Ad hoc abroad

Lede:

Except for a lone tamale salesman, Polanco at one in the morning is quiet.
“Lleve sus ricos y deliciosos tamales oaxaqueños.”
The omnipresent sound, a nasally recording adopted by every tamale vendor in Mexico City, resonates off the cobblestone streets.
As Chris and I step through the frosted glass doors and out of the secluded apartment building used only to house U.S. diplomats, the patisserie across the street is dark. We turn down Oscar Wilde Drive and pass rows of bolted boutiques — Tiffany & Co., Burberry, Chanel — all of the posh stores that christen Polanco the “Beverly Hills of Mexico,” a nickname that became painfully aware to us earlier that morning when we decided to eat breakfast at Casa Portuguesa.
Three blocks down from the corner of Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens, the Spanish café’s vast awning-covered patio spanned a large portion of Lincoln Park with a view of resolute statues of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. Chris and I had to keep reminding ourselves that we were not in Chicago anymore.
Within moments of sitting down we understood that it was not the type of crowd that we wanted to eat breakfast with. In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” And we were in the thick of it.
The bar area was filled with Kardashian wanabes sipping mimosas and cappuccinos. Businessmen in suits worth more than my entire suitcase-full of belongings were drinking gin and tonics and feasting on huevos rancheros on the outside patio. The only crumbs in this society came from the restaurant’s massive, flakey croissants.
Halfway through our cups of coffee we couldn’t help but overhear a couple captains of the universe brashly discussing their lucrative battery trade with a Mexican magnate.
“It’s mostly nickel, copper and selenium,” the man said. “There are strikes in the Congo, threats of cutting off exports. Now, China though, China is different.”
“I think we can find a market for you here in Mexico,” the Mexican said. “We wouldn’t have to pay taxes on it.”
We had to get out of there … and fast.
We landed at Benito Juárez International Airport two nights before with the intentions of spending our spring break doing something that no other students would. While most were spending the week drinking on Daytona and Panama beach or even Cancun, we wanted to dive headfirst into a different culture — we wanted to experience what Mexico, a country just below our feet, was really about.