The Zócalo, Mexico City's central plaza, opens the city to the sky. Mexico's greater metropolitan area is the largest in the Americas, with more than 20 million people. Many of the streets are narrow and full of people and crammed with cars. But at the center, the Zocalo, the city unfolds in a wide square and takes a long breath. It is lined on three sides by stately, elegant stone buildings, and it is crowned by the National Cathedral. Aztec temples used to rise from this same spot; their remains are still being excavated. A paseo around the square takes awhile, perhaps 20 minutes at a brisk pace. Thousands of people walk through it; vendors sell their wares; but it is so vast in the midst of a teeming city, and it holds such history, it somehow feels peaceful.
On one side of the Zócalo is the National Palace, and inside the palace are walls emblazoned with Mexico's history. Diego Rivera painted these murals over years in the middle of the twentieth century. The paintings stretch up a central staircase and around two hallways of the second floor of the palace. First, the colors are stunning; then the detail. The murals depict Mexico's history, from the vibrant indigenous cultures of Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, through Spanish conquest, independence, revolution - and ending with some workers reading Marx. The paintings illustrate a story of struggle, oppression, and liberation, repeated.
In the Zócalo, all of the walls seem imprinted with deep memories; in the murals along the palace halls, those memories flare and shout.
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