Editor’s note: Mexico’s character often reveals itself in the objects and experiences that seem most ordinary—or most spectacular. The humble Monobloc plastic chair, stacked outside taco stands and brought out for family gatherings, has become a durable piece of everyday social infrastructure: inexpensive, adaptable and always ready to make room for conversation. At the other extreme, hot-air balloons drifting above Teotihuacán now carry around 60,000 passengers a year, but Mexico’s fascination with flight reaches back to early experiments in Veracruz, Puebla and Xalapa in the late 18th century. Together, these stories capture a country that finds meaning both at street level and high above it: in a chair shared over tacos, and in the enduring urge to see Mexico from a new perspective.
MND Staff
“It serves rich and poor alike, because everyone gets tired,” says a UNAM sociologist about Mexico’s most ubiquitous seating option, the Monobloc plastic chair.
Although the modern centers of hot air ballooning are in Teotihuacán and León, the pastime has a surprising long history in Mexico, dating back to the late 18th century, writes…
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