Got out into the city late today, making my first stop at my favorite bakery, Pasteleria Ideal, in the historic center. It was quiet since most Mexicans were still at mass, but overflowing with baked goods. I limited myself to a cinnamon donut, a kind of lightly glazed rolled pastry, and a kind of muffin with a light lemony angel food cake texture. I will miss the Mexico City bakeries. I will also probably end up bringing home type II diabetes as well.
I found a cafe on one of the pedestrian cross streets, and sipped a latte outside while munching on my pastries.
Stopped by the Feria del Los Disenadors Independentes in the Pasaje America, which is basically a corridor through a building connecting two streets. The pasaje was filled with tables covered with work by independent designers- jewelers, tee shirts, stickers, felt, soaps, makeup, artesianal mescal, etc. etc.
I finally made it to Palacio Belles Artes, which is actually more of a theater venue than a museum, although the murals by Sisquieros and Diego Rivera are pretty amazing.
In particular, Diego painted a huge mural, Humanity at the Crossroads, which was apparently a re-creation of the mural he created for the Rockafeller center in New York. The Rockafellers had it destroyed because of the anti-capitalist themes. What the hell did they expect? It would be like the US Army commissioning Pablo Picaso for a mural at West Point, or asking Cat Stevens to write a national anthem for the US.
I've seen sketches of the Rockafeller mural, and this one is very different. It looks like the Rockafeller version suggested anti-capitalist themes. This mural in the museum featured Kant and Lenin and the uniters of humanity. Maybe el Sapo was a little upset.
The building of the Belles Artes was constructed under the lengthy dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, who wanted to remake Mexico City in the image of Paris. To that end, he had numerous civic buildings in the beaux arts style erected.
The ornate white marble shell of the Belles Artes was completed but revolution and geophysics intervened. Construction stopped and the heavy shell began to sink into the soft lakebed. After the revolution, the sinking was halted and the interior finished in an amazing art-deco style.
After the Belles Artes, I worked my way back across the centro to where I was supposed to meet Sergio for lunch. I popped into another palace, the palacio Iturbide, where there was an exhibit of the Guadalupine, the Virgin of Guadalupe.
After the miraculous appearance of the Virgin on the tunic of the poor indigenous Juan Diego, there was both a massive need for depictions of the virgin, but also a need for technical accuracy. Apparently, the populace felt that for maximum miraculousness of the reproductions of the image, that technical accuracy was critical. So a template was created and passed around the various artists of the 1700s, leading to a standardized depiction of the Virgin, even down to the placement of the stars on her cloak.
As an image, its fascinating. Why, for example, is the virgin cloaked in night sky? Why is she standing on a crescent moon? Are those clouds parting around her? What is the function of the little cherub at her feet? There is something enigmatically Buddha-like in her expression- serene, with a head inclined in prayer, but smiling slightly. There are some who say that the pattern on her dress is actually remarkably pre-columbian, and that it is possible to pick out pre-columbian religious symbols from her tunic.
The Guadalupe has always been a contentious issue. For decades, the Catholic church refused to recognize the divinity of the appearance to Juan Deigo, and, with good reason, suspected that the cult-type worship that emerged around the virgin of Guadalupe was actually a masked form of worship to an earth goddess venerated even before the Aztecs.
Really, its has not been that long since a congregation in a rural village was exposed for hiding pagan indigenous gods behind the alterpieces in the local Catholic church. Mexico is an unbelievably compromised/hybridized country.
Anyway, I met Serigo for lunch at Coox Hanal, a Yucatan restaurant with an excellent reputation. Sergio actually came yesterday to make reservations since they dont take them over the phone. I was expecting really expensive, but actually, it was really surprisingly cheap. Pork featured heavily on the menu.
I got a surpsingly good lime-pork soup and some pork/bean tacos, polished off with a Mexican beer. About 100 pesos. Delicious and cheap. We passed a line that wound around the stairs as we left.
Sergio came over tonight to drink some mescal before he takes off to Switzerland tuesday, and I entrusted him with my birthday present for Saori. He was kind enough to take it with him and to mail it from his home country, so it should get to her sooner rather than later.
Time for bed. It's past midnight and I have a busy week ahead.
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