The Dream That Never Died
Haresh Shah
It stands there in the middle of Mexico City, looking wrecked and devastated like the crudely chiseled and ravaged structures in the bombed damaged cities of Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. The walls half built and then left unfinished with their uneven rough edges sticking up, floors smeared with the dried out cement. The bare stairs next to the elevators are exposed with no doors concealing them. The haltingly moving lethargic lifts are pulled up and down by the sinister looking cables behind the barely lit entrance to the building. You need to strain your eyes to see the lone figure of the security guard sitting at his battered desk sprouting a dim desk lamp. The open wires devoid of the fixtures dangle down from the high ceilings like in the Snake Alley of Taipei.
When coming in from the street, you walk the rough dusty grounds of what was probably intended to be a Plaza to surround the tall structure planned to be the tallest building in the all of the Latin America. You climb the few unplastered scratchy cement steps to the lobby and make your way towards the elevators. You hurry past the guard and barely return his greetings. You wait for the elevator descend ever so slowly and watch the cables that control it in that semi-dark dusk like filtered vision.
You hurry in and hurry out of the elevator when you get off your designated floor lest one or more of their cables were to snap. On your left is unlit deep dark bowling alley like narrow passage. The corridor on your right is all lit up. The walls are plastered smooth and painted in pleasant colors. There are doors on the either side with bright light pouring through. Walls in between the doors are adorned with paintings – most of them large originals of the illustrations that brighten up the writing within the pages of the magazine. You hear the cacophony of voices and the hustle of the humans presence from behind the doors. These are the Playboy offices in the Aztec capital of Mexico City.
If brought in blind folded and walked directly into one of the offices, you never would imagine the exterior of the building being anything other than one of the modern glass fronted structures of the time. Sitting in our publisher Irina (Schwartzman)’s office what you see are the angled walls covered with multiple of original paintings and the clear glass panels that form the outer walls, overlooking the trees and the buildings outside in this residential neighborhood of Colonia Nápoles. Irina’s glass top desk and the chairs around make it for the setting of one of the most modern offices providing a very pleasant work environment. Even though we are only on the second floor of the building, what you see outside those glass walls is the panoramic view of this sprawling mega city, which is mostly covered in the dense smog. So prevalent is the smog that someone with a sense of humor is marketing a Mexican flag covered sealed beverage can “containing” aire de Mexico sin smog – the Mexican air without smog. But the view you get from Irina’s office is more like the romanticized dusty urban landscape reminiscence of the hazy dreamy images of David Hamilton’s pubescent maidens.
This is the late Eighties. The building was originally meant to be a fifty stories high Hotel de Mexico. The man often referred to be the protégé of Pancho Villa, it was to be the dream tower of the eccentric entrepreneur Manuel Suarez y Suarez, construction for which began in 1962 and was meant to be completed before the country’s 1968 Summer Olympics to provide accommodations for the athletes from around the world. It was to be just like Mexico’s hosting of the Olympics, meant to showcase the country as becoming a part of the modern world, coming true of an immigrant dream that this Spaniard wanted for his adopted country.
Unfortunately, Don Manuel as he was universally called, ran out of the money, and the construction of his dream project had to be halted. Even though the main tower was completed in 1972, it remained an unfinished skeleton for twenty more years. However, also completed and inaugurated was the integral part of this massive undertaking, Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros. In 1980, the project was re-imagined as an international business center. Don Manuel blessed the idea, but before it could be materialized, he died in 1988, while still leaving the unfinished tower to its own fate. But in 1992, the remodeling began partially with the public funds and the completed tower finally opened in 1995 as Mexico’s World Trade Center and eventually went on to become the administrative head quarters for NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement).
It is during the interim years when the building was infested with rats and inhabited by the squatters that our clever publisher Francisco Javier Sánchez Campuzano grabbed the opportunity to headquarter Playboy Mexico’s parent company Grupo Siete in the building so desolate and bare boned Meccano like structure.
Javier had an uncanny knack for setting up his offices whatever space he could lay his hands upon. Originally situated in a family home in the residential Colonia del Valle, it was then moved to Calle Maricopa, practically around the corner from the World Trade Center, into the corner of an art gallery, still known as Hotel de Mexico. Now that I think of it, could well have been an extension of the Polyforum Siqueiros.
Like another sub bunder ka vepari – the trader of every port, Javier dabbled seriously into the art business as well. It seemed quite natural to him to fill the nooks and corners of the large space with setting up desks and phone lines for his editorial staff. Which reminds me of the weekend retrieve Christie Hefner had us Playboy executives to convene and bond. It was at the Kohler show room in Kohler, Wisconsin. Yes, we mingled and toasted and were treated to a sumptuous buffet set up along with the high café tables in the midst of shiny toilet bowls, a huge variety of bidets, bath tubs and shower stalls. It turned out to be one of the most relaxing venues for us to synergize in.
And so were Playboy offices dotting the art gallery. It obviously couldn’t well be the permanent habitat. Whatever other businesses Grupo Siete had drummed up under its umbrella, Javier owned several radio stations of which he had come up with a brilliant idea of setting some of them up to focus mainly on the listeners of north of the borders – that is, of the United States of America. The Hispanic population of the border states such as California, Arizona, Louisiana, Florida, ate up the programing and the advertisers couldn’t be happier, while the listeners got the taste of home.
What’s more – while most of the building remained in unfinished tatters, what was already finished was the antenna tower, reached by the take your lives into your hands high speed elevators. Voila. Javier knew how to make use of the antenna and he promptly set up his radio stations on the very top of the Mexican skyline.
The saving grace were those awesome King Kong size murals already dominating the entrance to the Polyforum, created by no other than the illustrious muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros, in front of which stood statues of the artist and his legendary patron, Don Manuel Suarez y Suarez. Approaching Calle Montecito from Avenida Insurgentes Sur, you can’t help but be in awe of those imposingly beautiful murals, lighting up the otherwise drab and deserted fog and dust filled city scape. It had a feeling of a lush green patch of lawn in the middle of the dry desert. It was a pleasure to stroll by them during our long lunch breaks.
As much of a shock as entering the main tower was, we had gotten used to our environment, of which many stories could be told. Often, Jesus (Bojalil), the editor in chief and his second in command Perla (Carreto) and I would ride the elevator to the vertiginous height and breath the cleanest air one can possibly in Mexico City and look down at the swarming multi-colored houses splattered across the horizon. And Jesus would tell us with all seriousness on his face the vibes he often felt when left alone in the office at nights, how he felt the presence of a shadow moving across our hallways, which he was certain being that of the wandering soul of no other than Don Manuel himself. His dream place, still struggling for life. With Playboy people breathing there, he must have taken comfort in the knowledge that at least the hallways of the second floor had cuddly little bunnies hoping and some of the most beautiful young women frolicking and filling them up with their perfume and and laughers.
This however small a ray of light, he must have seen as the beginning of what would within a few short years turning his dream into the reality. That once again the construction would begin and it would be opened as the convention and cultural centers, containing of the parking facilities, a multiplex, a revolving 45th floor luxury restaurant and a major shopping center with Sears as its principal occupier. And the complex also includes 22 floors of luxury hotel rooms. Perhaps Mexico should host another summer Olympics and have those rooms abuzz with the fervors of the world’s top athletes.
© Haresh Shah 2015
Illustration: Jordan Rutherford
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On Friday, June 19, 2015
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