Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Lunch in Teotihuacan

Adjacent to Teotihuatlan, the village of San Martín de las Pirámides provides a convenient destination for lunch. Ravenous from so much walking and pyramid climbing, we head for the mercado and some quesadillas. My lunch is cooking in the middle of the comal: quesadillas de flor de calabaza and quesadillas de champiñones (squash blossom and mushroom).

 

Heaped on the tortillas in the foreground are sesos—brains. Considered a great delicacy by many Mexicans, I've never found them appealing. However, I did sample a quesadilla de panza. The filling is stomach—not tripe mind you—but the actual stomach of some animal. It was quite tasty.

These quesadillas are not made with traditional round flour tortillas. The cook places a blob of masa—cornmeal dough—into this device. As with a pasta machine, she gives a crank a single turn. Rollers press the masa into a thick patty, and a second roller cuts it into an oval shape. It's cool to watch.

 

She places the masa ovals on her comal and adds cheese along with whatever other ingredients you want: onions, squash blossoms, brains... She ladles copious amounts of oil from the aluminum pot on her left, more in my opinion than is needed to keep the quesadillas from sticking. This is not going to be a low-fat meal.

 

Her hands move in a blur. She must have served twenty people in as many minutes. Hers is a popular place. Every stool was filled and often customers stood behind in ranks, waiting for their lunches.

 

Mercado food is a favorite for me. I wish it was even remotely healthy, but it's not. So I only get to eat it on rare occasions. But it tastes sooo good, and dining shoulder to shoulder with an amiable bunch of strangers only adds to the experience.

Nuisance Control

At the entrance to the Teotihuacan Museum, a sign informs us about limits on our behavior. Set for the common good, we accept them gratefully.



No dogs, no bike riding, no futbol, no boom boxes. No roast turkey.

Got it.

The Museum at Teotihuacan

A rcheological workers at Teotihuacan have unearthed a wealth of objects. A museum on the site displays a selection. We wander through a series of softly lit galleries.

 

Fragments of frescoes carefully lifted from hidden walls tantalize us with glimpses into the minds of ancient artists.

During the millennium since the fall of Teotihuacan, a few pieces of pottery managed to survive, some better than others. A tiny seated figure meditates; a life-sized head seems all the more terrifying for the pieces that are missing.

The head of a singer informs in a single piece that the inhabitants of Teotihuacan practiced performing arts as well as plastic ones. The piece is perfect, miraculously surviving the fall of the city and subsequent depredations of vandals and scavengers.

Ancient Mesoamericans may not have used the wheel for transportation, but they certainly found other uses for it. The perfect form of this exquisite alabaster bowl could only have been produced on a lathe.

Sharp tools were made from obsidian, a volcanic glass that when properly worked, produces edges as keen as scalpels. The curators cleaved this large chunk of obsidian as a demonstration piece by striking it with a round stone hand hammer.

Wicked leaf-shaped knives are on display, some nearly a foot long. Outstanding among the obsidian artifacts, this knapped hook catches my imagination. It looks just like the knife used by the torturer to eviscerate Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

A finely polished bone needle illustrates yet again the sophistication and skill of Teotihuacan's toolmakers.

An entire gallery is dedicated to housing a scale model of the pyramid site. This view encompasses the north half of Teotihuacan, with the Pyramid of the Sun in the foreground and the Pyramid of the Moon in back.

Curiously missing from the museum's exhibits are metal artifacts. Probably only objects made from gold would have survived uncorroded. I imagine security considerations would preclude housing such valuables at a location so remote as this one.

A small but exquisite museum, I was torn between spending time studying the exhibits and going outside to explore the ruins.

Teotihuacan

Yesterday I mentioned Mexicans' propensity for leaving stoneworks behind. An old military outpost, a crumbling chapel, a humble dwelling open to the sky—they're all interesting and often photogenic. But stoneworkers have been stacking rocks for centuries, since well before the Spanish got here. And these Prehispanic works are arguably their greatest achievements.

Laura and I have run down to Mexico City to immerse ourselves in the big tourist attractions. Our first stop is the Teotihuacan Pyramids, one of the Mexico's greatest archeological sites, ranking up there with Chichén Itzá and Uxmal.

We enter the site from the south, making our way toward the Pyramid of the Sun, intent on climbing it. Ever rebellious, we eschew the Avenue of the Dead, finding ourselves alone on a service road arcing around to the east. We feel as if we have thousands of acres all to ourselves.

 

Teenagers have come this way, unable to resist an urge to leave graffiti carved into maguey leaves. "Erika, I love you. Sincerely, Fabian."

The climb looks formidable. We take full advantage of the breaks in the steep steps to catch our breath. The air is thin at 7,200' and the conditioning we get running up and down the Chorro Steps isn't preparation enough for this climb.

 

The pyramids are built of millions of cubic yards of adobe faced with stone. Originally finished with thick plaster painted red, today we see rocks sticking out of the surface. Their purpose was to anchor the decorative facing to keep it from sliding off under the forces of erosion and earthquakes. The surface we see is a restoration, part of an effort begun at the beginning of the 20th Century.

 

Teotihuacan is a world-class destination. A pair of Japanese tourists make their way down the pyramid steps.

 

Years ago, Wal-Mart built a mega-store in the town near the pyramids. The intellectual left reacted in outrage that a symbol of U. S. hegemony would despoil the country's cultural heritage. From atop the pyramid I search in vain for the offending building. I am unable to make it out, but the stacks of the coal burning CFE power plant stand out plainly on the horizon.

 

Lots of people visit the site. I estimate this row of buses carried a thousand visitors here today.

 

Yet there's never a sense of crowding. The place is simply too big. There are hundreds of people in this photograph. You can barely make out a large tour group just to the right of the point where the pavement turns from red to black.

 

Once atop the Pyramid of the Sun, no one is anxious to hurry back down. We invest too much energy to squander it on a quick visit. This visitor reads up on Teotihuacan in her guidebook, raising her eyes from time to time to contemplate the Pyramid of the Moon.

 

Throughout the site vendors harass visitors, offering cheesy bows and arrows, obsidian masks, Mayan calendars and the like. Purported handcrafts, they somehow all manage to look manufactured. A favorite is a toy that makes sound like the cry of a cheetah. We hear big cat screams all day long.

 

We find a more satisfying cat tucked into the side of a minor platform. A painting of a cheetah has somehow escaped the ravages of erosion and vandalism. Teotihuacan must have once been a very colorful place.

 

Today it is more than a tourist attraction, more than an arena where licensed salesmen prey on gullible tourists. Teotihuacan is a major archeological research site. Careful excavation reveals rich detail about the lives of the original inhabitants and builders, thought to have numbered more than 100,000.

Archeological workers screen excavated soil to recover small artifacts.

 

Eventually we descend the Pyramid of the Sun and walk along the Avenue of the Dead past scores of platforms.

 

The avenue ends at the Pyramid of the Moon. We've done all the pyramid climbing we want, so we're satisfied just standing and contemplating it.



A day simply isn't enough to take all this in. I need more time. A vague sense of guilt steals over me for not working harder at trying to comprehend the society that built the Pyramids of Teotihuacan. The works left behind here are not the works of some primitive tribe of indigenos. A sophisticated administrative and social structure was required to create a city on this scale.

That the builders were brilliant is evident from these remains. That they were subject to the same follies as their descendants is also evident. Teothuacan was not conquered and razed by the conquistadores. The city collapsed sometime during the 7th or 8th Century, possibly in a civil war.