of arms in its center depicts an eagle, perched on a cactus, eating a serpent. Any local will tell you this symbol represents the mythical vision that compelled the Mexicas, a wandering tribe from the north, to found the city of Tenochtitlán, eight hundred years ago, in the very spot that the Zócalo now exists. The ruins of that city’s ceremonial center, the Templo Mayor, sit just to the northern side of the Zócalo where they’re protected from the harsh elements by a roof and from the unwashed masses by a modest entrance fee. Just a few feet away you’ll find the Metropolitan Cathedral. The soft soil remembers that there was a lake here once, and so the baroque house of worship has developed a precarious lean, like a priest whose true house of worship is a bottle of consecrated wine. Parts of Mexico City, we should remember, are sinking at a rate of 20 inches per year. Until such time as the earth swallows its parishioners, the church will remain free to enter.
The conquistadors began building this Cathedral in the 16th century, after razing the Templo Mayor. Prior to the invasion, the Mexica had carefully built their structures in successive layers, each new layer incorporating the old in an act of, shall we say, meditative masonry that reflected their cosmological beliefs. Cortez just knocked shit over and built churches instead. Given that the Mexican flag associates the idea of Mexico with Mexico’s native sons, you might then consider this entire area to be something of a conundrum: who, or what, are we celebrating? The first people? Their Catholic conquerors? Both? There’s a further complicating factor, too: the founding myth of Tenochtítlan is just that—a myth. According to archaeologists the Mexica, when they arrived in the valley, killed the other local tribes and adopted their mythical vision after the fact. In other words, reader, the idea of Mexico as a pluralistic and indigenist society is based on a stolen legend. It’s eagle-snake-cactus all the way down.
This is not meant to be uncharitable. Compared to its northern cousin, the country of Mexico is a paragon of inclusive humanism. One benefit to the United States of being, shall we say, dramatically unconcerned with the well-being of Native Americans, is that for almost two centuries after that country’s founding, its citizens rarely had to grapple with questions of identity. Northern Americans may put Native Americans on their coins, but the state has never claimed heritage with the Navajo or the Sioux or the Choctaw. Natives have always been the other, and the citizens of El Norte have always treated its indigenous people with disdain trussed up as charity and concern. For that behavior North Americans can thank the Brits. Readers of a certain age will remember the lesson from a popular anti-drug PSA from the 80s: You, dad, alright? We learned it from watching you.
The people of Mexico have learned something more complicated. The natives were conquered and mixed with the Spaniards. More than three hundred years later the people of New Spain, indigenous and mestizo alike, rebelled. Those rebels won, then beheaded the man who inaugurated that very rebellion. What followed was a series of assassinations, backstabbings, and wars, including that time Mexico was ruled by a Spanish emperor, that time the United States annexed half of Mexico, that other time the United States occupied Mexico City, and that time Mexico was ruled by another emperor, this one from, of all places, Austria. Then there was a dictator. Then another civil war. And from that painful birth, this modern country.
What is the final meaning, then, of the Zócalo and the Mexican flag? Here it’s perhaps enough to rely again on the Mexican writer Juan Villoro. In his essay on El Grito, Villoro writes that the true power of Mexican nationalism doesn’t rely on myths. It doesn’t rely on legends. Instead, local pride is a celebration of a simple, incontrovertible, and joyous fact: “There’s a shitload of us, and there will be more!”
📍Nearby sights and further reading
Center of the city. Lots of Spanish colonial, virreinato, and neoclassical buildings filled with examples of mid-century murals. We’ll cover the Templo Mayor and cathedral in subsequent posts so, for now, enjoy this selection of stops for a mural tour:
🎨 Murals, art, and sights 🎨
Casa de los Azulejos: The blue tile building. Has a Sanborn’s. Always stupid crowded. Go at opening or else avoid at all costs. Near the main staircase is Omnisciencia, by José Clemente Orozco.
Mercado Presidente Abelardo L. Rodriguez: Slightly less touristy spot for a good bite, and some floor-to-ceiling murals by Riviera’s disciples and collaborators.
Colegio de San Ildefonso: Holds La creación, Riviera’s first government-commissioned mural, La fiesta del Señor de Chalma, by Fernando Leal, and more than 20 frescos by Orozco. Where Riviera met Kahlo.
Museo de la Luz: David Alfaro Siqueiros painted several of his first murals here: La alegoría de los cinco elementos, El entierro del obrero sacrificado, Los mitos y El llamado de la libertad.
Secretaría De Educación Pública (Edificio Anexo): Currently closed for restoration, but contains several floors, staircases, and courtyards of Riviera murals depicting Mexican history and culture.
Palacio de Bellas Artes: On of the city’s most popular attractions, with murals by Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros, Tamayo, Roberto Montenegro, and Manuel Rodríguez Lozano. Most famous is likely Rivera’s Man, Controller of the Universe (1934), a version of which was originally intended for Rockefeller Center.
