Twilight in Tlaxcala
“The young women in the town of Tlaxcala who run the information booth were done giving directions in the textbook Spanish that the tourists could understand. They’d closed out the …
Category: Sabor de la Ciudad
Thinking on Havana
Important as it is, preserving Havana´s very valuable architectural heritage could end in a nostalgic, meaningless task—threatened by elitism and the lack of authentic everyday life—if it is …
Santo Domingo, Bodas, Bautizos y Emails
Bodas! ¡bautizos! ¡divorcios! ¡Aquí tenemos invitaciones para todos sus eventos, pásele güerita! Así reciben a los visitantes en la plaza de Santo Domingo, en el corazón del centro histórico de la Ciudad de México….
Port City-Scapes
Ports, for a kid raised hundred of miles away from the sea, were just holiday spots where we could see fishing boats come in with their catch. On special days, my family would buy fresh fish …
On Time and Space
Reading about a seminar on cities at Columbia University, I was fixated by the sentence: “A new regime of time-space relations is emerging ….” I thought of this the other day as one of the …
Medellín
Llegué a Medellín el día después de la bomba. Concentrada en los preparativos del viaje, no sabía lo que había pasado. Sólo cuando llegué a Medellín me enteré de todo. La noche anterio …
La Boca del Metro
Son las ocho de la tarde y acabo de llegar a la boca del metro. El calor del verano ha llegado pero las brisas frescas de la primavera todavía no se han ido. La luz tiene cierto toque romántico …
Drizzling Labyrinths of Beautiful Villages and Sublime Megalopolis
As the privileged scenario for the splendors and pitfalls of modernity, the city has been the depository of its most common and popular metaphors. Whether described as a reflection of an …
Dance Halls
“De donde es usted?” I asked the best Latin dancer I had ever followed around a floor. It was last summer in “centrally isolated,” as the locals say, Ithaca, New York where a friendly gay club goes …
Colonial Cities
“Potosí!” exclaims Tom Cummins, his lively eyes twinkling, his neat graying ponytail just grazing his collar line. “You can’t have an issue on cities without Potosí. Some people think cities in Latin America …
