Transcript

9.10.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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Speaker 1: I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine, dated September-October 2026.
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Speaker 1: As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
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Speaker 1: for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
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Speaker 1: make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
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Speaker 1: now for the first part of the article titled, Stunning
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Speaker 1: Antiquities and Frida Kahlo's Home, are just some of the
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Speaker 1: offerings that have bolstered Mexico City's fantastic array of museums.
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Speaker 1: The ancient capital has plenty of artwork and fossils, if
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Speaker 1: that's what you like, or tour the writing rooms of
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Speaker 1: a Nobel winner, the fortified home of an exiled Russian revolutionary,
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Speaker 1: and towers of skulls. By Tony Perrottet Nobody is entirely
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Speaker 1: sure how many museums lie hidden in the sprawling megalopolis
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Speaker 1: of Mexico City. but its government counts 171. They range
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Speaker 1: from the high-profile National Museum of Anthropology, which holds the
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Speaker 1: world's largest collection of pre-Columbian items in a superb modernist structure,
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Speaker 1: to such extravagantly specialized destinations as the Tequila and Mezcal Museum,
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Speaker 1: the Antique Toy Museum, and the Mexican Sugar Art Museum.
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Speaker 1: The controversial army-run Museum of Narcotics showcases exhibits related to
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Speaker 1: the Mexican drug war, including golden revolvers and a stuffed
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Speaker 1: drug-sniffing dog. Travelers must write in advance seeking rarely granted
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Speaker 1: permission to visit the edgy collection. In between the grand
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Speaker 1: institutions and the whimsical oddities are dozens of small intimate
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Speaker 1: spaces that offer rich experiences for visitors. Many are cultural
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Speaker 1: leftovers from pockets of Mexico City's long history. which dates
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Speaker 1: back some 700 years. Others are more recently preserved homes
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Speaker 1: of artists, writers, and celebrities, repositories for the personal belongings
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Speaker 1: of towering creative figures. In arm's reach of family snapshots,
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Speaker 1: a writer's desk, a painter's canvas, a hanging garment, even
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Speaker 1: a cluttered kitchen sink, observers starkly realize that these figures
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Speaker 1: were human, despite their legendary status. The cumulative effect of
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Speaker 1: visiting such varied museums, I realized while spending time in
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Speaker 1: recent years in CDMX, shorthand for Ciudad de Mexico, is
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Speaker 1: to flesh out an eccentric and immersive narrative of the
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Speaker 1: city's complex and multi-layered history. And its repertoire is only increasing.
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Speaker 1: In the past two years, several quirky and compelling museums
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Speaker 1: have opened their doors here. Even residents can't keep up. So,
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Speaker 1: last winter, I decided to explore Mexico City afresh, through
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Speaker 1: its newer museums, plus a few old favorites, to see
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Speaker 1: what cultural wonders I might discover behind closed doors, fleeing
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Speaker 1: the blizzards of New York for eternal spring. Perched 7,350
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Speaker 1: feet above sea level and surrounded by volcanoes, Mexico City
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Speaker 1: is bathed in sunshine for most of the year. with
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Speaker 1: daytime temperatures that usually stay above the 60s. Its vast neighborhoods,
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Speaker 1: home to some 22 million people, now claim the Central
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Speaker 1: Valley of Mexico, which was once an interlocking system of
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Speaker 1: lakes and marshy islands that were ruled by the Aztec Empire.
