Its inhabitants were ashamed of the genetic mix even as they were proud of their cosmopolitan culture, perhaps none more so than the poet Bernardo de Balbuena, whose Grandeza Mexicana is a two-hundred-page love letter to his adopted home. “In thee,” he wrote, addressing Mexico City, Spain is joined with China, Italy with Japan, and finally an entire world in trade and order. In thee, we enjoy the best of the treasures of the West; in thee, the cream of all luster created in the East.
