The Modern City

What constitutes modern Mexico? Is there a clear distinction between the historic and modern Mexico City? And if there are, does this distinctions hold up throughout the twentieth century, when what is apparent is a mix of legacies coexisting overtime? This chapter discusses the semiotics of history and modernity. It discusses the struggle of the Mexico City to find its own image including its struggle to preserve historic buildings amidst the differing political alliances that either promote change or preserve the past. However, past is not a single entity, hence if the preservation of the rich history of Mexico is pursued, the question arises as to what periods of history represented in the city are to be favoured in its future development. In this chapter, the focus is on the paradoxes of the Torre Bicentenario and on the pressures to preserve Mexico’s past, the ways they have been juxtaposed against the plans for its future and how the balance of these views has shifted over time. It determines the key actors and the institutions who have embraced history as opposed to progress, identifies the set of forces that dominated in the city’s twentieth-century history, and assesses the long-term implications of the shifting balance for the social, spatial and built environmental character of the city. The chapter ends with a discussion on the current role played by the cultural and historical authorities in determining the fate of the city.

The Colonial City

This chapter demonstrates that while Spain had a clear vision of what the conquered Aztec city should be, the city of the conquistadors was relatively short for it was soon transformed by its Creole inhabitants who made their own identity pronounced on its building and culture. For 300 years, the city of Mexico was the capital of viceroyalty. It was the capital of New Spain and was the seat of the metropolitan archbishopric of Mexico. During the first decades of the seventeenth century, a generation of young Creoles entered the secular priesthood and the religious orders. They challenged the predominance of European Spaniards, affirmed their talents and identity, and started looking back to the glorious past the conquistadors had destroyed. However, the development of the city was constrained and limited by the city’s status as the viceregal capital of New Spain. Its status hence meant that the city depended on the political decisions and cultural influences emanating from the Spanish. Out of this tension, a creative process of change emerged in which different ethnic groups and cultures intermingled and conflicted to ensure that the social composition and character of Mexico City would be different from the other cities in Spanish America. However, these changes were not brought without due loss. Due to the conquest and the Old World diseases the Mexico population fell to the near brink of oblivion. These epidemics and natural calamities continued to afflict the city throughout the colonial period.

The Pre-Columbian City

This chapter attempts to visualize how Tenochtitlan may have looked and functioned before the Spanish invasion. This usually assumed barbaric society with a culture of sacrificing thousand of captives for the blood-thirsty Aztecs was truly a civilized city by any criteria used to define civilizations such as the existence of bureaucracy, sophisticated agricultural technology, ceremonials and monumental architecture. Aztec Tenochtitlan was built and has been civilized more than 2,000 years ago. This ancient Mexican city started in the year Two Reed, it proliferated into stone-built city larger than Europe and had functions and bureaucracy similar to that of the sixteenth century Madrid. In terms of agriculture, the Aztec city has sophisticated agricultural technology—the chinampas which provided for the Aztecs and which provided insight into the chinampa ownership history of this ancient civilization. Complex architectural buildings also graced the Aztec civilization before the invasion of the Spaniards. Palaces, temples and avenues were dominant in this old Mexican civilization. These buildings were characterized by their complex decorations of serpents, murals and sculpture celebrating the state, its rulers, its gods and their conquests.

Introduction

This volume was a result of a symposium that discussed the history and culture of Mexico. It focuses on the city's culture and history and presents specific perspectives derived from the observant eyes and lens of the different authors and scholars of the chapters here, containing insight from various fields. While Mexico is generally assumed to be a city afflicted with problems such as social inequality, environmental denigration and traffic congestion made worse by government inadequacies and mismanagement, this volume presents a rather optimistic note that reverberates in the chronicles and voices in the chapters. Building on this sentiment, the chapters that follow aim to celebrate Mexico City as a focal point of cultural creativity, dynamism and diversity. From its foundation in 1324 as Tenochtitlan to the present day, the volume provides a window to the constantly evolving space that is Mexico City.

The Poetic City

This chapter discusses the ways in which the poet and poetry have traced the invisible map of Mexico City and how this literary art protected and strengthened memories while also helping the Mexicans to live each day with an increased dignity. The focus of this chapter is on the reflections created by the poets and their poetry from the Tenochtitlan period to the early twenty-first century with emphasis on the mid-nineteenth century onwards. This period is specifically a century of prose and poetry that stood as testaments to the beauty, downfall and the rise of Mexico City. Through the poets, poetry has became an avenue for the rich illustrations of the transformations Mexico has undergone such as the rise of nationalism, and the emergence of a gender role and a new gender awareness. Writing in this period has become a source of enlightenment and poets specifically have played a prominent role as urban planners, insiders who narrated the city’s transformations, educators who enforced virtues, and biographers of emotions. From the King Nezahualcóyotl to the poet Eduardo Lizalde, poets have found ways of describing and celebrating the city without falling into despair, because the very naming and exploration of despair is a way of transcending it.

The Cinematic City

This chapter discusses a city created by a cinema and a cinema created by the city, with emphasis on the dynamic interplay of these two. In this chapter the focus is on the last three decades, from 1977 to 2007, a period wherein the symbols and social expressions that were used to delineate the city have grown in strength while some others have consolidated to form Mexico’s current identity. In some of the cases, these symbols were placed in the film intentionally, while others seemed like they appeared through chance. The development of cinema in Mexico was bound with the developments of the city. Mexican cinema has played an important role as a mirror that reflected the developments within the city. Through the medium of film, the moving image became the most useful tool for visualizing the immeasurable wholeness of the city. In this chapter, the most defining moments that have found their way into the Mexican cinema are discussed. These events are the 1985 earthquake, the realities of globalization, and the defeat of the PRI in the 2000 elections. These are interwoven into narratives and images that explore dislocation, isolation and different forms of resistance.

The Photographic City

This chapter presents powerful images and accounts that chronicle contemporary urban life in Mexico. The images discussed were captured by the photographer Maya Goded. These photographs and narratives chronicle the desolation of death, the world of the child and the bleak world of prostitution. In addition to these, the woman’s prison, the attractions of lucha libre (masked wrestling), the national lottery and games of chance, and the mass rallies of the Zapatistas, are painted vibrantly through chronicles and accounts. In these chronicles and photographs, the theme of poverty and the failure of the government to address the needs of the marginalized people form the unifying voice of these accounts. Prostitution, wrestling and the lottery became means for the people to escape poverty and the humdrum of everyday lives marked with difficulties. And the mistreatment of children, the trafficking of the rights of women in prisons and the lack of systematic identification of the victims of death reflect the failure of the government to produce laws and services that protect its people. However, despite the bleakness of the photographs and the chronicles presented herein, they nevertheless reflect the resilience of the Mexicans in surviving the challenges of life despite the feeling of being marginalized.

Mexico City: Space to Mourn, Time to Spend

This chapter describes Mexico City through the observant eyes of Carlos Monsiváis, an influential and engaging commentator of the transformations of the city. This urban cronica offers snapshots of the post-apocalyptic city. It looks at the different ways in which the ordinary people negotiate and appropriate urban space or the lack of space in the city and amusingly presents such snapshots of Mexico City as its source of pride. Blending humour with social criticism, the chapter discusses the ‘humanism of squeeze’ and the pluralism on the metro and subway of Mexico wherein singularity and anonymity is abolished by squeezing the nation into an entire square meter. The chapter also offers political criticisms for the travails of working and marginalized people with a sense of wit including the attempts for the Americanization of some of the cities of the nation.