A Chronicle by Katiuska Blanco Castineira on August 5, 2025 from Mexico City
Illustration by Isis de Lázaro.
Before our eyes, the small terracotta deities, the dresses embroidered with eye-shaped hems, pure wool cloaks, obsidian, turquoise, shell, and coral masks, silver calendars inlaid with mother-of-pearl, clay figurines, filigree earrings, bracelets made of genuine metals, flowered stone chests, dreams of blown glass, colorful serapes, and above all, words. The vendor tells us about all the wonders in his shop, especially the customs of the ancient inhabitants of the city of Teotihuacan, how they made paper from the skin of the nopal leaf, how they extracted the liquid from the heart of the plant to make their drinks, how they prepared their favorite dishes, how far they had advanced in the observation of the stars and in their knowledge of nature, who ruled them, and how much they believed in water, wind, light, the living, and the dead.
A dirt path, among the numerous tianguis offering prodigious handicrafts and legends, leads to the Calzada de los Muertos (Avenue of the Dead). Crossing it, with the amazement of someone entering a sacred place, we arrive at the Pyramid of the Sun. The stone steps are a path to the clouds. As we climb, our bodies and souls gradually levitate. Time and silence dwell there. A tiny point at the summit concentrates the light, the energy, the entire star that warmly watches over us, that guides us. The pyramid reaches far, and at its feet, like a sleeping enigma, lies Teotihuacan, the abandoned city of palaces and temples on “handmade” hills—those of the Sun, the Moon, and the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl—; the city of squares, houses with large and numerous rooms and avenues; the city inhabited at its peak by more than 125,000 or 250,000 souls; bustling and colorful, perhaps like no other in the world at that time.
Teotihuacan existed from 200 BC, flourished, and died around 700 to 750 AD. It covered, as if in a portentous embrace, some 20 square kilometers, where farmers, potters, and merchants made its wealth and gave it the power that spread throughout Mesoamerica. Stories say that it was looted, burned, and destroyed, and it is not yet known whether all its evils came from within or whether it was defeated by a more powerful foreign people.
Today, dust clouds the view and one meditates on the age of these particles made of cataclysms: collapsed walls, crumbling walls, decayed bones. In this ancient place, the ancestors whisper in the ears of the fervent worshippers of their own lineage, with the murmur of the abundant and clear springs of another era. They say that a crowd dressed in white waits here for spring amid prayers and ceremonies. Now what arrives is a tide of children and young people who, with each step, climb their past and their history, drawing closer to the ancestral Mexico that touches the sky, to the deep wisdom of the elders, to the tradition of their peoples, to their greatness. They do so as if recognizing themselves, as if listening to the language of yesterday and affirming themselves in the myth that makes a work of men a city of gods.
Source: Cuba Periodista, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English
Illustration by Isis de Lázaro.