Faculty Feature Spring ’26

Though i studied spanish in college and have been teaching the language for more than two decades, until 2024 I had never had the opportunity to travel to Mexico. It felt particularly important for me to travel to the country’s capital city to better understand the people, history, language, and perspectives that are so key to the curriculum I teach at Winsor. Thanks to the Virginia Wing Summer Grant Program, I spent eight days in July 2024 in the sprawling metropolis of Mexico City; from the moment I stepped into the Benito Juárez International Airport, I knew this city would blow my mind and change every idea I had about it.

I grew up in Italy, living first in Naples and then in Rome, so I am accustomed to places where history is alive and visible in the streets, architecture, and faces of the people who live there. One can observe firsthand the mix of cultures and backgrounds that combine to form the complex, singular fabric of each place. Given the relative size of Mexico City—much larger than any city in Italy—I hadn’t expected the sense of its past to be the same. I was surprised to find a city equally defined by its living history, where past and present coexist visibly, and where the richness of cultural influence is woven seamlessly into everyday encounters.

Mexico City—CDMX or DF for locals—is a huge metropolis where the vibrant history of pre-Colombian civilizations meets the skyscrapers and glitz of a modern capital city. The city has over 150 museums, a fact that speaks to the depth and breadth of culture and history preserved there. However, this storied city compels you to learn beyond the walls of its museums, from the buried temples of Tenochtitlan to the looming presence of La Torre Mayor—once the tallest building in Latin America—and the sinking façade of La Basílica de Guadalupe.

In the classes I teach at Winsor, and in our Spanish program generally, students learn about the Aztecs and the Mayans, the cosmovision of the indigenous people, the importance of corn, the discovery of chocolate, and the challenges that modern Mexico faces. It is important for the World Languages Department at Winsor that students understand the complexity of a culture and its history in order to challenge the stereotypical view of Mexicans and Mexico often portrayed in the media. For this reason, during my eight-day trip I tried to see as much as possible, mixing history lessons and museum visits with walks around different neighborhoods, talking to locals and going shopping in markets for impromptu picnics, which were a highlight thanks to an abundance of delicious street food.

To help me navigate a huge metropolis and a very packed itinerary, I engaged the services of local tour guides. The best was Sebastián, who also teaches history at El Claustro, the University of the Cloister of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, in the very same convent where Sor Juana lived and wrote for 25 years. With Sebastián, I visited the Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Museum of Anthropology), the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts), and the historical center of the city.
We had a four-hour walk around the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico). Founded in 1551, UNAM is the oldest university on the North American continent and the largest institution of higher education in Latin America, home to Nobel Prize winners, political leaders, and world-class thinkers. The UNESCO site is a prestigious public research university that houses murals by famous artists like Juan O’Gorman, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. It is a foundational element of Mexican identity, culture, and progress, intricately woven into the fabric of Mexico City. Walking around the university’s main center—la ciudad universitaria—I could get a glimpse of what young people care about by seeing the graffiti, posters, and flyers protesting femicides and the kidnapping of women, denouncing the war the in Middle East, and cheering on the country’s first female president, who was due to take power in a few months.

I was particularly struck by my visit to the Museo de Arte Popular (Museum of Folk Art), which collects textiles, pottery, jewelry, furniture, and vibrant, imaginatively fantastical alebrijes—brightly colored, intricately patterned animal-based figures with mythical features. The museum was hosting a small exhibition called El hilo que corre (The Running Thread) by Lena Bartula. An American artist who emigrated to Mexico, she takes inspiration for her textile art from the huipil, a Mesoamerican garment with cultural significance as a medium of resistance and Indigenous sovereignty. In tribute to the women who create this art, Bartula chose it as a format through which to express themes of migration, environmental destruction, sustainability, and political repression. I found myself so inspired by the exhibition that I contacted the artist, and I will bring her to my senior seminar class this spring to talk about her art, activism, and use of recycled materials.

Another highlight of my trip was walking around the neighborhood of Coyoacán (“The Place of the Coyotes” in Nahuatl) and visiting the La Casa Azul (the Blue House), the house-museum where Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera lived. Though now one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Mexico City, with hipster cafés, bookstores, and bars, Coyoacán was once an ancient settlement, site of the headquarters of the Spanish conquistadores against the Aztecs, and the first capital of New Spain. Being in the place where Frida Kahlo lived, worked, and died was magical. My visit helped me understand so much more about what influenced her art, the colors, the vibrancy, and the pain. I saw the prosthetic apparatuses she had to wear, and the wheelchair she used near the end of her life.

Of course, local food played a vital role in my quest to better understand Mexican culture. My visit to Coyoacán was topped off by a stroll around a local market, where I had the best tostadas of my life. I also had the opportunity to take a cooking class with Vanessa García, owner of La Prosperidad Lonchería, a small restaurant in the Roma neighborhood. The class involved cooking with las mayoras, indigenous women who cook in the restaurant and who did not learn to cook in a culinary school, but who are nonetheless experts of ancestral culinary knowledge, native ingredients, and techniques. They generally grew up in rural areas where they learned everything there is to know about the food that was grown in those areas. We students were encouraged to try ingredients for different sauces, and we learned about the process of corn nixtamalization to make tortillas. Vanessa also showed us how to make the best guacamole sauce ever.

My itinerary briefly took me beyond the capital city on an excursion to Teotihuacán, one of the most important cities of Mesoamerica, where I visited the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon—the place the Aztecs believed was the site of the world’s creation. I also embarked on a two-day trip to Puebla and Cholula to see the colonial architecture and Tlachihualtepetl, the Great Pyramid of Cholula, on top of which conquistadores built the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios to remind the world of the imposition of Catholicism on Indigenous people during the Spanish conquest.

Ultimately, my time in Mexico reshaped my understanding of the place itself and reinforced my sense of responsibility as a teacher. I returned with more than memories of remarkable sites and meals; I came back with stories, voices, textures, and questions that will live on in my classroom. Mexico revealed itself to me as a city and country defined by contrast and continuity, where ancient civilizations and contemporary struggles coexist, and where creativity, resistance, and joy persist in everyday life. ●