Temples and Churches and Protests, oh my

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Yesterday we decided to go the organized route and booked a guided trip for today to go see the Tiotihuacan site. The tour also stops in a couple of other places which turned out really well because we were planning to see them anyway and they are a pain to get to.

First stop was the site of the ancient city of Tlatelolco which was very powerful at the time but not much has remained of it. You could see the different temples that were built one on top of the other. Apparently they would build a new temple every what they called ´century´ which is actually 52 years. At that time the old temple would be completely covered by a new, bigger temple. This site had 11 temples but not much has remained of them, although you can see the footprint and the different walls. The guide, Monica, told us a lot of things about the culture and the gods but to be honest it is all so complicated I forgot most of it right away. A church stands built very close to the site because the church was interested in shifting the religious beliefs of the people towards it so the church was built near the important native religious site. The whole place with the temple and the church is called Plaza de las Tres Culturas because it represents the pre-Hispanic culture, the Hispanic culture and the modern culture which is shown through the modern buildings surrounding the plaza. This was also the site of a 250,000 strong student demonstration in 1968 when troops and tanks were ordered to fire upon the protesters. The government was eager to subdue the unrest among the students before the Olympic Games opened in the city. It is still unknown how many exactly perished. Its interesting because I have never heard of that before.

Our next stop was the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. The book does nothing to convey how huge this complex is. I say complex instead of church because is not just one building. It is a series of churches, chapels, and shrines set around a huge plaza as well as some set on top of a hill. The Virgin of Guadalupe is the most popular saint in Mexico and this church was built on the spot because a man walking by had a vision of the Virgin who told him to build a church there. Complicated story but there were some miracles and appearances of the Virgin that amazed all. It apparently continues to because there were unbelievably many people there, many with children. Besides the original church which is all tilted inside because the soil is unstable, there is also a huge new church with space for at least 10,000 worshippers. There are continuous services there, with no schedule - it seems. Funny thing - something the guy who was ordered to build the church was wearing - which is very important hangs above the main altar. To prevent anyone from lingering too long at the spot underneath it there are travelling walkways like in the airport that take up that space, so you are forced to get on and therefore cannot just stand there. Very inventive.

Last stop was Teotihuacan. It is a huge site and many of the temples are in good shape, but that is mostly because they were restored. We learned that you can see that archeologists have taken something apart or restored something because there are these little black stones inserted into the cement used to hold the original stones together. Supposedly its the same all over the world, but I never noticed it before. Will have to pay more attention. We climbed one temple, the Moon one which was quite difficult because the stairs are very steep. They are that way because the people who got to ascend the temples were the kings and priests who were taller than the general population. Must have been taller than us too, because it was quite a challenge. Plus the thin air here makes it hard to physically exert ourselves. So Megan and I did not climb the other one, the Sun Temple - we had had enough climbing. One other interesting thing that I never knew before was that the temples were all painted from the outside and some of the buildings on the site which did have an inside had murals inside too.

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