By Deborah Van Hoewyk

Elsewhere in this issue, you will find great hints for how to see Mexico City at its best. But … suppose you’ve done all that? Or maybe … suppose you want to see what’s not so “best”? One of my sharpest memories of Mexico City is inveigling my hubby into an open front oyster bar (I’m a big fan of oysters on the half-shell) that had lively, loud music and cheap oysters. His memory is that it was a prostitute joint, the oyster shuckers were all drunk, and a few had cuts dripping blood onto the oysters. Oh, well. (No one got sick.)

If you’re in search of your own unusual experience in Mexico City, here are four such diversions.

1. How about The Island of the Dolls (La Isla de las Muñecas)?

Xochimilco is a borough in southeastern Mexico City famous for its lakes and canals that run among those famous floating gardens, or chinampas. At its Aztec height, the Valley of Mexico was filled with lakes and canals connecting various settlements – Xochimilco was a city in its own right. The Eye has published articles on the chinampas, notably the Chaikens’ July 2024 piece on “Aztec ‘Farm to Table’ Cuisine.”

On one chinampa in Laguna Teshuilo, sometimes called “Tequila,” there is no food grown. Once owned (or taken care of) by Don Julián Santana Barrera, who died in 2001, the island is now covered in “dead dolls” – disfigured, discolored, dismembered, dolls. Legend has it that Don Julián discovered on the shore of the island (or maybe floating in the canal) the body of young girl, drowned, and he was frantic with dismay that he could not restore her to life. A day later, he discovered a doll floating in the canal, assumed it was hers, and hung it on a tree to appease her spirit. A day later, another doll, another tree. Her spirit apparently not appeased, Don Julián began a life-long search for abandoned dolls to be placed throughout the island.

In 2001, when Don Julián was 80, he was fishing with his nephew off the shore of the island. He started to sing, telling his nephew that mermaids were calling him into the water. The nephew went ashore for something, and when he came back, Barrera was floating in the canal, dead, in the same place he had found the girl. There is no confirmation that the drowning victim ever existed, but Don Julián’s family saw an opportunity and opened the island to tourists.

You can visit the island by trajinera, the colorful flat-bottomed boats that ply the canals of Xochimilco. Go by Metro to the boat launch Embarcadero Cuemanco, in the southeast part of the city, and rent a trajinara – same price for all who will fit, about four hours, expect to pay about $100 USD and up, plus tip. Make sure of the price, and that the destination is Island of the Dolls before you leave. You can also rent a kayak at Embarcadero Cuemanco, go in a group with a guide, and expect to pay about $65 USD, plus tip.

2. Speaking of Xochimilco, how about its most famous denizen, the axolotl?

When the Aztecs developed their lake-basin city, the axolotl thrived in its waters; the Spanish eventually drained everything but Xochimilco, which became the axolotls’ sole habitat. While your chances of seeing an axolotl in the wild from your trajinera are limited (they’re not that big, much of the water is pretty dirty), they are fascinating creatures worth the effort to see up close and personal. The Eye has run articles on this cutie amphibian (see “I ♥ Axolotls,” by Julie Etra, February 2024).

Axolotls are amphibians, but they’re “paedomorphic” – they stay little kids, i.e., they don’t really metamorphose into land animals. Although they can walk on the ground like their relatives the salamanders, like Melville’s Bartleby, they would “prefer not to.” They keep their gills and stay in the water for life. They can be small (6 inches fully grown) to large (18 inches); some are pink and cute, others are an uninspired mottled brown. They’ve made it into feature films, cartoons, documentaries, the computer game Minecraft, and Diego Rivera’s paintings, not to mention onto Mexican money and a postage stamp.

Axolotls are an indicator species for amphibians, that is, their health and the health of their environment tell us a lot about the fate of amphibians in general – from flourishing to on the edge of extinction. Axolotls are of great interest in terms of medical research, as they are extremely good at regenerating missing body parts.

Unfortunately, pollution and competing invasive species in the Xochimilco canals have decimated the axolotl populations. Despite funding cuts for research and support programs under Mexico’s last president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO, researchers at the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have undertaken restoration efforts. Working with the chinamperos (farmers), they have set up bamboo cages in the canals as “refuges” for axolotls, where their growth and health are monitored.

You can learn more about the axolotls at a couple of places. In the Chapultepec Zoo, you will find Anfibium, the Museo del Axolote y Centro de Conservación de Anfibios, a museum and preservation center devoted to preserving Mexican amphibians, especially the axolotl. Very Science Friday, for fans of U.S. public radio. Both the Zoo and the Anfibium are free; the Anfibium is closed Mondays, otherwise open from 10 AM to 3:30 PM.

There is also Axolotitlán, the Museum of the Axolotl, located in Parque Tarango, also called El Segundo Parque de las Águilas. The park is southwest of the city center – a taxi or UBER will take you out Prolongación 5 de Mayo to the park; the museum is at # 521. The museum is closed Mondays, otherwise open from 9 AM to 4 PM; apparently there are tours to Xochimilco to see the work being done there, although you would have to inquire.

