¶ … trips that I made to very different places were Mexico City and the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, and I will describe the impressions that I remember best from these visits to two very different places. Mexico City stands out in my mind because it was my first trip to a foreign country, but Auschwitz is a place I cannot forget simply because of what it is and the evil that it represents -- and I mean that in the literal sense, because it's no exaggeration to say that evil is just in the very atmosphere of the place. I did see some terrible things in Mexico, too, but Auschwitz was always unique in my limited experience and in a category by itself. I did go back to Mexico more than once after that first visit, but had no desire ever to return to Auschwitz or anyplace like it, since it left me only with a feeling or mood of gray emptiness. I cannot describe it better than that. Auschwitz just sits by itself on the plains of Poland in surroundings that seem very isolated and desolate, and unlike the trip to Mexico I did not even feel like talking much about it afterward.
In Mexico City, I stayed at a $5 a night place called the Hotel Bolivar, which is near the Zocalo or main square, where they great cathedral is also located. That building was very impressive, full of Renaissance artwork as well as altars and statues made out of solid gold and silver -- just one indication of how much wealth was taken out of Latin America during colonial times. I later learned that the Native Americans...
There was a guy from Germany staying at the hotel who told me that he wanted to avoid being drafted into the army and was simply staying overseas until he was past the draft age. If they stayed out of the country until they were 27 or 28 they would not have to serve, and this guy wanted nothing to do with the military. He also had some unusual Mexican friends, including a man named Alfredo who drove around in an expensive sports car, and I would not be surprised if they were involved in drug dealing. I didn't ask.
Later at the hotel, I met a journalist named Carlos wrote for a radical newspaper down there and wanted to show me some of the real conditions of the country. First he showed me the business of a middle class family who made t-shirts in a small factory in the basement of their house, and they seemed well-dressed, well-fed and content. Then he showed me the slums of the city, which went on mile after mile and took me into the one-room shack of a poor family with no furniture where they sat around eating on a dirt floor. I thought I had seen poverty before, but never anything like this, and I could never forget the smell of open sewage. In this area, people had no shoes, no decent clothes, not enough food and lived with flies, sewage and garbage. It was one of the shocks of my life and I never forgot it. I should mention many other things about my trip, such as the town of Tepotzlan in Morelos, where…