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Speaker 1: After the Spanish conquered the region in 1521, they set
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Speaker 1: about draining the region's waters and paving over its canals
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Speaker 1: so that today only one of the original lakes, Xochimilco,
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Speaker 1: remains in the south. As a result, it can be
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Speaker 1: difficult to picture the once majestic Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, founded
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Speaker 1: around 1325 on a central island with wooden pylons forming
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Speaker 1: parts of its foundation. At its peak, in the early 1500s,
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Speaker 1: The city was home to at least 150,000 inhabitants, and
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Speaker 1: three causeways connected a central area full of pyramids, temples,
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Speaker 1: and ritual sites known as the Sacred Precinct. On a
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Speaker 1: brilliantly sunny, cloudless morning, I headed over to the revered location,
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Speaker 1: which now rests beneath Mexico City's Historic Center, where the
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Speaker 1: Spanish built their own colonial administrative heart, as well as
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Speaker 1: the ornate Metropolitan Cathedral. which still looms over the expansive Socalo,
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Speaker 1: or main plaza. The vestiges of Tenochtitlan lie under our
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Speaker 1: feet as we walk, explained Raúl Barrera, who has been
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Speaker 1: the director since 1991 of the Urban Archaeology Program, known
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Speaker 1: by the Spanish acronym PAU, which oversees excavations in the
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Speaker 1: historical center. This is why we are slowly building a
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Speaker 1: network of underground museums. After the Spanish conquest, Barrera explained,
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Speaker 1: Hernán Cortés gave the Aztec capital a radical redesign to
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Speaker 1: effectively erase the barbaric civilization with its penchant for human sacrifices.
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Speaker 1: But the idea that the city had vanished was overturned
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Speaker 1: in 1978 when two electricians working near the Zócalo city
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Speaker 1: unearthed an eight-ton round stone carving of the moon goddess Coyochaqui,
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Speaker 1: prompting further excavations. Today, the base of the Templo Mayor,
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Speaker 1: a step pyramid topped with altars to the Aztec gods
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Speaker 1: of war and reign, is on exhibit inside an adjacent
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Speaker 1: museum where the disc is displayed. And since 1991, PAU
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Speaker 1: has excavated other rescue sites found during building construction in
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Speaker 1: the sacred precinct, with the eventual aim of opening them
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Speaker 1: to the public. But to reach three of the most
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Speaker 1: exciting discoveries, Barrera, a bearded, easygoing academic from Oaxaca, asked
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Speaker 1: to meet on Guatemala Street near the Templo Mayor. We
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Speaker 1: entered the modern Hotel Catedral, where desk staff waved as
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Speaker 1: we took a seat in the foyer above the exposed
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Speaker 1: circular foundations of the temple of Ehecatl Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec
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Speaker 1: god of the wind. which was unearthed in 2010 during
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Speaker 1: construction of the hotel's garage. A stairwell led down to
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Speaker 1: the remains of an elegantly proportioned, rounded structure and part
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Speaker 1: of a ball court dating from the 1400s, an area
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Speaker 1: scheduled to open as a museum at the end of 2026.
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Speaker 1: When we visited, a young archaeologist was at work exposing
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Speaker 1: the masonry with a brush. Excavation in Mexico City is
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Speaker 1: difficult because moisture is still seeps from the original clay
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Speaker 1: lake beds that Tenochtitlan was built upon. Barrera compared the soft,
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Speaker 1: damp soil to a giant jelly. The compacting soil is
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Speaker 1: also why many of the structures built since the Spanish
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Speaker 1: arrival are slowly sinking, at a rate of up to
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Speaker 1: 20 inches a year, he added. Next, Barrera led me
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Speaker 1: a few doors away to the Spanish Cultural Center, a regal,
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Speaker 1: 16th-century colonial structure built with the basement containing the remains
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Speaker 1: of a Kamekak, which was a school for the sons
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Speaker 1: of Aztec nobility. Discovered after a massive 1985 earthquake and
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Speaker 1: opened to the public as a museum since 2012, it
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Speaker 1: houses eerily lit displays that include spiral roof decorations, well-used
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Speaker 1: ceramic plates, an engraved human jaw used for religious rituals,
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Speaker 1: and spectral footprints embedded in stucco floors. as if the
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Speaker 1: Aztec students had just vanished upstairs after classes. Each new
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Speaker 1: site needs a creative engineering solution, Barrera observed, such as
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Speaker 1: reinforcing colonial edifices or designing modern ones like the Hotel
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Speaker 1: Catedral that float above Aztec ruins. We no longer need
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Speaker 1: to knock down buildings to excavate Tenochtitlan. The Aztec world
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Speaker 1: can coexist with the modern, he said. The highlight of
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Speaker 1: the subterranean tour was nearby at a restored Spanish mansion
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Speaker 1: that opened last year as, of all things, the Museum
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Speaker 1: of Cacao and Chocolate. As a staff member at the
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Speaker 1: ticket desk nibbled chocolate treats, Barrera peeled away the official
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Speaker 1: PAU seal from an off-limits door to reveal a dusty
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Speaker 1: chamber lit by Barra bulbs. Barrera explained that workers had
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Speaker 1: made a sensational discovery in the basement while the museum
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Speaker 1: was being built in 2015. Human skulls. Barrera soon realized
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Speaker 1: that this was the famed Huey Tsompantli, where more than
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Speaker 1: 650 craniums of sacrifice victims, ritually cleaned and stripped of flesh,
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Speaker 1: were put on display as a centerpiece of the sacred precinct.
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Speaker 1: When the first skulls were found, we studied the memoirs
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Speaker 1: of conquistadors, Barrera said. The soldier, Andres de Tapia, left
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Speaker 1: a detailed account of the Huey Tzampantli, describing a long
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Speaker 1: rack with two hollow circular towers at either end. This
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Speaker 1: was definitely it. It was a marvel. Barrera led me
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Speaker 1: down a rickety ladder to examine the rows of hollow-eyed
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Speaker 1: skulls embedded in an earthen wall. We then climbed down
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Speaker 1: a second ladder inside one of the two hollow towers
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Speaker 1: of skulls, row upon row gazing at us, an admittedly
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Speaker 1: nightmarish and claustrophobic effect. As we sat in the haunted space,
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Speaker 1: Barrera explained that the Huey Tsompantli remains an active archaeological dig.
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Speaker 1: but there are plans to open it as a museum
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Speaker 1: in the future. Our first priority is conservation, he said.
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Speaker 1: It's an important site of huge cultural shock, he added.
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Speaker 1: One of Cortés' men, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, described in
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Speaker 1: his memoir witnessing human sacrifices at the top of the
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Speaker 1: Templo Mayor. According to Aztec theology, the gods needed to
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Speaker 1: feed on blood and human hearts every day, Barrera said,
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Speaker 1: explaining that the Aztecs believed they were blessed in return.
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Speaker 1: The sacrifices ensured that the sun rose every day and
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Speaker 1: the crops grew. It wasn't just a spectacle of death.
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Speaker 1: It was a temple of life, a place of regeneration.
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Speaker 1: With that, we climbed back up to the Museum of
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Speaker 1: Cacao and Chocolate, where the staff cheerfully offered us another
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Speaker 1: plate of sweet treats, a surreal contrast to the darkness below.
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Speaker 1: For three centuries after the 1521 conquest, Spanish rule made
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Speaker 1: Mexico City the world's first wholly multicultural place, writes the
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Speaker 1: historian Paul Gillingham in Mexico, a 500-year history, with trade
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Speaker 1: routes across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, establishing it as
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Speaker 1: a nexus for travelers, migrants, and traders from the Americas, Asia, Africa,
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Speaker 1: and Europe. In the 19th century, after Mexico's 1821 independence
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Speaker 1: from Spain, French and American forces invaded the country in
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Speaker 1: successive waves, a story recounted at the National Museum of Interventions.
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Speaker 1: Situated since 1981 on a property studded with ancient trees
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Speaker 1: in the dreamily quiet Churubusco Monastery, from which resident monks
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Speaker 1: were evicted in 1847 to turn it into a fort,
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Speaker 1: the museum's exterior is still dappled with bullet holes. My
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Speaker 1: saga continued at the National Museum of the Revolution, devoted
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Speaker 1: to the uprisings that created Mexico's modern constitutional republic between
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Speaker 1: 1857 and 1920. Established in 1986 and recently renovated, it's
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Speaker 1: located beneath a cavernous structure first intended to be part
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Speaker 1: of the federal legislative palace. The labyrinthine space is filled
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Speaker 1: with personal relics, photographs, and artistic sculptures of sombrero-wearing rebel heroes,
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Speaker 1: items that recount the stories of flamboyant, romantic figures like
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Speaker 1: Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, both of whom swept through
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Speaker 1: the countryside with guerrilla armies. Both were assassinated, Zapata in 1919,
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Speaker 1: Villa in 1923. The revolution's final success in 1920 is
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Speaker 1: led to a creative renaissance as the government called on
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Speaker 1: Mexican artists to help forge a new national identity based
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Speaker 1: on pride in pre-Columbian civilizations and indigenous cultures. The artistic
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Speaker 1: pioneer was Diego Rivera, a charismatic figure who, in 1921,
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Speaker 1: returned from a decade studying in Paris to throw himself
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Speaker 1: into a state-funded mural program. His small army of fellow
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Speaker 1: artists including students and accomplished painters from around the country,
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Speaker 1: elevated the art form and gave it a uniquely Mexican perspective.
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Speaker 1: One of the best places to appreciate their contributions is
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Speaker 1: the Living Museum of Muralism, which opened in 2024 in
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Speaker 1: the former Secretariat of Public Education building, a majestic three-story
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Speaker 1: open-air structure in a 16th-century convent in the historic center.
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Speaker 1: Nearly 300 historic murals, decorate the walls and arches around
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Speaker 1: ornate courtyards, many by the wildly prolific Rivera, who was
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Speaker 1: a committed communist, showing Aztec warriors, laboring peasants, and greedy capitalists.
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Speaker 1: Murals by Mexico's 21st century practitioners are also exhibited. Even so,
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Speaker 1: I found the most exciting gallery from the era a
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Speaker 1: few blocks away in the now run-down Presidente Abelardo L.
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Speaker 1: Rodriguez Market. where murals from the 1930s cover the ceiling
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Speaker 1: and walls. Having read about a second-floor vestibule, I asked
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Speaker 1: a food vendor for directions. She pointed out a dark,
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Speaker 1: unmarked stairwell that led up to a sunny chamber where,
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Speaker 1: beginning in 1935, a 31-year-old Japanese-American artist named Isamu Noguchi
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Speaker 1: completed a vast artwork, History in Mexico, over eight months.
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Speaker 1: Five years later, Noguchi was would gain fame for News,
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Speaker 1: a relief adorning Rockefeller Center in New York. History Mexico,
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Speaker 1: a 72-foot-long sculptural frieze made of concrete and black and
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Speaker 1: red pigmented cement, depicts socialism's battle with Nazism and capitalism
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Speaker 1: with dynamic shapes of sickles, swastikas, and human figures. Noguchi
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Speaker 1: later wrote fondly of his Mexican sojourn, during which time
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Speaker 1: he met and had a brief affair with with the
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Speaker 1: surrealist artist Frida Kahlo, who was married to Rivera. Noguchi recalled,
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Speaker 1: By then, in the mid-1930s, multicultural Mexico City had cemented
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Speaker 1: its reputation as an exile's paradise, welcoming foreign artists, radicals,
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Speaker 1: and refugees. The city harbored German Jews and activists fleeing
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Speaker 1: the Nazis, Italians fleeing Mussolini, Russians fleeing Stalin, and a
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Speaker 1: veritable who's who of Latin American revolutionaries. Many were followed
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Speaker 1: by spies, assassins, and secret police. In the leafy neighborhood
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Speaker 1: of Coyoacan, history buffs can stroll to the Leon Trotsky
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Speaker 1: House Museum, established in 1990 in a fortress-like mansion where
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Speaker 1: the Russian revolutionary attempted to take refuge from Stalin and
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Speaker 1: survived multiple assassination attempts before he was stabbed to death
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Speaker 1: with an ice axe in 1940. The garden still has
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Speaker 1: Trotsky's chicken coops and rabbit hutches. A stone stele adorned
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Speaker 1: with a hammer and sickle contained his and his wife's ashes.
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Speaker 1: Trotsky had fled to Mexico City in 1937, and he, too,
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Speaker 1: had a brief affair with Kahlo, who, with Rivera, was
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Speaker 1: a pillar of the left-wing arts community in Coyoacan, then
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Speaker 1: a rustic village south of the city. The neighborhood today
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Speaker 1: is part of the metropolis's urban sprawl, but it maintains
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Speaker 1: its old-world charm with colorful handicraft markets, verdant plazas lined
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Speaker 1: by cafes, and one of Latin America's oldest churches, built
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Speaker 1: atop an Aztec cemetery. For decades, Coyoacan's main attraction has
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Speaker 1: been Casa Azul, the Blue House, where Kahlo was born
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Speaker 1: in 1907, spent her childhood, and later lived with Rivera.
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Speaker 1: She died there in 1954. It is one of Mexico
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Speaker 1: City's most popular tourist sites, with ticket lines routinely stretching
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Speaker 1: around the block, as befits the hometown star who today
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Speaker 1: eclipses her husband. Kahlo's distinctive image, wearing the traditional embroidered
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Speaker 1: dress and floral headpiece, of the Tijuana people of Oaxaca,
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Speaker 1: adorns restaurants and souvenir stores. Exhibitions of her work tour
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Speaker 1: the world's marquee museums constantly, and in 2025, one self-portrait,
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Speaker 1: The Dream, The Bed, broke the international public auction record
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Speaker 1: for a female artist, selling for $ 54. 7 million at Sotheby's
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Speaker 1: New York. As a result, the opening late last year
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Speaker 1: of the new Kahlo House Museum also in Coyoacan, was
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Speaker 1: a major cultural event. Known as Casa Roja, the Red House,
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Speaker 1: the memorabilia-filled museum epitomizes the capital's penchant for domestic shrines
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Speaker 1: to historical celebrities. Adan Garcia Fajardo, the museum director, told me,
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Speaker 1: We Mexicans like heroes. We like warriors. We like sorcerers.
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Speaker 1: We like magic that moves us and great personalities. Kahlo
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Speaker 1: qualifies in each of these categories, and her paintings have
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Speaker 1: deeply affected millions. Her art is inseparable from her operatic
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Speaker 1: life story, which was marked by a life-altering accident, a
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Speaker 1: severe illness, a traumatic relationship with Rivera, and several tumultuous
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Speaker 1: love affairs. With a focus on her early biography, Casa
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Speaker 1: Roja serves as a complement to Casa Azul. The Red
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Speaker 1: House is like a prequel to The Blue House, said
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Speaker 1: Maria Jose Camacho, a staff member. We look at Frida
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Speaker 1: as a person, not just as an artist or Diego's wife.
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Speaker 1: It completes her story. Kahlo's parents moved into the Red House,
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Speaker 1: so named because it had a red door, although its
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Speaker 1: entire exterior has now been painted red, in 1931, and Christina,
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Speaker 1: Kahlo's young sister, moved in a few years later with
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Speaker 1: her two children, Isolda and Antonio. Frida spent the night
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Speaker 1: here whenever she was fighting with Diego, or when she
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Speaker 1: wanted moments of privacy or intimacy, Garcia Fajardo said, including
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Speaker 1: an 18-month stretch in 1947-48. It is believed she came
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Speaker 1: here for romantic trysts with Leon Trotsky and Noguchi. What
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Speaker 1: also distinguishes the Red House, Camacho added, is that it
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Speaker 1: remained a family home until recently. Christina's grandchildren lived there
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Speaker 1: until a few years ago, leaving it filled with private
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Speaker 1: relics that survived through the generations. The family passed on
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Speaker 1: the archives and artifacts from daughter to daughter to daughter
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Speaker 1: in a chain. The descendants were still living here just
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Speaker 1: three years ago. This is where they had dinners, entertained guests,
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Speaker 1: celebrated birthdays. It was the family's heart, said Camacho. Curators
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Speaker 1: have cataloged clothes, jewelry, toys, medicines, wedding invitations, and scribbled
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Speaker 1: notes from Kahlo. This wealth of memorabilia is essential to
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Speaker 1: the allure of all house museums, Garcia Fajardo said. People
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Speaker 1: can tell when something is not an original. You can
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Speaker 1: almost feel it, she said. We were able to salvage
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Speaker 1: the personal treasures from inside the house. The sheets on
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Speaker 1: the beds are original. The cutlery in the kitchen is original.
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Speaker 1: We even have a pack of Frida's cigarettes. Casa Roja
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Speaker 1: still feels like a family affair. One of Kahlo's great-great-nieces,
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Speaker 1: Mara de Anda Romeo, narrates the introductory video, which relates
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Speaker 1: Kahlo's childhood, the case of polio at age six that
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Speaker 1: left her with a withered leg, and the horrific bus
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Speaker 1: accident that damaged her spine at 18. The narrations also
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Speaker 1: refer to her distinctive una ceja, her unibrow. Elsewhere in
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Speaker 1: the museum, another great-great-niece, Frida Henschel Romeo, gives voice to
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Speaker 1: Kahlo's sister, Christina. Many exhibits recount Kahlo's growth as an artist,
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Speaker 1: starting with her close relationship with her father, Guillermo, a
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Speaker 1: Hungarian-German immigrant and photographer who produced many striking family portraits,
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Speaker 1: including childhood shots of Kahlo. Frida's father was very artistic,
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Speaker 1: said Garcia Fajardo. He wanted to be a painter and
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Speaker 1: loved opera and music, all passions that he passed on
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Speaker 1: to Frida. During renovations, the interior courtyard was paved for
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Speaker 1: visitor access. and the original grapefruit tree was replaced. The
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Speaker 1: family had loved the citrus perfume suffusing the house. Images
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Speaker 1: of grapefruit leaves also adorn the cozy kitchen above a
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Speaker 1: mural of fluttering birds discovered beneath a layer of white paint,
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Speaker 1: possibly done by Kahlo herself. An inscription reads, El Maison
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Speaker 1: de los Guerriones, The Sparrows Inn. It's easy to imagine
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Speaker 1: the family gathering around the table. Perhaps the most striking
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Speaker 1: space is downstairs, where a small easel stands on a
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Speaker 1: desk in a bare brick room surrounded by dolls Kahlo
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Speaker 1: shipped home from San Francisco's Chinatown around 1930, because, Camacho
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Speaker 1: told me, she wrote to her sister that they reminded
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Speaker 1: her of Mexico. Standing there, I felt a satisfying intimacy
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Speaker 1: from encountering the everyday lives of larger-than-life figures, which both
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Speaker 1: demystifies them and makes us appreciate their extraordinary achievements all
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Speaker 1: the more. I had a similar experience in the former
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Speaker 1: home of an acquaintance of Kahlo's, the prolific English-born painter, sculptor,
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Speaker 1: and novelist Leonora Carrington. One of a coterie of surrealist
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Speaker 1: artists who fled Europe for Mexico, Carrington produced nearly a
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Speaker 1: dozen books and more than 2,000 visual works during a
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Speaker 1: long and colorful life, mysterious creations, often hybrid humans and animals,
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Speaker 1: that were once said by contemporary admirer Edward James to have, quote,
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Speaker 1: materialized in a cauldron at the stroke of midnight, end quote.
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Speaker 1: Carrington's Journey to Mexico reads like an adventure novel. In
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Speaker 1: the 1930s, she turned her back on the aristocratic comfort
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Speaker 1: of a conservative Catholic upbringing in Lancashire to study art
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Speaker 1: in Florence and live as a bohemian in Paris. where
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Speaker 1: she became romantically involved with Max Ernst, the German-born pioneer
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Speaker 1: of Dadaism and Surrealism. She narrowly escaped the Nazi invasion
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Speaker 1: in 1940, fleeing to Spain, where she strategically married a
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Speaker 1: Mexican diplomat, then traveled underground to Portugal and New York,
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Speaker 1: eventually finding refuge in Mexico City in 1942. In 1948,
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Speaker 1: Carrington moved into a house in the Roma neighborhood with
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Speaker 1: her husband, a Hungarian-born photographer, and she remained there for
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Speaker 1: 20 years before moving to the United States. In her
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Speaker 1: last decades, she returned to the Mexico City house to
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Speaker 1: live and work. Today, the district is filled with CDMX's
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Speaker 1: trendiest cafes, bars, and restaurants, but a sense of its
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Speaker 1: quiet charm a few decades ago can be gained from
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Speaker 1: Alfonso Cuaron's Oscar-winning 2018 film Roma. Once obscure, Carrington's artistic
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Speaker 1: reputation has soared since her death in 2011 at age 94.
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Speaker 1: Plans to open her three-story Bauhaus-inspired abode on Chihuahua Street
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Speaker 1: as a public museum faltered in 2024, but it is
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Speaker 1: now preserved by the Metropolitan Autonomous University as a research center,
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Speaker 1: the Leonora Carrington House Studio. True devotees can visit by appointment.
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Speaker 1: and by paying a hefty $ 100 fee. The homey lived-in
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Speaker 1: rooms have hardly been touched since Carrington died, and they
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Speaker 1: are adorned with original bronze sculptures, creating a mythical bestiary,
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Speaker 1: cats with human faces, a life-size horse with the head
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Speaker 1: of a crescent moon, a crocodile with baby crocodiles riding
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Speaker 1: on its back, a larger version of which can be
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Speaker 1: seen a few blocks away on Insurgentes Avenue. The most
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Speaker 1: intimate space, once again, is the kitchen, with spices still
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Speaker 1: in their racks, a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray, snapshots
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Speaker 1: stuck casually to the cupboard doors, and a dark sculpture
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Speaker 1: of a fantastical beast hunched by the sink. Mexico City
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Speaker 1: reveres its writers as much as its visual artists. One
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Speaker 1: of the newest and most intriguing literary shrines is the
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Speaker 1: stylish home of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian-born winner of
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Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize in Literature. The home lies in the
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Speaker 1: affluent southern neighborhood of Yardines del Pedregal, Stone Gardens, where
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Speaker 1: he lived with his family for 39 years until his
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Speaker 1: death in 2014 at age 87. Gabo, as he is
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Speaker 1: fondly referred to by relatives and fans alike, was by
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Speaker 1: then one of Latin America's most beloved writers thanks to
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Speaker 1: 100 Years of Solitude, the masterwork he wrote in Mexico
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Speaker 1: City in the mid-1960s, and his house on Cayo Fuego
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Speaker 1: Fire Street quickly became a crossroads of the capital's intellectual life.
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Speaker 1: It was formally opened by the family in 2025 as
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Speaker 1: the Casa de la Literatura Gabriel García Márquez and can
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Speaker 1: be visited by appointment. I like to do the house
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Speaker 1: tours myself, although I never say who I am, said
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Speaker 1: Emilia García Elizondo, Garcia Marquez's 36-year-old granddaughter. I can offer
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Speaker 1: little insights about Gabo because I'm part of the family.
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Speaker 1: For example, my grandfather only ever sat in this chair,
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Speaker 1: she said, indicating a comfortable-looking white padded recliner. This concludes
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Speaker 1: readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your reader has
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Speaker 1: been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening and have a
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Speaker 1: great day.