CLINICAL MATTERS

Picking up from where we left off after our first day in Mexico City, we journeyed south to Xochimilco where the remnants of the mountain lake, on which Mexico City was built, can still be seen. Canals crisscrossed the small man-made islands, known as chinampas, where locals build their homes and grow produce. These canals are navigable by gaudily colored boats carrying passengers, mostly tourists, and make a pleasant roundtrip for the better part of two hours. Lunch is included, made up of large pieces of chicharon (they call them chicharrones in Mexico) placed inside a soft taco with avocado and different condiments. We made several stops in the chinampas to look at the endangered axolotls being raised in captivity, see the native houses, and sample pulque, a fermented drink made from agave. Axolotls, which are salamanders that never lost their gills, used to be endemic to the Xochimilco riverways. They nearly became extinct when tilapia and other invasive species were introduced and devoured the axolotls. Axolotls are considered as a symbol of Mexico, and Xochimilco is one of the few places where they can still be seen.

After our sojourn in Xochimilco, we made our way to Coyoacan where we went to the local market. Several shops sold edible stuff. We sampled grasshoppers (known locally as chapulin), scorpions, and a tarantula. The tarantula has small hairs, which made my tongue go numb, and I couldn’t really say these were delicious but they were definitely edible. We then went to Frida Kahlo’s house, where we learned about her art and the health challenges she faced. As a mestiza (her father was a German photographer and her mother was a mixed-race Indigenous Mexican and Spanish woman), she was definitely ahead of her time in terms of her ideas and art. She contracted polio at an early age and was in a terrible accident, which shattered her spine, and yet she overcame these challenges to make a mark in the world with her distinctive style.

The next day, we went to Chapultepec Castle, a magnificent palace perched on a hill, which now serves as the National History Museum. It is painted with many important murals, including a painting of a young martyr of the war between US and Mexico who leaped from the roof of the tower to prevent the Mexican flag from being captured. The mural is painted in the inside dome of the entrance and depicts the unnamed student as he is falling from the tower. It makes for a striking three-dimensional image when one looks up from the entrance. We then walked to the nearby National Anthropology Museum, one of the finest museums in the world. It contains artifacts from the many civilizations that arose in Mexico. The museum is huge, and it would take many days to see all the exhibits. Since most of the explanations are in Spanish only, we hired a private guide to walk us through the highlights and explain the significance of each exhibit. It became clear to us that Mexico had civilizations at par with the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians and Chinese and they were very advanced for their time.

Nights are cold, and as we went on a “ghost tour” of Mexico City, our guide told stories of serial killers and famous ghosts. As we walked around the 16thcentury building around the Zocalo, strong winds blew through the plaza. It was a refreshingly different aspect of the many historical buildings and served to further enrich our appreciation of this beautiful city.

On our fourth day, we went to see the pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. The ancient pyramids were built by the Toltecs as a place for the gods and are definitely god-like in their scale. Human sacrifices were made in these pyramids, each god with a specific preference on whether they should be male, female, adults, or children. The ancient Mexicans believed that the sun died as it set at the end of the day and that the blood from a sacrifice and a beating heart removed from the body would ensure that the sun would rise again the next day. The pyramids themselves are massive, the pyramid of the moon being much bigger than that of the sun. The ancient Mexicans precisely aligned their pyramids according to the cardinal directions and contoured the sides to mimic that of the surrounding mountains. In the excavated buildings, there is evidence of a sophisticated culture, with indoor piping for water along with drainage and sewage systems. After exploring the pyramids, we sat down to a sumptuous lunch, which included huitlacoche, a blue-black fungus that grows on corn and served inside a soft taco. Our next stop was the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is four churches in one. The newest shrine is the biggest. It houses the image of the Virgin who appeared to Juan Diego. A conveyor belt brings viewers directly below the cape with the Virgin’s image.

On the fifth day, we explored the Templo Mayor, which are the recently excavated ruins of the Tenochtitlan pyramids in the heart of Mexico City. Before the Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes destroyed the pyramids in order to build the Cathedral in the center of the Zocalo, some Europeans were able to see these and declared the pyramids at par with those of the great cities of Greece and Constantinople. Unfortunately, in order to properly subjugate the Aztecs and other Indigenous Mexicans, Cortes felt compelled to destroy the structures to downplay the rich civilizations that existed before their conquests. In fact, there was a more sinister narrative where the conquerors questioned whether Indigenous people had souls, and whether they could justifiably treat them like animals. The Templo Mayor has its own museum which, while not as large as the Museum of Anthropology, hosts spectacular artifacts found in situ. These include massive stone statues of the gods used for sacrifices and remnants of walls of skulls used to deter intruders.

That night, we went on a taco tasting tour where we sampled different kinds of street tacos with the locals. This was capped by Lucha Libre, Mexico’s homegrown professional wrestling circuit, which we attended at the Arena Central. While it was all clearly choreographed, the athletic prowess of the wrestlers saw them flying through the air and doing complex throws and holds, which got one’s adrenaline pumping. There were also female wrestlers who were just as skilled at fighting as the men.

The next day, we returned to Chapultepec Park, which is double the size of Central Park in New York City. We traveled through the park using Segways. Aside from biking, Segways are perhaps the best way to explore this enormous green space with many historic sites. If you have never used a Segway before, it is very easy to learn. It is a great experience. My 12-yearold daughter got the hang of it after about 10 minutes of training and she did quite well.

Our last day saw us visit the silver mines of Taxco outside Mexico City. The town is quite picturesque with many finely-made silver items for sale. We then went down a recently discovered silver mine beneath a hotel, from which the pre-colonial Indigenous people extracted gold, silver and obsidian. There remain hundreds of millions of dollars worth of silver in the bowels of the earth, but there is a risk that the whole town will collapse if they take too much.

Our week in Mexico City was over too quickly, but I feel like we got an excellent sampling of all that this cosmopolitan city has to offer. It is a dizzying mixture of old and new, with more and more of its ancient Indigenous civilization coming to light, instilling present-day Mexicans with a nationalistic pride that there was so much more to their ancestors than just a conquered people.