Mexico #2

You might say my entry titles are lazy. Well, you'd be right.

We spent all day yesterday in el Bosque de Chapultepec (the park with the castle from the day before in it), this time at the national anthropology museum: el Museo Nacional de Antropologia. (Spanish is pretty hard to understand, huh) The museum is gigantic. They cover a handful of pre-Columbian cultures, which I haven't learned to keep straight. I thought the Mexica (Aztec) pottery I was looking at was the best, but then I discovered that I was actually in the Oaxaca section of the museum. Whatever that means. Anyway, there were also monumental Mayan and Aztec sculptures that I had my fill of last time I was here. The top floor was dedicated to modern indigenous people. It provided some contrast to the Museum of the American Indian, which we saw in DC and did a much better job of avoiding the easy trap of portraying Indians as people of the past who had exotic customs but are no longer around (since they were the victims of our nation's history). The DC museum gave the exhibit's subjects (American Indians, in case you forgot) significant space to represent themselves, and had a great exhibit that connected traditions, politics and history to the present. The DF museum (de antropologia) had some mannequins wearing weird clothes, and also a video that I sort of slept through. But that was my fault. Anyway, what you really want to see are my pictures.

[Pictures will be inserted here once I get back to Chicago. Keep checking!]

We had a great evening with a dozen friends from the University of Chicago. Julia and her husband, Spiro, hosted a delicious dinner, and I'm always so impressed by how interesting and friendly that group of academics is.

Today, we went to Leon Trotsky's house in Coyoacan (a neighborhood, or colonia, of Mexico City). What a life. I'm so glad no one I know is an enemy of Stalin's. Trotsky's history in Mexico is also a striking reminder of how small the circle was; there was a lot of overlap amongst groups that now seem distinct. The same people were famous artists, intellectuals, and political figures. The muralist Siquieros led the first Mexican attempt on Trotsky's life. Before that, Trotsky was living with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

After la Casa de Trotsky, we went to a strange Museum of Intervention. It is housed by a building that used to serve as a Franciscan monastery. Some of the exhibits show what monastic life there was like, but the main rooms basically deride Spain, France, and the US for "interventions" in Mexico (mostly invasions) in the last two centuries. It was kinda boring. Plus I was really hungry.

It's Tequila Night at the hostel. Not sure if we'll attend; I'm enjoying all the social activity, but we've had two late nights in a row already. And really, is the prospect of lots of drunk American college-age tourists (and a Czech guy who we met at breakfast who loves the Second Amendment, y un mexicano con su novia espanola) appealing at all?

Nap time. It's raining, hard.