Thank you to the crews: the homies in Neza, Reyes and the band in Santa Fe, “Gomita” and the guys in Murder for a Lover, the guys from the tollbooth to Cuernavaca, Señor Arturo and all the friends at Las Duelistas.
Thank you to the artists and photographers who shared their work with me. Your images are golden and indispensable in these pages.
In the United States and elsewhere, thank you Pilar Perez, Adam Jacobson, Richard Fausset, Gustavo Arellano, Alexis Rivera, Ruben Martinez, Alexandro Gradilla, Daniel Alarcon, Aura Bogado, Douglas Foster, Margarita Florez, Juan Maya, Ángel Marcel Porras, Francisco Dueñas, Josh Kun, Andy Greenwald, Gregory Rodriguez, Jonathan Gold, Rita Gonzalez, Mandalit del Barco, Pedro Ciriano Perez, Sandra de la Loza, Ky-Phong Tran, Adolfo Guzman Lopez, Erin Gallagher, William Dunleavy, Eamon Ore-giron, Adam Teicholz, Jessica Sanders, Vincent Valdez, Ashland Mines, Wu Tsang, Ector Garcia, Jose Luis Lopez, Nick Morrow, Valmiki Reyes, Mark Mauer, Nina Mehta, Harry Gamboa Jr., Shizu Saldamando, Jordan Long, Alma Ruiz, Raul Pacheco, Elizebeta Betiniski, Lyn Kienholz, Abel Salas, Melissa Sanchez, Macarena Hernandez, Emi Fontana, Marco Antonio Prado, Sarvia Jasso, Leilah Weinraub, Natalie Rodgers, Mehammed Mack, Eric Zolov, Carolina Hernandez, Alan Mittelstaedt, Sarah Ball, Jorge Neal, Natalia Linares, Elisa Sol Garcia, Neil Rivas, Rebecca Kahlenberg, Richard Kahlenberg, Erika Hayasaki, Marc Cooper, Cheech Marín, Sasha Anawalt, Reed Johnson, Marla Dickerson, Ben Gertner, Carribean Fragoza, Matthew Fleischer, Erin Blakemore, Richard Lidinksy, Suzi Weissman, Kathy Ochoa, Michelle Neely, Adrienne Crew, Luca Martinazzoli, Nadia Ahmad, Joshua Glenn, Joy Hepp, Ana Castillo, William Nericcio, Alan Minksy, Ernest Hardy, Conrad Starr, Darrel Ng, Samuel Vasquez, Gabriel San Roman, and the esteemed members of the H.C.
Thank you to those whose names do not appear here and who deserve my gratitude.
Thank you, Uriel Urbán, for always being down.
Thank you to my inspirations, the baddest women I know: Susana Chavez-Silverman, Mariana Botey, Andrea Daugirdas, Denise Marchebout, Nina Tahash, Jazmin Ochoa, my sister Erika Hernandez, and Kathryn Garcia. This book is dedicated to those for whom it is primarily written, for the enjoyment of Erika, Sergio, Ernesto, Gaston, Lisa, Sandra, Victor, Michi, Christian, Ángel, Alan, Brian, all our cousins far and wide, for Tía Martha and for all the nieces and nephews.
And in the memory of Anna Andrade, and Dash Snow, and Quetzalcóatl Rangel Sánchez.
Finally, thank you, K. Bandell, a reader in Norwalk, California, who in August 2007 sent me in the post a short note of encouragement and congratulations, the kindest and most sensitive I’ve ever received.
| Postscript
A spontaneous thematic flow chart on Mexico City, by the author.
The Mexico City streets are calling, pulling me away from the keyboard. I pinch my cheeks and step outside.
It is a carnival every day. Food, music, sounds, faces, and clothing of every sort, around every corner. It is a cosmopolitan feast. Cultural riches both fresh and old purr at me from inside museums, theaters, galleries, plazas, cafés, and the ruins of glorious past civilizations. I can enter in a single day a market that’s been in the same place since before the Conquest and an IMAX movie theater after checking into the Office Depot. I wait for the next trendy cult, or seek grace in the presence of Xochipilli, the Aztec god of song, dance, queers, male prostitutes, and psychedelic plants.
Life here is good and getting better. The air is clearer. The city is adding new bus lines and a new metro line. Public shared bicycle programs are popular. I look up. Modern new structures reach elegantly into the sky, under construction. I look down. The sidewalks are older than in most U.S. cities. A tag catches the eye that makes me smile. The city is becoming a haven of rights and simple rewards. Same-sex marriage is legal and everywhere I look couples across gender lines express their love for all to see. No one bothers them. Love and freedom conquer hate and demagoguery.
But there is always another side to this place. I have a rule about cities: I don’t trust any that all people love unconditionally. You have to hate what you love every once in a while for it to be a healthy affair, especially when it comes with the place where you live. Despite all its gems, there are things I still dislike about D.F. and its culture. I can find a zone of comfort and expression among friends, loves, the families you chose. Yet I’ve found over the past three years that my social worldview remains constantly at odds with the strict class stratification many Mexicans regard as something like the natural order of things. Class strata makes people fearful of whole regions of their own city, preventing them from opening their experiences to other systems or cultures. The family structure remains strong and insular in society at large. Circles are difficult to penetrate. These realities have brought me many moments of conflict, isolation, and doubt.
I look back at these pages and see a person different from the person I am today. This writer is already becoming a stranger. Youth ends. At some point I have to take those painful and lonely steps required for the evolution of the psyche. Everyone around me is doing it, too. I am at home here, but I could never say I wouldn’t move on. I have visions of Istanbul or Shanghai, a nameless coastal paradise, a dark nightmare in the sort of world we haven’t seen yet. Sometimes I see a future back in Los Angeles or on the border. The border is the only place in the world I know that is a metaphor we all live.
—D.H., September 2010
Down and Delirious in Mexico City: The Aztec Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century Page 25