The Valley of México has been the country's centre of
gravity since earliest prehistory, long before the concept of a
Mexican nation existed. Based in this mountain-ringed basin - 100km
long, 60km wide and over 2400m high, dotted with great salt- and
freshwater lagoons and dominated by the vast snowcapped peaks of
Popocatépetl and Ixtaccíhuatl - were the most powerful
civilizations the country has seen. Today the lakes have all but
disappeared, and the mountains are shrouded in smog, but it
continues to be the heart of the country, its physical centre and
the generator of every political, cultural and economic pulse.
At the crossroads of everything sprawls the vibrant, elegant,
frenetic and fascinating Mexico City . In population one of
the largest cities in the world, with more than twenty million
inhabitants, its lure is irresistible. Colonial mansions and
excavated pyramids vie for attention with the city's fabulous
museums and galleries, while above them tower the concrete and
glass of thrusting development. But above all, the city is alive -
exciting, sometimes frightening, always bewildering, but boldly
alive. You can't avoid it, and if you genuinely want to know
anything of Mexico you shouldn't try, even if the attraction does
sometimes seem to be the same ghoulish fascination that draws
onlookers to the site of a particularly nasty accident.
Round about there's escape and interest in every direction. To
the north, and the most obvious destinations for day-trips, are the
magnificent pyramid sites of Teotihuacán and Tula ,
the more dramatic legacies of the region's ancient peoples. The
road to Tula passes Tepotzotlán , a weekend retreat from the
city centred on a magnificent Baroque complex built by the Jesuits
and filled with ornate treasures. To the east lies the small city
of Pachuca , capital of Hidalgo state and a springboard for
the hill country to the north, notably the attractive mountain
village of Real del Monte with its Cornish connections.
East of Mexico City lies the region's second-largest city, the
thriving and ultra-colonial Puebla . This city probably only
warrants a day or two of your time, but does work as a great base
for forays north to Tlaxcala , and west to Cholula
with its enormous ruined pyramid. The ancient site here offers one
of the best views of central Mexico's twin volcanoes,
Popocatépetl and Ixtaccíhuatl , both currently off
limits after Popo's recent eruptions.
Immediately south of the capital you climb over the mountains
and descend to Cuernavaca , full of ancient palaces, and
handy for the hilltop pyramid sites of Tepoztlán and
Xochicalco . An hour further south the silver town of
Taxco straggles picturesquely up a hillside making it one of
the most appealing destinations hereabouts. Possibly the
least-visited quarter of Mexico City's environs is the west, where
the city of Toluca offers only modest rewards, acting as a
staging post for the lakeside resort town of Valle de Bravo
and some small towns to the south, the most interesting being
Malinalco , with yet more ancient pyramids.
All these ruins owe their existence to a long succession of
pre-Columbian rulers, above all the Aztecs , whose warrior
state was crushed by Cortés. But they were relative newcomers,
forging their empire by force of arms in less than two centuries
and borrowing their culture, science, arts and even language from
the Valley societies that had gone before. Teotihuacán ,
whose mighty pyramids still stand some 50km northeast of the modern
city, was the predominant culture of the Classic period and the
true forebear of the Aztecs, a city of some 200,000 people whose
influence spread throughout the country, south to the Maya lands in
the Yucatán and beyond into Guatemala and Central America. Their
style, though never as militaristic as later societies, was adopted
everywhere: Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent, and Tlaloc, the rain
god, were Teotihuacán deities.
For all its pre-eminence, though, Teotihuacán was neither the
earliest, nor the only settlement in the Valley: the pyramid at
Cuicuilco , now in the south of the city, is probably the
oldest stone structure in the country, and there were small
agricultural communities all around the lakes. The Aztecs, arriving
some five hundred years after the destruction of Teotihuacán,
however, didn't acknowledge their debt. They regarded themselves as
descendants of the Toltec kingdom, whose capital lay at
Tula to the north, and whose influence - as successors to
Teotihuacán - was almost as pervasive. The Aztecs consciously took
over the Toltec, military-based society, and adopted many of their
gods: above all Quetzalcoatl, who assumed an importance equal to
that of their own tribal deity, Huitzilopochtli, the god of war,
who had brought them to power and demanded human sacrifice to keep
them there. In taking control of the society while adopting its
culture, the Aztecs were following in the footsteps of their Toltec
predecessors, who had arrived in central Mexico as a marauding
tribe of Chichimeca ("Sons of Dogs") from the north, absorbing the
local culture as they came to dominate it.