Live blogging from the Mexican capital, Ciudad de México, or México City as you know it. We’ll be here all week, and I will try to give you a sense of this massive, historical, and vibrant city.
But first, let’s clear up some confusion. All over México, you will see signs–along the highway, in the airport–pointing you toward…México! You may ask yourself, “how did I get here?” and you may say to yourself “this is not my casa!” (Apologies to the Talking Heads).
Here is the short answer: México is the name of a city, and a state, and a country. Ciudad de México is the capital of the country of Mexico. It is surrounded by the state of México, but is not within it. In fact, the capital of the state of Mexico is Toluca. Got that?
Mexicans refer to the capital as just “México” but they mean the city. The city used to be in something called the Distrito Federal or DF, which was akin to DC in the States. So old-timers may call it the DF, but the new appellation is CDMX.
CDMX is the political, historical, and cultural center of the nation and an overwhelming influence on México. At between 25 and 30 million people, it dwarfs Guadalajara, México’s second city, and is either the largest or second largest in the western hemisphere (Sao Paulo, another uncountable metropolis, is the competitor).
The city was built (literally) on the ruins of the Mexica (Aztec) capital Tenochtitlan. I’ll cover all this in more detail as we visit, but one amazing point is Tenochtitlan was built on a man-made series of islands in a great freshwater lake. Practically nothing of the original lake remains, but the unsteady foundations of a lake bed remain a challenge to the skyscrapers that increasingly mark the CDMX skyline.
Did I mention the volcanos and earthquake faults? More on that later!
Fascinating, Pat. Keep up your reporting. Hard to imagine a city with three times the population of NYC.