Juan Villoro
The renovation of Mexico City’s airport seems to have been designed not by an architect but by a mortician. The problem goes back a long way. Since 1931, we’ve had an airport project that’s open to the future—in other words, unfinished. No one anticipated that urban expansion would encircle the runways, turning them into streets right in the heart of the city.
Airports are often metaphors for the sky; their high ceilings suggest you’ve already taken off. Benito Juárez International Airport is different. In homage to the national hero after whom it is named, it was designed for someone 5’1” tall. The suffocating corridors of Terminal 1 signal that the plane will travel underground. This establishes an interesting link with pre-Hispanic cosmogonies, which begin and end in underground cavities, but it leaves the modern traveler feeling depressed.
How do you fix what was poorly conceived? Fortunately, Mexico excels at crafts, and one of the most notable is patching: what doesn’t work is mended. Following this logic, the airport never stops replacing ceiling panels or placing plastic bags in the urinals that don’t work. There is always a ceiling from which a cable hangs; on the floor, a soda bottle reminds us of the electrician who couldn’t fix it.
When it comes to aeronautics, we are afraid of the definitive.
Terminal 2, which opened in 2007, retained the airport’s sense of the temporary. The new parking lot became congested immediately, and two roundabouts ensured that traffic wouldn’t flow.
The building was designed to be fixed. Anyone passing through security finds a cross-hall flanked by shops; to reach the boarding gates, you have to go down a level. At one end, this was resolved with stairs and a ramp; at the other, a slope of fabulous consequences was built: since every available space is commercialized, a “slanted store” was installed there. What happened by accident in Pisa happens here on purpose.
The approaching World Cup has given new splendor to the patchwork: the airport is undergoing numerous temporary fixes. For a while, the made-up corpse will look presentable. And then?
Reality is a nuisance that doesn’t slow us down. If there’s no budget to widen a highway, a third lane is painted on the pavement. Space problems are solved by cramming users together. This explains why the airport schedules more flights than it can handle. If things continue this way, getting from the terminal to the runway will be as difficult as crossing the Strait of Hormuz.
The drama worsens when you consider the money spent on not building another airport. The cancellation of the project planned for Texcoco left a debt of between 300 billion and 450 billion pesos, which taxpayers will continue to pay off until 2047. The disasters we see in the terminals force us to think about the fortune spent to cover what wasn’t done. López Obrador was one of the main opponents of the bank bailout undertaken during President Zedillo’s time, but he created his own Fobaproa by canceling Texcoco.
Since the country is bankrupt, every column in the airport is leased to a brand. There are so many neon signs that they bring to mind the movie Blade Runner, in which the only things that survive decay are advertising. The only thing left is for us to wear a promotional vest when traveling, like the “sandwich men” who used to roam the cities.
Upon landing at the airport, the first impulse is to get out of there. But every hell has its circles. To return to civil society, you must face the transportation mafia. Not content with displacing the rides, you can get through digital apps (which charge half the price), licensed taxis engage in extortion. At the international arrivals area in Terminal 2, an employee from one company informs you there’s a 40-minute wait for a car and offers an instant van for double the price. At another company, something similar happens; supposedly, your three suitcases won’t fit in a car: “800 for the van.” On the third try, they put you in your place: “How dare you show up on a Friday!”
The solution is to go to the domestic arrivals area, where there are plenty of cars, and three suitcases fit in the trunk.
Mexico is so unique that it turns the ordinary into a miracle.
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