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A poet once wrote about Ireland A terrible beauty is born; the same could be said of Mexico.1 It is a vividly beautifully country, with extremely friendly and open people; however, it is a country that has serious and pressing problems. Over half of the 100 million population live in poverty, there are high rates of crime, in particular, violent crime and kidnappings. Even more worrying, Mexicans continue to migrate in huge numbers across the 3,000-km border with the US, resulting in hundreds of deaths from heat exhaustion and dehydration while thousands of Mexican woman and children are forced to work in the sex industry.2 To make matters worse, there are reports of widespread corruption in the government, a major drug trafficking scene, and a full scale armed rebellion is under way in Chiapas in the south of the country led by the masked and charismatic Subcomandante Marcos, regarded as the new Ernesto �Che� Guevara�.3 From the arrival of Hern�n Cort�s and his 400 conquistadors in 1519 to the turn of the twentieth century, Mexico has a history of conflict, death and revolution all of which is strikingly portrayed by Diego Rivera, arguably Mexico�s greatest painter, in the presidential residence. Mexico City is a chaotic, heavily polluted, over-crowded and vibrant metropolis. There are people everywhere, which is not surprising given its population of over 20 million. Under an absurdly large Mexican flag in the city�s central square, Native Mexican Indians perform colourful ceremonies using incense to ward off evil spirits, market vendors sell the latest Britney Spears CD, as t-shirts of Che Guevara and Jim Morrison go like hot cakes. Not far from this unlikely scene, a street filled with jewellers' shops, fifteen in all, are each guarded by two policemen, one with a machine gun, the other brandishing a shotgun, both wearing bullet-proof vests. 'Welcome to my home', said the gold teethed woman. Her �home� was located in the centre of one of Mexico City�s municipal dumps. In order to get there, we had to drive for twenty minutes past children covered from head to toe in dirt playing with the discarded toys from the world�s second largest city. In between the mountains of refuse, mangy and disease-ridden dogs searched for leftovers as rats scurried for cover amidst Coca-Cola cans and McDonald�s wrappers. I considered the deleterious effects of eking out a meagre existence in such conditions and looked out over a Mexico City covered by a blue pall of pollution; people in the foreground milled between hundreds of shacks, going about their daily struggles, some succeeding, most just barely getting by. A far more sanitised scene awaited us in Teotithuacan or the City of the Gods, |
the site where the Toltecs and later the Aztecs rose to dominance. The place had an eerie feel to it. Maybe it had something do with the fact that the Aztecs had taken the Toltec teaching of the giving of the open heart to the sun too literally and conducted live sacrifices to appease the Gods.4 Cort�s and his men, who were welcomed by the Emperor Monctezuma as gods, must have been shocked by what they saw (that is when there were not thinking about slaughtering the 200,000 inhabitants and seizing the vast quantities of gold for themselves). Along the Avenue of the Dead are pyramids that rise as high as a twenty-storey building and are aligned with the stars and the solar system. They are without doubt a remarkable achievement for a so-called primitive society comparable to those in Egypt. Climbing up the largest of the pyramids called pyramid Del Sol (pyramid of the Sun), 210 feet high and 650 feet square, I couldn�t help thinking about the fate of so many others who had tread a similar path, never to return. The view from the top was quite simply spectacular but it must have been the last sight that thousands witnessed before being swiftly despatched to the next world. I sat and pondered this and other issues and to paraphrase the last Aztec poet wondered, "Where is Mexico going? Will these people ever know real peace and prosperity?" The omens are good. Backed by a deep religious conviction, Mexicans are slowly turning things around. The election of Vicente Fox, in 2000, marked a turning point in Mexico�s political fortunes, as it was the first time in 70 years that a member of the opposition Alliance for Change was elected president. Fox is attempting to resolve the situation in Chiapas. He launched an investigation into the disappearance of left-wing activists in the 70s and 80s while in June 2002, millions of security files were released shedding light on the torture and killing by security forces of hundreds of political activists.5 Most recently, he scored a victory for the 38.8 million Mexicans living in the US, with the Bush administration�s decision to draft new immigration legislation. Economically the situation is proving more difficult. In 1995, after a devaluation of the peso, Mexico suffered its worst recession in half a century. Since then, debt relief, diversification, foreign investment, oil production and tourism have led to an economic upturn.6 However, the plight of Mexico�s poor remains desperate and with the collapse of the world trade talks in Cancun in September 2003 prosperity remains a dream for many.7 So Mexico faces many challenges, nevertheless, it is a country which is used to enduring hardships and does so with remarkable fortitude, to echo the words of the Mexican poet Octavio Paz: only the slave can speak of freedom with authority. |
1. W.B.Yeats, �Easter 1916� http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/soundings/easter.htm
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1210774.stm
3. The Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) is allegedly fighting to change Mexico�s constitution to recognise the rights of the indigenous Mexicans.
4. http://www.crystallinks.com/toltecs.html.
5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1210779.stm.
6. http://www.historychannel>com/perl/print_book.pl?ID=23762.
7. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1210774.stm.