5. Mexico City
It was in the 16th century that the Spanish conquistadors discovered and captured the original Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, as reported by their leader Hernán Cortés to the King of Spain.
“The great city is situated in a salt lake, two leagues from the mainland. There are four entrances, formed by artificial causeways, each as wide as two spears’ length… its principal streets are very wide and straight; some of these, and all the inferior ones, are half land and half water and are navigated by canoes… The city has many public squares where markets are held continuously… The city contains many temples or houses for their idols, very handsome edifices; in the principal ones reside religious persons of each sect… Along one of the causeways that lead into the city are laid two pipes, constructed of masonry, each of which is two paces in width and about five feet in height. An abundant supply of excellent water is conveyed by one of these pipes and distributed about the city.” *
Then, more than 400 hundred years later, the condition of the modernising Mexico City in the mountainous plateau of Central America was as described by Graham Greene in 1939.
“The shape of most cities can be simplified as a cross; not so Mexico City, elongated and lopsided on its mountainous plateau. It emerged like a railway track from a tunnel – the obscure narrow streets lying to the west of the Zócalo, the great square in which the cathedral sails like an old rambling Spanish galleon close to the National Palace. Behind in the tunnel, the university quarter, high dark stony streets… Out of the Zócalo (one) emerges into sunlight. The Cinco de Mayo and the Francisco Madero, fashionable shopping streets run like twin tracks, containing smart Mayfair stations, the best antique shops, American teashops, Sanborn’s, towards the Palace of Arts and the Alameda. Tucked behind them is Tacuba… After the Palace of Arts the parallel tracks are given different names as they run along beside the trees and fountains of Moctezuma Park, the Avenida Juarez full of tourist shops, and the Avenida Hidalgo… and then wanders off… and is closed by the Great Arch of the Republic… (Finally) we turn south-west into the Paseo de la Reforma, the great avenue Maximilian made, running right out of the city to the gates of Chapultepec”. **
Now, well into the 21st century, whilst the historic area retains its central place, the city is surrounded by increasingly densely populated buildings, offices, towers along the main avenues extending outwards in all directions.
As the population has soared, most strikingly the urban characteristics have changed so completely with long bands of highways radiating outwards from the city around which any still available land is becoming occupied by densely built residences many of which are informal, as increasingly such areas are developed on fragile volcanic slopes beyond Ecatepec and Naucalpan.
With the lakes drained and water and land subsided, only small basins of water as around Xochimilco exist as a reminder of the geographical past of Lake Texcoco. And yet the proud ‘Ciudad de Mexico’ continues to grow more densely now under the label ‘CDMX’ as Greater Mexico City, a truly metropolitan Federal State.
*Hernán Cortés – Cartas y relaciones de Hernán Cortés – Paris, 1866.
**Graham Greene – The Lawless Roads – Longman, 1939.