Downtown Mexico Hotel: Wonderful hotel with a dependable rooftop bar, not to mention the site of El holocausto by Manuel Rodríguez Lozano—a melancholy sort who, to his credit, was one of the only mid-century muralists who refused to paint patriotic scenes. So, death. Death and sadness. That was his vibe.
Palacio Nacional: Holds Diego Rivera’s massive The History of Mexico. Tours in English and Spanish available daily. Tickets available across the street at Museo de la Secretaría de Hacienda.
La Suprema Corte de Justicia: Several impressive Orozco murals. Walk-up tours were suspended during covid but group tours are now available if you plan in advance.
🎭 Entertainment 🎭
La Casa del Cine: Tiny little cinema showing indie films and some mainstream favorites. Great for date night.
Zinco Jazz Club: Delightful little jazz club with period correct decor. Also great for date night.
Sunday Sunday: Semi-secret dance parties in Centro
Bósforo: Best mezcal bar in the city (some say La Clandestina in Condesa, but Bosforo is classier). Wildly different DJs playing world and EDM music, depends on when you go. Eclectic bites. Gets crazy busy end of the week.
📚 What to read 📚
Mexico City’s Zócalo: Dense academic book that, if you can get past all the spatial philosophy, provides a great overview of how the Zócalo has changed, both in shape and meaning, over the centuries.
Horizontal Vertigo, by Juan Villoro, one of Mexico’s most famous living writers. In a series of vignettes, Villoro describes what it’s like to live in a profoundly chaotic and nonsensical city that somehow, beautifully, remains enchanting. Probably my favorite book about the city.
Life in Mexico, written pseudonymously by France Erskine Inglis (wife of Spain’s diplomat to Mexico) during her travels in Mexico from 1840-1842, is an immersion into Mexican culture from her vantage point as an aristocrat. Vivid and humorous if sometimes slow, it’s one of the most intimate portraits of the country. Recommended to read after your trip, once you’ve seen Mexico City and can compare what it once looked like to how it appears today.
Postcard to Justin from Reforma
Want a postcard from Mexico? I’d love to send you one. Leave a comment (not with your address!) or reply to this email.
📕 What is Julian’s?
Julian’s is a handbook for curious travelers written by Steve Bryant, who lives and works in Mexico City. Julian’s is named for his grandfather, a very handsome southerner. The wordmark for Julian’s is designed in Frustro, a typeface inspired by the Pemrose Triangle, and which represents impossible objects—appropriate for Mexico City, which Salvador Dali once described as more surreal than his art. More about Steve at thisisdelightful.com.
A fun and diverting note on terminology, so you can appear more intellectually attractive at dinner parties. The people known today as “Aztecs” knew themselves as the “Mexica”. They spoke Nahuatl. The word “Mexico”, as in the country, comes from Nahuatl, but there’s no definitive proof of its origin. The leading theory suggests that it is formed from three Nahuatl words: ‘metztli’ meaning ‘moon’; ‘xictli’ translate as ‘belly button’ or ‘centre’; and the affix ‘-co’ indicating ‘place’.
The term “Aztecs”, which was coined in the 19th century, refers to the people of Aztlan, a place which is mentioned in Mexica records but has never been found. The Mexicas were a sub-group of the people who came from Aztlan, which means “Whiteness” or the “Place of the Herons”. Accordingly, and perhaps somewhat confusingly for certain racial supremacists (haha suckers!), Aztec means “the people of whiteness”. As for Aztlan we note, somewhat despondently, that the concept lives on today as the name of an amusement park.
Also sacrifices. Let’s not forget the sacrifices. It has often been assumed, not least by dads who watch too much History Channel, that Aztec political and religious life was motivated by the necessity of sacrificing humans in order to keep the gods happy, and that the Aztecs were warlike because they needed more humans to sacrifice. Not the case! Aztec political life was organized around ever-shifting familial alliances across the territory. For a full recounting, see The Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs.
The Palacio Nacional is the executive seat of government and the presidential residence. Group tours in English are free, and include visiting the murals of Diego Rivera. In 2019, the current president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, moved the official residency away from Los Pinos in Chapultepec Park, which is now a museum complex that also offers free tours (which include a look at the vintage automobiles of 12 Mexican presidents).
El Edificio de la Suprema Corte also offers free tours to view the building’s works of art, including four huge murals by José Clemente Orozco, one of Mexico’s most famous muralists
Alameda Central was established in 1592, making it the oldest public park in the Americas. They also used to burn witches there. So, you know. That.
A quirk of language is that El Grito is also the Spanish title for Edward Munch’s most famous painting, which took as its subject the anxiety of the human condition, a semantic coincidence that’s left to the reader to interpret.
U.S. pedestrian deaths recently reached a 40-year high, likely due to the popularity of larger vehicles like SUVs.