Tripping Out in Neza York

By Daniel Hernandez

You’re not supposed to go to Ciudad Nezahualcóytl, and certainly not alone. Ever since I moved from Los Angeles to Mexico City, people have been telling me that Neza is an out-of-control place. A no-man’s-land. The scary “ghetto.”
Sounds like an invitation to me.

I love going to Neza. Despite its image, I see why people who live there or were raised there are proud to represent their hood. Neza, just across the border of the Federal District (D.F.), in the state of Mexico, grew in the 1970s out of the arid plains of the former Lago de Texcoco, unplanned, organically, and, by most accounts, quite painfully. Immigrants who poured into the Valley of Mexico from outlying states—mostly Guerrero, Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Michoacan—settled in what would become Ciudad Nezahualcóytl, named after the Texcoco prince-poet whose florid Nahautl verses to this day adorn the walls of government buildings and cultural centers all over Mexico City. Overrun with rubbish, Neza was known for many years as a polluted and violent place. It would be one of the country’s biggest cities were it not a part of the vast urban swamp of the Mexico City megalopolis. Today they call it “Neza York.”…

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in Slake No. 1. To read the entire story, purchase or subscribe at shop.slake.la.