Mexico City

My wife tells me about mole making at her home when she was a child. She was sent to the market to buy the ingredients, and her mother would make the paste.

My mother-in-law still makes great mole, but she buys the paste., now. She's 80.

Mole from Puebla? - I'm just guessing, and none of my business of course.

Mole was originally conceived in Puebla, but there are several types and colors of mole, with Oaxacan mole being the main runner-up.

My mother in law is from Mexico City and lives now in the state of Querétaro.

I always (well, for a long time) wanted to take the train that went there.

OK. Let's visit the suburbs of Mexico City.

We start at Huixquilucan, west of the Federal District. West of Santa Fe neighborhood.
It used to be a quiet town not many years ago. But since Santa Fe exploded, so did this county.

Interlomas:





Fuentes de Las Lomas:



La Herradura (so posh, girls don't learn how to cross the street until their teens):



Dos Ríos, one of the original towns in Huixquilucan county:



"Downtown" Huixquilucan:

Oh, look, wind tunnels - - -

not sure, of course. Just remembering the Century City Towers in Century City (LA).

One of the most important suburban counties is Naucalpan, also west of DF.

It has one working class colonia a lot of middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods, some of them made to look and feel like American suburbs.

It is a strange place for some. Very heavy traffic (lots of SUVs), ice rinks, american football fields, and malls as the place to get together, many malls, some very big malls.

San Esteban, the lone working class neighborhood:



The wonderful (IMHO) Towers of Satélite (Ciudad Satélite was the first American style suburb in the city):



Plaza Satélite, the original big mall:



Lomas Verdes:



Echegaray:



Their usual traffic:

A curious thing happened in the development of Naucalpan.

As suburbs grew, ejidos began selling their land to developers. But one ejido, closer to the city than Ciudad Satélite, didn't sell, because they wanted a hefty price. It was called "the golden ejido" for the land value.
Well, the suburbs grew so much that the government decided to expropiate the "golden ejido" (paying the owners a price much lower than they expected) to make a "lung", a park for a part of the city that needed it.

It's Parque Naucalli:

North of Naucalpan, we find the county of Tlalnepantla, with less upper-middle class, and more middle and lower-middle class inhabitants.

Tlalnepantla is another old town swollen by the city:

But of course Tlalnepantla has its suburbs:



... and its Vegas style malls:



Another view of Tlalnepantla:

Farther north, the county of Atizapán:





At Atizapan we find another campus of ITESM, the so-called ITESM-CEM, where many of the suburban young study:

Still farther-north, Cuautitlán Izcalli, as suburban lower-middle class as you can get:

Still farther north is Cuautitlán, working class suburb:



Confy, if you work in one of the many nearby factories.

After Cuautitlán, still going north, comes Tepotzotlán, just before you take the highway to Querétaro.

Now, that's an interesting place.

Tepotzotlán used to be an important town in the Colonial era.
Its baroque temple is unique:



These arches used to bring water to the town:

At Tepotzotlán, in a former convent, the Museo Nacional del Virreinato, with al lot of stuff from the Colonial era.

I've gone past these counties swiftly. But I gotta tell you, they're big and densely populated. Here's the number of inhabitants:

Huixquilucan: 242,000
Naucalpan: 834,000
Tlalnepantla: 664,000
Atizapán: 490,000
Cuautitlán Izcalli: 512,000
Cuautitlán: 140,000
Tepotzotlán: 89,000

That makes about 2.5 million people.

I forgot to post that UNAM has another campus at Naucalpan, it's called FES Acatlán.





Nothing to do with magnificent CU at Coyoacán.

Another one at Tlanepantla, called FES Iztacala:



Yet another UNAM campus is at Cuautitlán:



This one looks even bleaker. No wonder all the alumni want to go to the historical campus.

Tepotzotlán sounds sort of familiar, but by now a lot of area names do.

Massive city that I hadn't begun to understand before, Fbaezer.

Not that I understand it now, but I understand more.

Either you went to Tepoztlán, near Cuernavaca, a very nice small town with an impressive mountain and some ruins nearby, or the Tepotzotlán I just posted about.

Tepoztlán, Morelos (not in Mexico City):

Looks like a Roman aquaduct.