"Along avenues that once were causeways connecting the old Aztec island capital of Tenochtitlán with mainland, the traffic boils and surges. Buses careen through the streets, with passengers clinging to roof, bumper and doorstep. Decrepit trucks, monstrously overloaded, grind their way through the maze. Taxis painted in heathenish splendor race each other, the drivers shouting obscenities or exchanging hand signals and whistles of unmistakable meaning. Antique Ford races antique Fiat. Sleek Mercedes glides beside sleek Cadillac, the conveyance of bankers and politicians. […] Small newsboys wave their papers like flags, shouting of crimes of passion, disasters on the road, scandals in the republic and the latest results of box and beisbol.
Braked tires scream. Accelerated motors roar through broken mufflers. Ambulance sirens mingle with the offkey music of curbside barrel organs. Full-throated jukeboxes blare songs of outraged love from saloons. Soap operas, singing commercials, and traditional ballads shriek from a hundred radio and television sets, each with the volume turned on full. From the sidewalks come the cries of shoeshine boys and lottery-ticket sellers - ‘Five hundred thousand for today, chief; I have your lucky number.’
The air of Mexico City is nervous, vital, hectic, dynamic, eclectic and kaleidoscopic. […]
[People] will be speaking a variety of languages as can be heard in any of the world’s capitals: the slurring slang of Mexico City itself, full of double meaning and thinly veiled abuse; lisping Castilian; precise English; pocho Spanish from the northern border country, an execrable mixture of bad Spanish and bad English; the Spanish of Mexican poets, pure, sonorous and full of glittering images; or Nahuatl, most prevalent of Mexico’s 50-odd surviving Indian languages and dialectics, sounding vaguely oriental; or Otomí, Huaxteco, Totonaco, Huichol, Tzotzil or Tarahumara. […]
Source: William Weber Johns and The Editors of LIFE, Mexico (New York: Time Incorporated, 1961).
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