Megacity problems

A trip into the center of Mexico City was a pretty quick way to experience one of the problems of being in a megacity. 

The plan was for me to skip lunch at work and leave late afternoon to visit the museum of art in the central historical district.  Uber rides are plentiful and cheap in Mexico city and we were able to easily get to where we needed to go from our AirBnb in the suburb of Escandon (a 15 min drive West of the center).  

First the museum

 

The museum (Palacio de Bella Artes) had a fairly long line of people waiting to get in and we were a little surprised and disappointed to discover that the only areas accessible to us were one exhibition of the work of Federico Silva, and the walls of the main atrium - 3 stories high.

The art on these walls were murals by famous Mexican artists, including Diego Rivera who was married to Frida Kahlo (who is one of Anne's favorite artists).   

Anne and Nick taking photos of a work by Federico Silva

The Rivera murals from the 1930s depict emerging communist heroes and mock white tourists and the police and government of Mexico in various panels - reflecting the political and social corruption of the period that motivated his interest in communism.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo sheltered Leon Trotsky during his exile in Mexico for 2 years (1937-1939) and she became his lover during that time.  

The mural of an artist who hated Trotsky and who attempted but failed to assassinate him hangs across from Diego Rivera's murals, prompting the museum guide to point out that the museum's halls had an artist who wanted to save Trotsky, another who wanted to kill him, while Frida just wanted him.

Carnival of Mexican Life Polyptych - 1936

Diego created a commissioned mural for the Rockefeller center in 1932 as a portrait of a man at a crossroad looking in high hope at a vision of the future.  His original sketch was not very confrontational but Diego was criticized for being a sell-out by leftists in New York.  

When he actually created the mural he more or less ignored the original sketch altogether. 

Rockefeller's son said that his father is depicted sipping martinis with a harlot (along with other unflattering things) while Lenin is depicted on the right (other communist figures including Trotsky and Karl Marx appear on the far right).  Rivera was asked to paint over Lenin and refused, saying he'd rather the artwork was destroyed than mutilated and it was ultimately chiseled off the wall in New York.  Later the mural was recreated by Diego in Mexico.

Then the crush of people

After the visit to the museum we walked up a block or two to the central plaza in the historical district called the Zócalo. 

We had a really fancy meal in a restaurant nearby and then decided to make our way back to Escandon.

Admittedly it is the week between Christmas and New Year but I was instantly reminded of the crush of Halloween celebrants in the little walkway near the Peabody museum on Halloween weekend (multiplied by thousands).

Every public walkway (broad streets closed to traffic) leading away from the Zócalo was full of people making their way in and away from the center and every street perpendicular to these was full of back-to-back cars trying to make their way along.

We were shell shocked within a few minutes, trying to figure out the best way to get out of the city.

Nick suggested that we walk a few blocks until we came to a major road that was not gridlocked with traffic.  I was struck by some of the shops including one that sells clothing repurposed from used clothing and one with clothing hung in layers a story high on the wall outside.

As we we walked, the crowds did not diminish but the setting became less glitzy and gradually less appealing and we eventually huddled on the corner of a gridlocked side-street and a main road waiting the 9 minutes or so for an Uber to make its way to us.

Megacities

I was surprised to read that of the top ten megacities (population over 10million) only one (New York, 23 mil) is in the United States.  Wikipedia sources an article with population figures published in Jan 2022 which shows that London reached this threshold in 2020 (14.8mil) with Johannesburg (14.5mil) making the threshold between 2020 and 2022 which is a phenomenal rate of growth.

The articles about megacities point out that the problems are exacerbated in less developed countries.  

Sanitation and water delivery are two major problems as are societal issues associated with crowding: transport, slums, crime, air pollution.

Mexico City has its share of additional challenges including being in an active earthquake zone.  The country is the region with the most severe natural disasters worldwide including volcanos, tsunamis, hurricanes with earthquakes with the three most recent in the city being (Sep 2022, Sep 2017 and April 2014).

As a result of earthquakes and lack of maintenance of the infrastructure for delivering water, the city has been using (and losing) more water than the underground aquifer that delivers it can provide.  The draining of the aquifer is reported by Latinamerica Reports (Sept 2021) to be causing the city to sink by 20 inches (50cm) a year.  

Sanitary waste water treatment challenges make it hard to keep the water that does collect during rainy seasons clean and the crumbling water delivery infrastructure is leaking a staggering amount of water back into the soil.  Currently around 20% of the population only have access to running water for part of the day.

Water 

Not even the locals drink tap water in the city and there are plenty of warnings online about drinking tap water.  Some people will avoid wetting their toothbrush with tap water or opening their eyes or mouth in the shower but this is considered unnecessarily cautious by most.

There is a major industry with drinking water, some large 5 gallon bottles that are exchanged in many of the local shops and smaller bottles that you can buy for about $1.62 US.  We have been carefully washing raw vegetables and fruit with bottled water.

Large blue-capped water bottles stacked at the right

A couple of days before New Year's day we were planning to go to a famous restaurant in Roma where you get a traditional meal served on ochre pottery plates and cooked in a traditional open kitchen.  

The wait was two hours because you can't book and it is incredibly popular and so we decided to go to a small vegan restaurant around the corner instead.

We don't know if it was the fresh fruit juice served there or something else we had that day, but Anne and Nick were both not feeling great the day after when we visited the traditional restaurant again for breakfast.  By that afternoon Anne was flat on her back and what followed was two days of massive headache, nausea and upset stomach.  The standard pills (ibuprophen and paracetamol) didn't make a dent and so she had to ride the storm without help.

Nick had it less bad - he was off his feet for the night and feeling generally miserable for the next day but Anne took about 3 days before she started to feel normal again.

This photo shows a combination of things on the AirBnb counter after New Year's eve:

• Anne's special water bottle with 0.2-0.01 micron filtration
• bottled drinking water
• grapes for the traditional 1grape per each of the 12 strikes of the clock to bring luck in the new year
• honey for rooibos tea (yes we brought that with us) and 
• wine for me, watching over Anne as she fought with Montezuma.