I went for a coffee
one morning at one of Coyoacán’s tiny cafes called El Mundo del Café. Similar to Café Jarocho it tightly fits on a street corner with a couple long benches and petite tables in the
heart of Coyoacán’s historic center. Located
six miles south of Mexico City´s presidential palace and now a borough of Distrito Federal, it historically served
as Hernán Cortés´ center of operations in the 1500s. Coyoacán is Náhuatl for “place of coyotes”. Náhuatl is the language of the Aztecs.
Normally there are lots of patrons chatting
away, reading the daily or just sipping on coffee and people-watching. Today a couple of people and their dog sat
enjoying their day. I asked them how to
get to the Leon Trotsky museum. They
later said: “We thought you were going
to ask us how to get to La Casa Azul”.
The conversation
ensued and we exchanged names. Gabriela
Turner said she grew up in Coyoacán and that since I was interested in finding
someone who might have known my father she suggested I look up Don Gil that
shines shoes at Café Jarocho. In his mid
seventies “he knew Frida when he was a child and you might want to go meet
him”, Gabriela said. Being my last day
in México I had to postpone that for my next trip.
However Gabriela had
her own story about Frida and her abode.
She said “as a kid I’d visit Frida’s house, lie on her bed and look up
into the mirror she had on her ceiling”.
Today this would not happen as the museum has a security person in each
room and firm rules are upheld when opening its doors to all tourists that
visit from around the world and México.
“Nunca robé nada porque la amaba”
“I never stole anything because I loved her” Gabriela told me.
After saying our
goodbyes it occurred to me I had forgotten to take a photograph of Gabriela and
her husband. But I caught up with them soon
after and got that picture of them and their dog.
You get the sense of being in a small town even though the population in
this delegación is over six hundred
thousand.
Leaving pendientes, pending visits and business
that time did not allow me to accomplish gives me even more reason to return to
Coyoacán, its beautiful streets and its gracious people like Gabriela and her spouse
who love their town and its previous inhabitants like Frida.
Frida's house La Casa Azul
