The uglier face of Mexico City (DF) (written August 10)

This Sunday our group leader promised to show us the two faces of Mexico City. Kudos Rob.

Mexico City’s central plaza is perhaps best known for its sheer size, second worldwide only to Moscow’s Red Square. Just outside its premises sits Mexico’s national palace, where the president once lived and where dozens of legislatures now have their offices. As you walk up the grandiose colonial-styled staircase, you’re greeted by Diego Rivera’s world-renowned murals that occupy the walls of nearly an entire level of the four storied building. With each step you enter a new scene from some period of Mexico’s more than 2000 year-old modern history, from pre-Hispanic Mayan marketplaces to Zapata leading fellow field workers through the streets demanding fair treatment. Perhaps, however, Rivera’s greatest achievement was his ability to accurately portray the subjugation of ‘indios’ under the nearly 3 hundred years of Spanish rule inaugurated with Cortes’ invasion at the turn of the 15th century.

And really, it makes sense that this would be his focus. You only have to walk for five minutes before you’ve left the capital city’s clean and manicured center and entered the underbelly of Mexican society. Once you squeeze your way through the standstill human traffic that makes getting through the two blocks of the city’s black market take nearly a half hour, you take a breath, look up, and ask the person next to you where you are. With its 40 year old VW bug taxis dominating the roads and its rows of apartment buildings with their blues, yellows and oranges peeling off after maybe a century of weathering, which hasn’t neglected to leave its indelible mark on the barely visible, rotting 19th-century wooden window frames, this place is proof that Cuba isn’t the only country with a Habana.

I only had moments to be taken aback by the scene before our group leader had us come close as he told us “I wasn’t sure if I’d remember how to get there, but I have. When we turn this corner, it’ll be the first alley on your left.” Excited to see firsthand such a social phenomenon, and to escape the odor of the decaying rat that we were standing directly next to, we made our way along the less crowded side street. In an attempt to avoid attracting attention, Rob used only a nod of the head to indicate that we had arrived at our destination. He had already told us that while girls were advised against doing so, anyone was free to enter.

I entered the dark alley, more accurately described as an above ground ninja-turtle-esque sewer. With the crowd that had amassed in a neatly shaped oval around the main spectacle, I did my best to fit in. However, my plan was quickly spoiled when four girls from my group walked up, whispering in English, apparently to give me unwelcome company. There was a reason why girls didn’t come to this place. There were already plenty to go around.

Similar to how I imagine Iowan dairy farmers stand at a local fair attempting to spot a winner out of the passing cows, 150 Mexican, mostly middle-aged men, stood in silent vigilance as they struggled to pick one of the 20 marching, scantily dressed women to take home, or more likely to a hotel.

Bizarrely, more respect was shown to these women parading around in some back alley looking to be paid for sex than I’ve seen be shown to female students in my group as they walk past the local mechanics on their way to school. With no head pimp in sight (of course this can only be validated by the fact that I didn’t see a dude with big shades and a purple top hat, relying unnecessarily on the aid of a oversized cane) the whole process was truly a testament to man’s capability to work as part of a team to get things done without requiring the assisting hand of authority. For instance, I saw one man politely make his way through the crowd toward the ring of women, where he then shyly motioned to one of the women who came over and began, I assume, to list services and prices. All this occurred within a matter of seconds and without attracting any attention. As is common when playing golf or eating out with your boss, in this darker than black ‘market’ there seemed to exist an unspoken etiquette that no involved party had the nerve to violate, risking throwing the entire operation into mayhem.

It came as no surprise to see that these women didn’t seem overly excited to be there. Not only would saying that they didn’t have smiles on their faces be a serious understatement, they didn’t feel compelled to exert much of any effort to outshine the competition. While not dressed for church, these women wouldn’t necessarily stand out if they roamed the streets of DF. These women had been sold and resold more than enough times for them to know that being sold was not the problem. The only real problem to be avoided was any interruption to market demand, aka: the group of wide-eyed, drop-jawed gringos that had stolen half the crowd’s attention away from the main attraction. So, after less than thirty seconds, our visit to the local sex market came to a somewhat frightening conclusion.

The scene wasn’t unlike the one I had seen just minutes before portrayed by Rivera in the Mexico City Palace. Rivera’s shows indigenous women being beaten and raped by a Spanish colonialist more than four hundred years ago. Here, I don’t mean to compare the Spanish conquistadores to the Mexican men in the alley, but rather to those on top of Mexican society that benefit from the perpetuation of the disintegration of the lower classes. (I promise you, you're going to have trouble finding a sex parade in upper-class DF). Both tell the tale of the poverty and abuse that the majority of Mexican society has and continues to be subjected to at the hands of the elite.