It was 1984, a year before the earthquake in Mexico City. On Christmas Eve, at the taco stand in the Alameda, pale meat scraped off the skull of a sheep - barely thick enough to dice - was frying on a griddle. Little heaps of nopalitos and onions were swept up into three tacos with a quick cleaver under a string of bare lightbulbs. I added coriander, a few spoonfulls of a dark red chilli sauce, a squeeze of lemon and a dash of salt. The tacos were ready to eat: tacos de cabeza. The old Hotel Regis that would later collapse in 1985, killing everyone in it, loomed to the right. The Teatro de Bellas Artes was lit up and visible through the trees to the left and, if I had bothered to look up, I would have seen the tall blocky shape of the Torre Latinamericana rise in the direction of the Zocalo. Next to me, eating his own tacos, was a young European man - perhaps around 32. He wore light blue jeans and a blue shirt and sported a thick blond beard that covered a large part of hi
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head