Eerie and prescient: Anthony Bourdain’s parting words in Parts Unknown’s Mexico City episode. “As I have come to know in my own life, drugs, even drug addiction, can be a survivable event. Death is not. Death is final.”
“I had begun my trip to Mexico in a mood of dejection and self-pity, feeling shunned, overlooked, ignored, rejected—easily identifying with migrants and Mexicans … I’d hoped the trip would be salutary, a cure for my sour mood, and so it proved. I was uplifted, smiling when I set off for home, my hand on my heart, promising to return. …
“One of the greatest thrills in travel is to know the satisfaction of arrival, and to find oneself among friends.”
That was not Tony Bourdain but rather the distinguished writer Paul Theroux, who Bourdain would later break bread with in the Hawaii episode of CNN’s Parts Unknown.
Mexico, which first aired in May 2014, marked a return of sorts for Bourdain to the rich, layered world he first traced in No Reservations five years earlier, in 2009, but this would prove a very different experience. In the prescient way Bourdain had of divining and foreshadowing future events, the Mexico he shepherded viewers through in Parts Unknown is eerily reflective of events in Mexico today. No Reservations cast a brighter, more sunny light on a country of more than 750,000 square miles with more than 130 million people — the 10th most populous country in the world and the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country.
Human presence in pre-Columbian Mexico dates back to 8000 BC; Mexico is one of the world’s six Cradles of Civilization and a familiar and yet inscrutable neighbour to the United States.
That is not the Mexico that is on Bourdain’s mind, though, as he makes plainly clear in his show-opening opening voiceover, even as he resolves to reveal the human story behind the brutal headlines. Then and now.
“Mexico is a country where every day, people fight to live,” he tells viewers. “All too often, they lose that battle.
“(This is) a magnificent, heartbreakingly beautiful country. The music and food, and a uniquely Mexican, darkly funny, deeply-felt worldview. Right down there, cuddled up in ethos, our brother from another mother.
"Holy mother of Santa Muerte, please protect my stash of cocaine. Let it not be interfered with by the cops, or the competition. Let any who would mess with me be killed. My enemies destroyed. Please forgive us our sins, for they are many."
Drugs, cartels, corruption, murders and convoluted, labyrinthine politics — clearly, we’re no longer in the sunny optimism of Lyon, which Bourdain visited on Parts Unknown only a week earlier.
Recent history is much on Bourdain’s mind, and it says a lot that what was recent in 2014 is still recent in 2024.
Bourdain: “More Mexican civilians have been killed since 2006 than all the American military lost in ten years of the Vietnam War and eight years of wars in Iraq. … 80,000 Mexicans have died in the last seven years in narco violence.”
Bourdain is not interested in the vacation resort side of Mexico with its turquoise coastlines and conveniently pristine white sand beaches, but rather in what lies underneath. This is what made Parts Unknown tailormade for CNN and not the Travel Channel.
The closer Bourdain gets to Latin America’s heart of darkness, the more fulfilled he seems — no longer a chef on the frontlines of the restaurant trade but a cultural anthropologist; part ambassador, part interpreter and part sage for those of us curious about and willing enough to look beyond the glossy surface of travel brochures and self-serving spin from politicians jumping from one positive press announcement to the next.
Bourdain’s strongest suit was the humanizing sensibility he brought to complex, uncomfortable subjects, and it doesn’t get much more complex or uncomfortable than the real Mexico.
“Tepito is a city within its city. Its own thing. Either the dark centre or the beating heart of Mexico City, depending on your point of view. It's the home of Santa Muerte, the skeletal St. Death. This is where they come: the impoverished, the oppressed, the marginalized, the criminal. People for whom the traditional church has less relevancy. For the unforgiven and the unforgivable. For those on whom the Catholic saints have turned their backs, there is Santa Muerte.”
There is grace here, too. Among his many, many attributes, Bourdain had a way of finding grace among the ruin.
And, as often as not, that had to do with food. Good food. In fine quantity, and full of sustenance. And drink. Here’s Bourdain sampling the micheladas in the mercados of Tepito, for example, a delectable concoction of beer, lime, Clamato juice, Worcestershire sauce, spices and chilli peppers, served in a chilled, salt-rimmed glass:
“A lot of good smells here, man. A lot of good-looking food. My happy place is somewhere in here. Oh, there it is. … Wherever there's bones and guts simmering in broth, chances are I'll be happy.”
Interestingly, some of Bourdain’s most poetic, stirring words do not appear in the program itself but rather in an accompanying essay he wrote at the time for the social media platform Medium.
“(Mexico) has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for its gorgeousness. Its archeological sites — the remnants of great empires, unrivalled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over a tortilla chip. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply ‘bro food’ halftime. It is, in fact, old — older even than the great cuisines of Europe and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. …
“The received wisdom is that Mexico will never change. That it is hopelessly corrupt, from top to bottom. That it is useless to resist — to care, to hope for a happier future. But there are heroes out there who refuse to go along. On this episode of Parts Unknown, we (got to) meet a few of them. People who are standing up against overwhelming odds, demanding accountability, demanding change — at great, even horrifying personal cost.
“This show (was) for them.”
