Flight of the Chickadee: el DF: parte dos a

This post goes waaayyy back to my second day of three in Mexico City (I hate to admit this, but that was all the way back on July 11th). It's also extremely long, with approximately 20872027 photos. [update: the post was just too long, so I split it into two parts. This is the first half.]

Saturday morning, we got up early-ish and ate breakfast at the hostel. Then we headed downstairs to catch our tour. There were just five of us, which was a nice sized group: Kelly, Kyle, me, and a lovely Danish couple whose names I can't recall. I think the girl was named Ann, but beyond that I'm stumped. We loaded into a large van with Oscar, our driver, and Gerson, our very interesting tour guide. Case in point: he was wearing a giant sombrero.

First stop on the tour was Tlatelolco. First, we walked through the archaeological excavation (more ruins, surprise surprise). Tlatelolco was the twin city of Tenochtitlán. It was here that Hernán Cortés defeated the Aztecs under Cuauhtémoc in 1521, a decisive moment in Mexican history. An estimated more than 40,000 indigenous people died in that massacre.

the ruins at Tlatelolco; the building in the background is the museum.

Different constructions of the Templo Mayor, or main temple

Every so often, the Aztecs would build over their current temple to make it bigger.

"The 13th of August of 1521, heroically defended by Cuauhtemoc, Tlatelolco fell into the power of Hernan Cortes. It was not a triumph nor a defeat. It was the painful birth of of the mestizo people that is the Mexico of today."

Next to the ruins is the Templo de Santiago, or church of Saint James, built by the Spanish in the seventeenth century. In Spain, James became the patron saint of the Reconquista: Santiago Matamoros, or Saint James the Moor-Slayer. In Mexico, he underwent a transformation to Santiago Mataindios-- Saint James the Indian-Slayer. Our tour guide was quite incensed that Mexican people (who are essentially all mestizo) would worship at a church celebrating the murder of their "indian" ancestors.

Templo de Santiago

Between the ruins and the church is the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, or Plaza of the Three Cultures. It is so called because it is flanked by three different cultures: pre-Colombian (ruins of Tlatelolco), colonial Spanish (Templo de Santiago) and modern Mexican or mestizo (housing complex). This was the site of the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre, often referred to as la Noche Triste or the Sad Night. On the evening of October 2, 1968, Mexican police fired on a large student demonstration in the plaza. Several hundred people were killed, but the Mexican government placed the death toll at 30. These events are still a source of anger in Mexico today; the famous 1989 film Rojo Amanecer (Red Dawn) is about the massacre, and another film, Tlatelolco: Mexico 68, is currently rumored to be in production. It was definitely eerie standing in the plaza knowing what had happened there.

Me in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas

This is the memorial dedicated to those who died in the 1968 massacre.

After that, we drove to Tepeyec and the Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, or Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Virgin of Guadalupe is arguably the most recognizable symbol of Mexico. By legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to the indian Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in the early sixteenth century and left her image burned into his cloak, which he had filled with roses. Construction on the basilica in her honor, which would house the cloak with the Virgin's image, began shortly thereafter but was not finished until nearly 200 years later, in the early eighteenth century. There are actually two basilicas at this site now. The new, much larger basilica (Nueva Basílica) was built in the 1970s because the old one (Antigua Basílica) was --guess what?-- sinking. The basilica is one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the world. Some estimates place it second only to Vatican City. The church was stunning.. and it was absolutely packed.