Pubdate: Mon, 21 Jul 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Hector Becerra

MEXICO CITY UNTAMED

Alfonso Hernandez stands before a mural of Jesus Christ being ferried 
on a lion-drawn carriage, trailed by Catholic bishops and priests. 
Behind them, scores of men in crisp suits - some smiling, some 
somber, one in dark shades - kneel as they watch the procession.

They are among the dead of Tepito.

"It's called the mural of the absent. They're people from here," said 
Hernandez, a native of the famously tough - and famously untamable - 
Mexico City neighborhood. "These are people who died because of the 
drug wars. This is to remember them here and not just in the crime 
blotter of the newspapers."

Hernandez is the chronicler of the "Barrio Bravo" - fierce barrio - 
where the whiff of danger hangs over even the simple act of walking 
down the street. (Walk with a purpose, he says. Avoid what locals 
call the "galleria walk.")

By day, a vast, bustling marketplace sells items as varied as tripe 
tacos, freshly squeezed orange juice, Louis Vuitton knockoffs and 
illegal Chinese cigarettes stacked like Legos. By night, some of 
Tepito's streets are a bazaar of a different sort: drugs, guns and vice.

Everything is for sale, locals like to say, but Tepito's dignity.

Hernandez, 70, whose day job is working for a government office, 
halfjokingly calls the tours he conducts here "the safari."

He knows that aside from teaching outsiders about the neighborhood 
and hopefully humanizing it, he's also satisfying a need among many 
visitors to feel like they walked on the wild side and survived Tepito.

Tepito, he says, is a microcosm of Mexico, with its cultural 
richness, the warmth of its people, their sense of humor, their 
adroit improvisation in a place where few count on the government for 
their survival. And then there's the rest. "At the global level, 
Mexico is corrupt, governed by cartels, with incompetent officials," 
Hernandez says. "The same thing that happens at the level of the 
country happens in Tepito. Why judge Tepito when Mexico is the Tepito 
of the world?"

Few neighborhoods have been the subject of government efforts to try 
to "rescue" or wrangle it - sometimes resulting in violent clashes - 
over the years as much as Tepito.

For more than half a year now, the government has been trying again.

"What we're trying to do is a program of 10 actions to try to 
reconstruct the social fabric of Tepito, which has been degrading 
little by little," says Adolfo Savin, a government official who 
declared Tepitenos a "very unified people, not easy to defeat" and 
worthy of respect.

More than a decade ago, then-New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took 
a trip to Tepito with a heavily armed entourage with crime-fighting 
ideas. More recently, food and travel celebrities Anthony Bourdain 
and Andrew Zimmern visited the neighborhood.

Bourdain said, and not incorrectly: "Tepito is a city within a city. 
Its own thing. Either the dark center or the beating heart of Mexico 
City, depending on your point of view."

Tepito's outlines existed before the Spaniards; locals say it's the 
place where the beloved Aztec emperor Cuauhtemoc was captured. It has 
the air of a last place to fall.

Resistance, Hernandez said, is in Tepito's DNA - a point driven home 
by slogans both spoken and tattooed throughout the barrio.

On one wall, a graffiti-style mural delivers a message that can be 
translated, with considerable sanitization, as, "We grow like a steak 
is tenderized, with constant beatings."

Another: Tepito existe porque resiste. Tepito exists because it resists.

Outside the office for the Center for the Study of Tepito, which 
Hernandez uses as a base, about a dozen young men sit on a bench, 
waiting for marching orders. They're paid by merchants to protect 
them and customers from criminals.

An illustration on a wall behind the men depicts the evolution of 
"Homo Tepitecus," concluding with early man becoming a motorcycle 
rider. Motorcycle and moped riders honk horns and rev engines as they 
navigate the marketplace's warren of stalls.

Travel through Mexico City and mention Tepito, and it's likely 
someone will give you tips on not being robbed. Hernandez says the 
everyday danger is exaggerated and mostly confined to a few areas, 
though it's definitely best to be vigilant. Don't wander with a look 
of overt awe over the sensory bombardment - the scent of organ meats, 
the ever-present throb of music or that zombie-like young man huffing 
solvent near the subway. It'll mark you as an outsider.

In the spring, fliers supposedly from the Gulf cartel were 
distributed at night through the neighborhood, advertising for 
recruits. A little more than a year ago, 12 young people from Tepito 
were kidnapped from a bar in another neighborhood and later found 
dead. Days later, two masked gunmen entered a gym in Tepito and 
killed four men.

On Sunday, a shooting left one person dead and two injured, Mexican 
media reported.

Hernandez tries to expose visitors to Tepito's bountiful reserve of 
charisma. He stops by tables serving migas, a soup thickened by stale 
bolillo bread and heaped with pork shanks laden with marrow.

"The best thing about Tepito is its people and their sentiments. They 
can give you their heart just as easily as they can give you a 
beating," says Monica Frausto, 47, the daughter of the restaurant's 
owner. Here the law of reciprocity rules in Technicolor.

Hernandez stops by a stall where Lourdes Ruiz Baltazar sells 
clothing, a cigarette dangling from her lips and a brown checkered 
apron wrapped around her slender figure.

Baltazar is known as the champion of albures, a way of speaking using 
double entendres that she describes as a "puzzle of the mind." Many 
of the merchants here have become known as "the Marco Polos of 
Tepito" because they go to China so often to buy their merchandise. 
Baltazar just likes to travel; she's gone to the Vatican, New York, 
London and Paris. And she's put up her fists in a couple of those 
places when someone tried to rob her, she says.

"Here nothing has ever happened to me," she says. "In Tepito, we 
don't think one thing and say another. We speak face to face. We're 
not thinking about using words to not hurt feelings. What we have in 
this barrio is that we're not hypocrites."

Leaving the marketplace, Hernandez walks to an altar of the Santa 
Muerte, or Holy Death. Devotees leave beer, chicken legs, quesadillas 
and other offerings. Some ask for protection, others retribution.

A man with the Aztec calendar tattooed on top of his shaved head like 
a skullcap leans against the window and bows his head.

Hernandez is standing near the mural of the absent waiting for Martin 
Camarillo to come out to talk. At that moment, Jesus Ramirez Silva 
walks by pushing a cart laden with caramelized fruit and yams.

Hernandez buys a snack and admires a large jade pendant depicting a 
Maya god dangling proudly from Silva's neck. As the affable vendor 
pushes his cart down the street, Hernandez is asked whether having 
such apparently valuable jewelry wouldn't endanger the friendly merchant.

"He knows karate," he replies. "And besides, he has an impressive 
collection of knives."

Camarillo, 35, rolls out of his house in a wheelchair. Sixteen years 
ago, he was shot in the back outside a party. Now he spends many of 
his daylight hours playing Poliana, which involves moving colored 
pieces around. It's a game of strategic domination that's popular in 
prison, where Camarillo spent some time.

He points to a cross near the mural bearing the nicknames of more 
than two dozen people who were killed. Many hung out on this street, 
Camarillo says, adding that by the skin of his teeth he avoided being 
the first name on it.

He says that most people in Tepito are "very peaceful and 
hard-working" and that there's a double standard in how the 
neighborhood is viewed.

"In high society there's people that work to steal, who studied to 
steal," he says. "Here they steal to study."

Hernandez knows the neighborhood will continue to get more than its 
share of scrutiny. It'll be famous and infamous. What it won't be is 
unnoticed. The brand Tepito sells best is Tepito.

"In this city," he says, "a barrio that doesn't cast a shadow does 
not inspire respect."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom