Mexico City: City of contrasts, city beyond reality

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If I have ever seen a city of contrasts, it is Mexico City. These contrasts permeate all aspects of life. The city bursts with life as 20 million people rush around their busy lives in an infrastructure built to accommodate about half its population: streets overflowing, horns honking, breaks squeaking, subways overcrowding, but somehow the next day comes.

Steep contrasts between rich and poor are impossible to ignore: Lavish private country clubs, fenced in residences accessible only to the select few. 15 year old teenagers transported in limousines and escorted by police protection. While just a few streets away a beggar extends his hand for a coin, the army of walking salesman struggles all day for a few pesos, the millions of shopkeepers waiting in their stores or street stands for a few customers, a homeless person searching the waste for food, the ghettos filled with indigenous people from the country all looking for a better life in the city, the street child that sells his body for sex because he sees no other way to survive.

The architecture is equally diverse: pretentious colonial structures next to modern day sky scrapers, deserted allies, quaint residential areas, beautiful plazas, hopeless ghettos and a few remaining pieces of green refuge that the city parks offer.

Faces of happiness: laughing university students in the metro, children playing football in the park, tequila shots at the night club, a relaxing cup of coffee at a street café so close to faces of despair: the child whose stomach has not been fed in days, the woman with the bruised face running away form her husband, the qualified university graduate unable to find a job, the family whose daughter is kidnapped and held for ransom or the family of 8 living in a one bedroom apartment.

Happiness and sadness, wealth and poverty, city of opportunity, loneliness among millions of people; Mexico City, city of contrasts, city beyond reality.