One of Latin America’s most colourful capitals comes alive through its dancehall rhythms, gritty cinema and tasty tacos
At a community dinner in Santa María la Ribera – one of Mexico City’s first suburbs, built in the late 1800s just west of the old centre – I met a European contortionist. He was in his 70s and used a wheelchair. Circus work had first brought him to the country decades ago, but then he’d never left. “I feel more alive here,” he told me.
This is the city’s seduction: extremes of existence can happen all on the same street corner, and render life more vivid. The Slovakian expat writer Lucia Duero describes the city as “on the edge of the moment: an intensive intensity of being. You know the world is torn apart and you hold to it tight, joyfully.” Continue reading...
