Welcome to my neighborhood
Eight years ago, I moved to the corner of Nezahualcóyotl and Isabel la Católica in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico. It’s a poetic name for an intersection, suggesting an embrace between 15th century contemporaries from opposite sides of the Atlantic: the philosopher king of Texcoco and the queen of Castile and León. Despite the allusion to royalty, it’s a plebeian corner of Mexico City’s historic core, where apartment building façades are decorated with graffiti and overhead power lines wear athletic shoes. Gentrification is coming, but it doesn’t yet have the momentum to cross busy Izazaga street, one block to the north.
Nezahualcóyotl street wakes just before seven o’clock, when tables are clacked open up and down the gutters facing the sidewalk. Already, the vendors have been chopping, slicing, mixing, kneading, spreading, scooping and pouring for hours—toiling in distant, tiny kitchens. One by one, they arrange their outdoor offerings as carefully as any greengrocer. There is no time to feel tired. Working quickly, tablecloths are draped, plastic crates emptied and their contents arranged for a quick sale to passing office workers. Blue-and-white boxes from Pastelería Ideal are propped open, revealing individually wrapped sweet breads and pastries.
The eleventh-floor windows of the water department catch the first sun from the east, reflecting the rays onto the asphalt below. The pavement is cracked and pocked and like an alcoholic looks terrible in the morning light. It is strewn with plastic bottle caps, cigarette butts and gray patches of chewing gum. Soon, a steady stream of slow-moving traffic will hide its most glaring flaws, restoring its virtue.
At seven-thirty, I make my way downstairs and step onto the sidewalk prepared for the sensory onslaught. Colors pull my eyes to brilliant shades of citrus, tropical fruits and cactus pears piled in tall plastic cups. As I move to my right, yielding to a man with a cane, my shoe finds a divot in the concrete and my ankle folds, nearly clipping the ground. Ouch! A car honks, goading another to do the same. A man laughs upon seeing a friend and shouts ¡Cabrón! ¿Qué haces aquí? before pulling him into an improvised embrace. A woman in too-high heels shuffles past, brushing my arm with her purse. I see a massive cardboard box overflowing with crunchy bolillo rolls that will be stuffed with fried tortillas simmered in salsa and bathed with cream to form spicy carb sandwiches: tortas de chilaquiles. A cloud of burning oak rises from a pair of squat braziers; it smells of the camping trip I took last April. A man ladles chocolate from a ceramic pot into a Styrofoam cup. I see transparent plastic clam shells containing salads topped with cheap protein—hard-boiled eggs, chicken nuggets, and fried mozzarella sticks—and wonder Who buys these? I feel the heat of a blazing griddle and slap-slap-slap-slap fills my ears as the woman pats out a gordita. As I step away, I hear the hiss as she slides the perfect disk of blue corn into the hot oil. The Pavlovian response is immediate.
By eight o’clock, men and women dressed for a morning cooler than this crowd the sidewalk. A tow truck holds a delivery truck in its claws, waiting to enter the central impound yard, where it will dump its victim before hitting the streets to find another. Parked cars fill every bit of curb, except for the spots taken by motorcycles or reserved by the entrepreneurs who stake their pavement claims with plastic stools and splintered packing crates.
Traffic has come to a standstill as usual, given that the traffic signal at the end of the block is set to permanent malfunction. The patrol car double parked to offer a jump to a colleague in a civilian sedan causes more congestion. An indigent man in a dirty Redskins jacket pushes a cargo bike stacked with naked mattress coils and an enormous sack of scavenged PET bottles. Cars stop in the middle of the street to release the low-paid office workers about to embark on their ten-hour slogs—godínez, they’re called mockingly. But unlike the higher-paid godínez like me who work on Paseo de la Reforma or out in godforsaken Santa Fe, on Nezahualcóyotl street there’s no AAA office space and no Starbucks. Here, there’s only homely concrete boxes housing floors of city utilities and their bleak bureaucracies.
The chill of morning is gone and the garment district at the far end of the block has come to life. Shopgirls in tight denim and midriffs raise the corrugated security blinds of cut-rate boutiques and wrangle mannequins onto the sidewalk. The insistent bass of high-energy music hemorrhages from open doorways. Catalog sales showrooms occupy the upper floors, trading in maternity wear, uniforms, girdles and, especially, lingerie. A banner advertising Tania undergarments shows a woman with red lips and black heels leaning against her bed, tousling her own hair. Fall in love with your sensuality as never before promises the slogan.
A young man in saggy pants wheels a garment rack down the sidewalk—freshly sewn samples from a sweatshop around the corner being delivered to a wholesaler. Two men in kippahs step out of a doorway and walk in tandem, each in a private conversation with his mobile phone. Jewish traders still dominate the downtown rag trade—a fact hinted at by the presence of Kosher tacos al pastor in local lunch spots—though every evening, they retreat to their homes in the verdant western hills.
Honestly, I’d leave too…if I could. Even though Nezahualcóyotl street has grown safer since I moved here, it’s also grown noisier, with even more police sirens, shouting street vendors and cars trying to honk their way out of gridlock. I’d love to escape the noise and chaos, to feel less anxious and on edge. But for the time being, this is home and whether I like it or not, it’s my ombilgo del mundo.