MEXICO & MEXICO CITY

"Imagine only 500 Spaniards, with a few horses and clumsy cannon, conquering the whole Aztec race!"

Into Mexico City swarms the travel stream, mostly Americans. With the informality of eager sight-seers, they question anyone they meet, and comment freely on what they see. "Our Ambassador looked tired when we called. They say Mexico City is the hardest post in our foreign service."

"When is the bullfight?" asks a Chicago Board of Trade delegate, meeting a Rotarian from Texas. "And I want to see where Gen. Winfield Scott's men put scaling ladders against Chapultepec. How could the Aztecs tell time by that big stone calendar in the museum?"

"My daughter," says a man from Missouri, "is here with 600 other American students for summer classes. The University is very old. It was started in 1553. Think of that-before Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, or even St. Augustine was heard of !"

"This is the oldest big city in the Western Hemisphere," volunteers a professor of history, slyly pocketing a guidebook. "When the Spaniards first came they found here a rich city of perhaps 300,000 people, with an emperor's court, luxurious palaces, lawsuits, poetry, music."

Mexico City is an astonishing place. Things have happened here so strange and unusual that were they not set down in authentic records they would tax all belief. It looms largest in the mind of the average American because of its supremely important diplomatic relations with Washington, growing out of the many old, unsolved questions between the two republics; but in modern, superficial aspects it is not unlike some other Latin-American capitals. It has old palaces, parks, paintings, and libraries; colleges, convents, great newspapers, and broadcasting stations; like-wise diplomats, soldiers, traffic jams, and jails. It buys and sells, and makes soap, soda water, shoes, shirts, candy, cigarettes, furniture, machinery, leatherware, patent medicines, and textiles.

Sit in one of its theaters and watch a "news reel"; swim, dance, play golf or tennis at a club, or land at Balbuena Field in a passenger plane from El Paso, and-except that you hear Spanish instead of Yankee chatter-you might as well be in Denver. In fact, the high top light and near-by snow peaks much resemble the scenic settings of Colorado.

But under all this standardized modernism is much more-a blend of Spanish and Aztec forces that goes back 400 years. You see signs of this, now and then, in fiat, three-cornered Aztec faces moving stolidly in street crowds. Probe the mystic past and you find that certain historic events staged here swayed the destiny of our continent for centuries. Here Christianity got its first foothold in North America, when idols were turned into altars and a glittering but cruel pagan culture yielded stubbornly to European civilization. Here America's first sheet music and first book were published. Here its first money was coined. And here, too, appeared the "Flying Mercury." Some have styled it America's "first newspaper," but more likely it was but a pamphlet on history or political discussion. Cortez himself built the first sugar mill, not far from Mexico City, and his men introduced many domestic animals, fowls, and farm methods new to the Aztecs. In fact, the coming of Cortez set in motion economic and other forces that to this day are felt, from California to Panama. That is one reason why, now, more than two million Mexicans live in the United States…”