One of the most revered religious shrines in Mexico is the one dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe. In 1531 the Virgin Mother of Jesus appeared before a Mexican peasant out in his field. More importantly, when he recovered from this encounter he discovered that the Virgin had left an imprint of herself on his tilma--a coarse cloak worn by peasants of the time. This was eventually accepted by the Catholic Church as a true and miraculous appearance by the Virgin Mother and this Cathedral houses the original cloak. Today it is the object of pilgrimages and veneration by people from throughout Latin America.
When walking in Chapultepec Park I encountered these boys who, like young boys everywhere, were only too eager to mug for my camera. Ironically, in the 1800's Chapultepec was the site of a Military Academy which was perched on top of this strategic hill in the midst of the Mexican Capital. In Mexico today it is remembered for the attack made by General Pershing and the United States Army towards the end of the Mexican War when they stormed this bastion and killed the majority of its defenders who were largely the young cadets enrolled at the academy.
Besides attending the Charreada, I also went to a bullfight in which one of my instructors at the University was performing. This was some sort of charity event (though I guess it wasn't very charitable for the bull!). At any rate, it had a certain amount of fanfare and certainly gave one a taste for what a real bullfight might be like. The bulls were rather small and at least one of the "kills" was a butchery, but this man did perform with a certain flare.
The picture below was the scene looking east from the Latino Tower which was the city's tallest building--something like the Empire State Building in New York. Of course you can't go to Mexico without seeing some local color and the Mexican Charreada above was one such event.
Mexico City itself was a beautiful cosmopolitan city unlike anything I had seen before. Yet in its midst were the remains of an ancient Aztec culture overlaid with the colonial buildings of its Spanish conquerors. It was a very mystical encounter. At that time it had a population of 4 million and was not being strangled by pollution like in modern times, so I had a fabulous time roaming and photographing.
