CDMX Diaries: Trump, tremors and traffic jams
Dispatches from Mexico City in the spring of 2025
Everyone is always going on about Venice sinking but no one talks about the fact that Mexico City is too, and at an alarming rate. I think it's because it's nowhere near the coast. Venice, set as it is in a lagoon, reminds you constantly that it is under threat from the water, since it’s completely surrounded by the stuff at all times.
When, during high tides, some of this water spills over onto St. Mark's Square, it is less of a shock and more an inevitable consequence of building a city on a pile of mud. It was a silly idea in the first place and now look where we are, paddling around in the consequences.
Mexico City, despite being built on a lake, has little water in its centre. It’s hot, dry and paved over with an admirable zeal. But a quick scan of the city tells you all you need to know. The streets themselves look like a wave is travelling beneath them. Individual buildings are bending and warping as parts of them sink at different rates. The cathedral has cables wrapped around it to attempt to solidify its presence on the wide open Zocalo.
Oh, and then there are the earthquakes. Every thirty to forty years, according to a guide, Mexico City has a big one. The last of these was in 2017 so the one happy bit of news here is that one isn't due. But small ones happen regularly, tremors all the time. When buildings are destroyed, they are often not replaced. A memorial is put up instead. There’s no point putting another building up, since clearly it’s not a good place for one.
Mexico City is full of Americans who have been “called” here. Called by whom or what isn't clear because nobody seems to want them but they're here and they are everywhere. Lots are digital nomads, a lovely quaint little term that white people can use when they are immigrants but not a term that would be bestowed on, say, a Mexican moving to El Paso.
I sit in Cafebrería El Péndulo in Roma Norte and listen to one particularly out-there American describe how she was “called to the city.” This is despite the fact that it becomes clear while listening to her that she has done little to no research on the place. It’s just more exciting than where she comes from, New Jersey, as I can’t help but overhear, because like all Americans of her type, she talks like she’s the only person within thirty feet. I’m not trying to listen, I’m trying to read, but sitting next to her is like sitting next to a podcast you can’t turn off. She’s going on and on and I pray that soon she’ll interrupt herself to try and sell me a mattress or NordVPN.
This kind of person, and they really are everywhere, must be particularly galling to all of the Mexicans who, called or not, were born, raised and now live in Mexico City. Which, for better or worse is now overrun with these gap-year types living in Airbnb's that used to be more affordable apartments. I love Roma Norte and I love Condesa. They are two extremely beautiful, walkable, green neighbourhoods, but while here it's hard to escape the fact that I could be in Los Angeles, Newark, Austin. I haven't been to these places so this isn't based on how they look or what you can buy or eat, but rather that it's where all the people here seem to be from.
There are Mexicans around of course but they are serving us gringos, working in the shops and the cafes and the restaurants. I'm throwing quite a lot of shade at the Americans here but us Brits are just as guilty - we're here in force. We just can't be picked out as a Valley Girl at ten paces.
If you'd like to experience Mexico City without actually going, all you need to do is sit in traffic on a hot day with the windows open. Any time I'm in traffic now I'm back on Insurgentes, one of CDMX's main drags, covering a tiny distance in a large amount of time. Frankly, you haven't experienced traffic if you haven't experienced Mexico City traffic, which actually is hardly traffic at all since it doesn’t actually move. Really it is a collection of shiny metal objects with people inside them, standing very still on something that elsewhere would be called a road but here is just a really long car park.
Though this may seem frustrating at first this - that is, standing still - is actually the ideal state for cars in Mexico City, since when they move they are inexorably drawn together. Taxis in CDMX have more near misses than I have hot dinners. Traffic lights, lanes, indicators, all are not seen as an integral part of driving in Mexico but instead as polite suggestions one can ignore at will.
It’s lazy and predictable to describe the traffic in a new place. If you’re from a city such as London the traffic somewhere else, be it Mexico City, Rome, Paris, never seems to make any sense. But since everyone seems to be in their cars all the time, in Mexico City it is a particularly large part of life here. It’s also why for the whole duration of my stay I can’t get the fumes out of my nose and throat. Antihistamines may work on pollen but they’re useless against exhaust fumes.
Donald Trump looms everywhere in Mexico City. He is on murals, on the covers of magazines, on the minds of those here. A Canadian man we meet who has been holed up for weeks in Puerta Vallerta tells us of a t-shirt he has bought. It has the Mexican and Canadian flags and the phrase “not for sale” on it. He also says that here in Mexico we're on “the fun side of the wall”.
Trump is referred to by anyone, but particularly the ever-present Americans, with knowing phrases, a shake of the head, a roll of the eyes. His main complaint about Mexicans flooding the US is ironic given that half of the American population seem to be here, in Mexico City. The US-Mexican border these days must look like a real-life recreation of the chemical process of diffusion, Americans being pulled one way, Mexicans sucked the other.
“It’s terrible, what’s happening”, the Canadian shakes his head, and then of course our tour group is swelled by a group of American college students. We smile politely and try not to mention the wall.
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Best book shop in the world (but needs air con!) 📚
Well Tom, this was a more than entertaining read. Very amusing and interesting. Brings a whole new perspective to "therapy ". Maybe the Mexicans are on to something here.
Very well written once again.