Free Sunday Activities Help Save Dwindling Budget

Approaching the final 3-4 days of this trip, and running low on disposable funds, I set out yesterday to find free or low-cost activities.

With the large Alameda Central largely closed off for renovations, even hanging out in the park--just three blocks from my hotel--wasn't a viable option.

Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered that the Museo Mural Diego Rivera waived its 19 peso entrance fee in order to welcome a California based musical trio for a free afternoon concert.

http://www.thelandtrio.com/land_trio/Home.html

With a young Mexican composer/guitarist fronting two Iranian Americans on percussion (tabla) and kamancheh, a violin-type instrument played upright and verticle, the Land Trio performed its last concert of their current tour in front of the huge Rivera mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park before an attentive audience of around 100 people.

These three excellent young performers played a 75 minute concert with enthusiasm and sensitivity, occasionally inviting another Mexican guest artist who played Mexican guitar.

I paid five pesos (40 cents) for a photo permit in order to practice shooting indoors without flash, but could only manage to get some very mixed results.

I produced slightly better quality by recording six or seven minutes of audio/video of the musicians.

Here is Frommer's take on the Museo Mural Diego Rivera:

http://www.frommers.com/destinations/mexicocity/A24331.html

CNN Reports U.S. & Mexico Mum on Shooting Attack

Back in the DF, I saw a crawl on CNN:  'U.S. Mexico Mum on Attack' but there was no report so I looked  it up online.

See below for the Los Angeles Times report:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/08/mexico-gunmen-attack-us-officials-american-driving-consulate.html

Apparently Mexican federal police are suspected of firing automatic weapons at American diplomats in an SUV traveling on a highway from the Mexico City to Cuernavaca.

This is not the first time in recent years that American diplomats have found themselves under fire from shady Mexican gunman.

Mexican police and military are notorious for harboring rogue elements who moonlight as thugs and gunman for the narco cartels.

Arrival in the DF

My arrival yesterday in Mexico City, the distrito federale of the nation's capital, was pretty much as I expected.

Thanks to much extensive reading over the past winter of such young American authors as David Lida, Chuck Thompson, and Jim Johnston, I had a remarkably amount of knowledge about the place before commencing my first trip here.

As all three of these writers point out--you can google them to find their books--Mexico City has attained an unfairly bad rap in the "Western"--read, American--press.

Thompson's book is his amusing account of picking three of the scariest places in the world and his subsequent journey to find out what the big fuss is about.  Somewhat facetiously he chose the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Mexico City, and Disney World.

A highly entertaining travel writer who despises the formulaic travel writing found in most newspapers and magazines today, Thompson himself was inspired by Lida's excellent "non-guide" book about the Mexicican capital.  Much of the factual info I pass along here comes from them both.

The DF is a massively huge area, perhaps definitive of urban sprawl in the developing world in this, the second decade of the 21st century.  Like many such megacities in the world's poorer countries, it has a large and rising population which is nearly impossible to document with any accuracy.  However, most agree that there are at least 20 million people living here, and probably at least 1000 more arriving every day.

That amounts to 1/5 to 1/4 of Mexico's entire population.  The reason so many live and work here is the same as why so many Mexicans seek work in el Norte, the U.S.--for the economic opportunities which are lacking in the rest of the country.

Probably at least 40% of the economy in Mexico is "underground" and therefore untaxed, and there are signs of this everywhere since so much of the economic activity is of people trying to sell something on the street.

Despite widespread poverty, Mexico's economy is large and robust.  It remains one of the ten largest economies in the world today, but the big problem is widening income disparity, with income stratification even worse than in the U.S.

After my reading last winter I realized that I've been missing out on a possible gem of a location for my continuing travels in the developing world, and one that's amazingly only a 3 1/2 hour flight from Chicago!  Because the DF is quite a bit like a New York City for all of Latin America--the undisputed center for culture, music, and the arts "south of the border"--I felt I had to rectify this hole in my lifelong itinerary.

And after only 24 hours here, I can say:  so far so good. . .