On February 1 and 2, the Museo celebrates the Día Nacional del Axolote, with everything from academic conferences and documentaries to kids’ activities and muchas mas sorpresas! In this case, adults pay $100 MXN and kids $50 MXN to get in.

3. As we all know, Mexico’s politics are intertwined with violence. Early babyboomers may remember the Tlatelolco Massacre.

The year 1968 saw worldwide protests driven by left-wing politics aimed at reducing social inequality, upholding racial civil rights, supporting workers’ rights, and expressing anti-war and anti-military sentiment. Combined with the rise of a youth counterculture, demonstrations broke out across the western world (in the US, France, England, Italy, and elsewhere).

In 1968, Mexico was preparing to host the Olympics, and there was great concern about whether protests, ongoing since early summer, against the repressive PRI government would disrupt the event. On October 2, students from UNAM, the National Polytechnic Institute, and other universities, gathered in the Plaza of Three Cultures in the Tlatelolco section area of the Cuahtémoc borough in what was supposed to be another peaceful protest against the government. While it took years for the official documents to be released, there is now general agreement that the Olympia Battalion, organized by then-president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz for Olympic security, was signaled to close off the square by flares shot into the square from helicopters. There is less agreement on whether the Olympia Battalion had been instructed to fire covertly on Mexican soldiers, thus causing them to fire on the demonstrators. But fire they did, killing anywhere from 28 to 300-400 demonstrators and onlookers.

Memorial 68 is a museum that tells the story of any number of protests by the Mexican people, but it emphasizes 1968 and the Tlatelolco Massacre.

The museum is located at Avenida Ricardo Flores Magón 1, in Tlatelolco, near the site of the massacre. It is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Admission is free on Sundays; otherwise, it’s $40 MXN, half price for students, teachers, and members of INAPAM (seniors), IMSS, and ISSSTE.

There’s also La Piedra del ’68 (The Stone of ’68), which commemorates the student protests of 1968. Unveiled in 1998, 30 years after the event, it incorporates a volcanic rock from the UNAM campus, with quotes from student leaders. You can find it at Eje 7 Sur Extremadura,in the Insurgentes Mixcoac neighborhood of the borough of Benito Juárez.

4. Are you into ruin porn?

“Ruin porn” is shorthand for the capture – by photographing, writing about, or observing – of urban decay. While travelers, writers, and painters have been “doing the ruins” since the Renaissance, this go-round is devoted to cataloguing the decline of cities as they abandon various areas in favor of something new. Basically, it’s an over-enthusiastic taste for detritus left behind when cities don’t clean up after themselves.

Mexico, of course, is rife with ancient ruins, and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) technology is finding more hidden in Mexico’s jungles every day. These are not the stuff of ruin porn. But, oh, the Desert of the Lions – no desert, no lions – is definitely ruin porn.

Ex Convento del Desierto de los Leones is the name of a ruined monastery – in this case, called a convent – and of Mexico’s first national park, where the convent’s remains are located. Built by barefoot Spanish Carmelite monks in 1606, the monastery was christened “desierto” for its distance from the center of Mexico City (although it lies entirely within today’s CDMX, in the borough of Cuajimalpa de Morelos), and “leones” because the Spanish were surprised at how many pumas, which they called “lions,” there were in the area. It might also have been called “de los Leones” because there is evidence that the Leon family financed at least some, if not all, of its construction. (It is referred to as a convent in part because the Carmelites were an order of both friars and nuns, although there is no evidence that there were ever nuns in residence.)

By 1810, the barefoot monks (think of the rattlesnakes, the scorpions, the tarantulas!) had abandoned the monastery. Already starting to decay from excessive humidity, and the monks’ desire to avoid being involved in the just-started War of Independence against Spain, El Desierto de los Leones served briefly as a military barracks, and then was left to what engineers call “graceful degradation.” There are those, however, who say the monks never left, and their spirits haunt the buildings and grounds.

President Lerdo de Tejada declared the area a national reserve in 1876, and President Venustiano Carranzo named it a national park in 1917.

There are any number of ways to reach the national park and/or the monastery, but you will need to be resourceful. The best way to is to take an UBER – it should be less than $10 USD and take about 45 minutes, depending on where you start. Be sure to specify you are going to the Ex Convento del Desierto de los Leones (the Convento del Desierto de los Leones is on the north side of CDMX), that you want to be picked up to return, and what time. It is possible to get there by public transportation, but the end stages are ever-changing. Take the metro to Barranca del Muerto station (line 7), whence you can take a bus to Santa Rosa, and then a taxi or walk – Internet reports say the number of the bus to Santa Rosa changes, where it goes changes, and sometimes it goes right to the park so no need for a taxi. There are other metro stations fairly close by, then use the taxi technique. Getting BACK by public transportation is an iffy proposition, make sure you find out how to do that when you are dropped off. There are organized tours that visit the convent, and hiking tours that include the convent and hiking in the park – they tend to be on the pricey side.

The former monastery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The admission fee is 20 pesos per person and allows access to the building and its outer grounds. There are food stalls at the entrance, so you won’t go hungry or thirsty. Watch your step to avoid rattlesnakes, and do not sample the mushrooms – the ones here are all toxic!