Feeling Porfirian in Toluca, or Holiday Greetings from The Man

I know it is a little industrial, but Toluca is one of my favorite Mexican cities. It just feels honest, you know, like Omaha or Fargo ... it just has the feel of a place that's not trying to be Cozumel or DF or something.


I was a little bummed to see in Sol de Toluca that the portales, the lovely shopping area in the center of town under went a Porfirio Diaz style cleansing of the semi-mobile merchants that fill the portales around the holidays (day of the dead there is great fun - no Oaxaca, but again, it ain't trying to be). Women, kids, handicapped - the police even used some teargas in the day-long expulsion of the vendors to get the place "cleansed" for Christmas Eve. Zounds.