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Cafe Tacuba and the Zocalo

I'd been here for barely two days when I heard the news that Cafe Tacuba would be playing a concert open to the public in the Zocalo on Saturday, May 28th at 8:00pm. There are two things here you must know: 1) Cafe Tacuba is the biggest name in Mexican rock and hail from the sprawl of Mexico City. Outside of the country their popularity curtails drastically, but amongst the young and the 20/30 somethings, they are pop culture heroes. 2) The Zocalo is the historic heart of Mexico City. It is a ginormous plaza flanked by the Presidential Palace, the metropolitan Cathedral, and the excavated site of the Templo Mayor - the main Aztec temple and center of the Aztec universe. The Zocalo's most notable feature is a 50 kilo/25 meter long Mexican flag hanging 50 meters above it's center.

Needless to say, the Zocalo is quite the site to see. Now imagine it and its surrounding streets, alleyways, shop roofs, car roofs, and any other imaginably inhabitable space possible packed with hundreds of thousands of people. 170,000 to be exact, according to Cafe Tacuba’s website. Included in this myriad of seating options at one point during the concert was the top of a fire truck that pulled into the middle of the street in front of us. I didn’t take long for people to realize the advantage they would have from its roof and there was nothing the firemen could do, except drive away.

My friend and I got to the Zocalo around 8:30pm that evening knowing that the place would already be packed. We could have gotten there around 2:00pm with all the other people that wanted to get a good spot, but frankly, we just didn’t see much use. We arrived amongst the mob and worked our way up as close to the plaza as we could get. At the time Cafe Tacuba started to play, we were on a side street about 4 blocks from the stage and about 2 blocks from the nearest big screen recreating the stage performance.

The view from there was incredible. Every inch of the plaza was packed with people as far as the eye could see. People on all sides for blocks and blocks surrounded us.

We lasted two songs in this prime location.

I’m still not sure what caused the disturbance but if I had to guess I would say it was the vibrations from the people dancing in the front. Regardless, the crowd of music goers turned into a river of people. At first it was just to the right of us; a channel of people roughly 10 wide moving away from the stage (either voluntarily or because they had no choice, its hard to tell). This channel quickly turned into the whole street and there was nothing we could do but try not to fall over. When the mob finally stopped and we were able to catch our breath and relax, we were 4 blocks back and could barely hear the music.

Left and right people were running, carrying their friends out of the crowd and towards the group of 10 EMT’s assigned to the task of ensuring the medical well-being of multiple thousands of people. This was the only negative aspect of the entire night, and thankfully, no deaths were reported.

For my second full day in Mexico City, it was quite the cultural experience and a great introduction into life in the “big” city. The moral of the story: a public concert in the Zocalo is not an event to be missed, but proceed with caution.

This is what the Zocalo looks like, minus 170,000 people:





For more info about Cafe Tacuba: www.cafetacuba.com.mx

* Cafe Tacuba will play the Birchmere in Washington, DC on June 21, 2005.