On my first visit to Mexico City as a young student I toured Teotihuacan and fell in love with the country’s pre-Columbian past. It almost happened by accident as the trip itself was made because Aeronaves the airline that later became AeroMexico had a sale offering a round trip from the border to Mexico City for $89.00.
I was home from school visiting my parents in Mercedes, Texas in the Rio Grande Valley and decided to take up the offer. When I arrived at my destination I did not know where to go and so a taxi driver took me to the Hotel del Bosque on Paseo de la Reforma promising that it would be inexpensive.
Later I learned that the hotel was walking distance to the National Museum of Anthropology and History that became a must visit every time we were in the city. It was outside the hotel that I met a man with a car and for $10.00 took me to Teotihuacan, the most important city of pre-Colombian Mesoamerica.
The National Museum of Anthropology and History is the typical event of the day I am describing. This time I stayed downtown in the Historic District, a block from the famous Juarez Avenue with its Alameda Park and the beauti- ful Instituto de Bellas Artes with its unique architecture and hometoperformancesbytheBalletFolkloricoDeMexicode Amalia Hernandez that I attended over the years.
I got up very early in the morning and took a walk along the freshly cleaned streets and the magic of no people and little traffic all the way to the Zocalo Square and its monumental buildings that include the Presidential Palace and back to begin the day.
Breakfast was at Sanborns House of Tiles restaurant, a beautiful mansion off Cinco de Mayo Avenue that is covered with Puebla tiles and has been a prominent part of the city’s colonial and independent history. Stories of how the outside walls got tiled this way add to the mystery of its grandeur.
The visit to the museum itself began at an entrance dominated by a round obelisk depicting Mesoamerican designs covered by a fountain roof that rains water on the monument. The building itself is U shaped with artifacts of the Aztec world dominating the displays at the bottom of the U.
The tour began on the right side that includes displays of human evolution followed by the archaeological history of Classic Teotihuacan and Post-Classic Toltec civilizations. The center of the U is occupied by the famous Sunstone calendar carved during the last period of the Aztec civilization and an artifact that I have studied and am still trying to understand.
The left side of the museum holds a Mayan collection that includes written records in stone and displays of its unique architecture. It also holds the Olmec collection with its giant human heads and ocean motives that testify to a strong beginning of Mesoamerican civilizations.
The museum has an excellent cafeteria where I had lunch before coming back to visit the Historic District again. This time it was bustling with people, traffic and the intense activity of a world-class city.
I arrived at Templo Mayor next to the Zocalo and the center of ancient Tenochtitlan to visit the uncovered base of the pyramid temples that were the most sacred ground of the empire. Visiting the monuments and the museum there, I thought of what those silent stones might be thinking about a future they helped to shape.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of la Voz bilingüe. Comments and responses may be directed to news@lavozcolorado.com.
