Eight Years, Three Presidents, One Car
Eight years flew by like water under the bridge. In my eight years in Mexico, I’ve seen three presidents come and go. And for eight years, I’ve kept visiting one unusually "stabled" car.
Eight years is enough time for a preschooler to become a teenager. It’s how long the New Horizons spacecraft traveled to Pluto, covering five billion kilometers. In eight years, a sapling grows into a sturdy oak with roots tangled deep into the earth. And eight years is also how long a Corvette can remain parked in the same spot, quietly marking the passage of your journey through a foreign land.
How could it happen? How could eight years just pass like that? More than I’ve ever spent in one place. More than I’ve ever dated anyone or worked at any job. What would my past self, waking up on that first morning in a strange megacity, have said if I told him this place would become my second home? That I’d know it better than Prague or Czech Budweiss? That it would know me, too—that we’d grow accustomed to each other and find comfort in the familiarity.
Back then, it was just a vacation. Nothing more. A chance to clear my head for a few weeks because the opportunity had presented itself. It was only the fourth time I’d ever traveled outside Europe. A trip to Mexico sounded as exotic and distant as a voyage to Pluto. Today, I couldn’t even count all my flights across the Atlantic, and my wallet holds an ID card declaring Ciudad de México as my place of residence.
When I woke up that October morning in 2016 to the gray smog of a modest apartment belonging to a girl I barely knew, it couldn’t have been further from my idea of an ideal holiday. The place felt hostile and unwelcoming. Just concrete, grime, too many people, chaos, noise, unfriendly stares. Grime—I’ve mentioned it already, but it bears repeating.
We stepped out into it all. She led me toward one of the city’s many multi-lane highways, where thousands of cars, in varying states of disrepair, rushed by. Before we crossed the street, something else caught my eye. A stunning vintage Corvette, beautifully preserved. Not so unusual, perhaps—except that its front axle was chained to a lamppost. I couldn’t help but laugh and took a photo. Nobody back home would believe this.
We nicknamed the vehicle Don Vergas’ Car—a local term that roughly translates to Mr. Dick’s Car. If someone screws up, they’re called Don Vergas. If someone parks like a jerk, they’re Don Vergas. And if someone chains a sports car to a lamppost? Definitely Don Vergas. So, that’s what we called the beautiful old Corvette.
I was relieved to leave that smoggy, smoky chaos behind a few days later to experience the “nice” Mexico—the kind people travel to the southern state of Oaxaca or the Caribbean for.
But fate had other plans. A year later, through a series of unfortunate coincidences, I found myself back in the same neighborhood, walking past the same house. And there it was—the car. Or rather, it was still there. By then, it was shortly after the devastating earthquake of September 2017, which left parts of the city in ruins. That’s when my story in Mexico really began. More coincidences piled on until they no longer felt like coincidences. When I returned deliberately a year later, I couldn’t resist checking if the Don Vergas’ Car was still there. And it was.
By then, I was coming back to a different home, on the opposite side of the same artery, with something resembling a family waiting for me. Every autumn, I’d make a point of visiting the Narvarte neighborhood, just across from Parque Delta, to see if the car was still there. And it always was. A little dustier, covered in more leaves, slowly fading with time.
It became my chronicle, my personal Mayan calendar, reminding me each year that another cycle had passed since I arrived for a few weeks and stayed for years.
When I took my second photo of the car, in the summer of 2018, campaign posters for the political party Morena were everywhere. One, with the cryptic initials “AMLO,” loomed from a massive billboard across the street, watching us as we climbed onto our rooftop to marvel at the vast human anthill below during sunsets. Later, I learned what those letters meant—an acronym for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the man who would become Mexico’s president a few months later.
I was there when AMLO, as he’s widely known, swore loyalty to the Mexican people in December 2018, standing in the heart of Zócalo square. Indigenous leaders enveloped him in ceremonial incense, a spiritual cleansing. The vast plaza filled with the scent of copal.
After years of lamenting his predecessor Enrique Peña Nieto’s bloody legacy, people soon realized that under AMLO, things weren’t improving—in some cases, they worsened. Even as we witnessed drug lords arrested, like one of El Chapo Guzmán’s sons (who, as I later discovered, also enjoyed hanging around Parque Delta), doubts grew.
Then, this spring, Morena posters returned to the streets, now in a deep reddish-purple hue.
By then, I had taken my eighth photo of the car and accepted that one day, this series would have to end. As expected, AMLO’s protégé Claudia Sheinbaum won the June elections, and a few months later, I was once again in Zócalo, where the air smelled of incense as Mexico welcomed its first female president. It hit me then: I, who came here EIGHT! years ago for a visit, had now lived through three Mexican presidents—just one fewer than I’ve experienced in my home Czech Republic.
And last weekend, I snapped the ninth photo of the car. Yes, it’s still there. Covered in leaves, its headlights smashed, long since freed of its chain. Dusty, with a note on the windshield saying someone would like to buy it.
I wonder what that younger version of me, who took that first innocent photo before getting dropped off by a friend at the Balderas metro station (where he immediately got lost), would think of the man now writing these lines just five blocks from there—calling this place “home.” What would he say about having lived through the best and worst life has to offer here? He’d be stunned by all that’s changed. He wouldn’t believe it.
It’s been eight years. Eight years since I landed in the middle of this madness. Eight years since that Corvette first caught my eye. Eight years I’ve spent trying to figure out why. Just as I’m still trying to figure out what the hell, at the start of this ninth year, I’m still doing here.
