Down and Delirious in Mexico City Read Online Free

have another barrier to contend with. A severely outmatched Catholic scout, a girl of about twenty in a crisp red shirt, pleads helplessly to the crowd pushing to get inside, “Please no pushing, no running!”
    â€œWe’re inside the basilica!” another scout scolds.
    But it is hopeless. Inside the basilica there doesn’t seem to be enough oxygen to go around for everyone, let alone any personal space. Chanting from the altar choir fills the vast tent of the shrine’sinterior. The smell of potent incense heightens the delirium. I can’t see anything but the upper surfaces of the basilica’s interior swooping walls of polished wooden panels and modern chandeliers showering pale yellow light downward. It feels like an overdone late-disco-era penthouse.
    My
banda
keeps double-checking on itself. Christian hangs on to Gozu, and Gozu hangs on to Porku, and Porku hangs on to El Cochinito. I hold on at the back as best I can until—to my great horror—my knees begin to give. It has been three hours of walking and standing, in the cold, surrounded by a sea of millions. I feel dizzy. There is chanting and incense and the human hum, but I can’t see what is happening beyond the mass of people. We are stuck behind an intimidating stucco pillar. I cannot see the Virgen de Guadalupe. Gridlock. My limbs check in with my brain and inform it that they can no longer go on. Calling to Christian and Porku, I say, “I can’t go in there. I’ll wait for you right here, against this wall.”
    The guys glance at each other, and at me—quick looks of panic and the awareness of imminent loss. Voices and ears are all around us. No time to discuss or reassure one another, not a second. Bodies pressing forward. They have to keep moving. All of us know, in those short seconds as we are swept with the crowd farther into the church, that we will probably never see each other again. I immediately feel that I have made a terrible mistake.
    My friends disappear into the masses inside the shrine and I work my way backward, to a corner near a doorway, searching for air. I watch a poor guy attempt to enter the basilica on his knees, clutching a framed portrait of the Virgen and a few wilting red roses. He seems frightened and, with his shaved head and heavy glasses,looks vaguely like a fellow Mexican American, just as in-over-his-head as I am.
    Nearing collapse, I anchor myself against the cold stone wall. It has taken us hours to get here, to reach her, Mexico’s patron saint and Holy Mother. And now I am alone, inside her basilica, stuck behind a brown pillar near the entrance, not even able to see the Virgen’s image from where I am standing. Defeated, I don’t know what to do next. My friends are gone. I have failed them. I have failed in light of the faith I was developing in the bonds with the brothers you choose, in the face of a tradition that binds all Mexicans. I have failed myself. I struggle my way back outside and breathe the crisp night air, crestfallen. More crowds are coming in, but I am in a no-man’s-land between the lines of police and basilica attendants and the shrine itself. I wander the plaza in a daze. If I could just have held on a bit longer, stayed brave, I would already have been hanging out with my new band of brothers on the other side of the basilica. By now, outside on a patch of grass or concrete somewhere, we’d be pitching a tent, smoking pot, drinking, and talking about our devotion to Guadalupe. Or whatever.
    I reach into my backpack for one of the charity oranges handed to me earlier, open its skin with my fingernails, and started munching on the icy flesh. The orange just reminds me of my lost friends, Porku, Christian, Gozu, and El Cochinito, the guys from the tollbooth to Cuernavaca. I become afraid I am already beginning to forget their faces. I make my way around to the rear of the shrine, hoping to see my friends. Instead I am ushered