On a Sunday in Mexico City, you simply have to stroll down Paseo de la Reforma and take in the pleasure of the avenue closed to traffic.

It turns out they shut it down every Sunday, so people can enjoy themselves skating, cycling, or just walking.

It's as if the stressed-out Mexico that grinds on all week simply vanishes for one day, making room for leisure and fun.

A lot of people have been critical of some of the measures the city has taken lately, and since we hadn't been here to see them up close, we hadn't really weighed in much.

It's a brilliant idea, and if you're a tourist, you can spend the day happily watching how Mexicans behave when they're relaxed and just trying to have a good time.

In the Alameda (the park on Avenida Juárez, to the left as you come down Reforma toward the historic center), you can see the whole glorious spectacle of a Sunday in full color.

Balloon vendors, classic Mexican toys and handicrafts, and of course mountains of street food and antojitos (savory snacks) ready to eat right there on your feet, or to carry along as you keep walking.

The contrasts are what make it most interesting: people skating and cycling alongside vagrants drifting through the streets, or the hungover sprawled on a bench sleeping off the night before.

Running through all of it, you can always feel the political discontent, the bitter criticism that spills out through pamphlets, magazines, and CDs blasting at full volume with insults aimed at the endless parade of corrupt and disastrous politicians this beautiful country of mine keeps producing.

Because with loudspeakers and a full stock of merchandise, people broadcast, with sarcasm, irony, or outright mockery, the most notorious things happening in this country day after day.

Some women dress up to feel more Mexican, and also, clearly, to catch the eye of those of us passing by (it's pretty obvious they're out there helping spread political awareness and exercising the kind of criticism that is more necessary now than ever, not just to change things, but to genuinely try to change them for the better), because what's the point of change if it isn't for something better?

By "better," I always mean whatever brings benefit, peace, and happiness to the majority of society, not whatever those short-sighted, thieving politicians, deputies and senators, vote for most of the time without any serious analysis or real commitment to us, the society that pays their salaries.

It's impossible to set politics aside in a country that wants to enter a democracy it has no idea how to digest.

We've been continuously enjoying this Sunday spectacle, and so many others, ever since we settled here in the very heart of the city. The constant demonstrations that happen day after day tend to have their fascinating and colorful side.

Now that I'm coming back to finish something I started a couple of weeks ago, it happens to coincide with a special occasion: the first anniversary of the vehicular closure of the avenue.

The number of bicycles and people out celebrating the one-year mark is remarkable. You can tell this city needed it. The enthusiasm with which the whole thing keeps growing is incredible.

In Mexico, the poor don't earn enough to invest in entertainment, so these kinds of activities help people with limited means enjoy themselves without spending anything much.

Today there was music, ramps for the young people doing tricks, and a general sense of celebration.

Yesterday we also got to take in International Gay Pride Day. It was incredibly fun: the costumes, the spontaneity of people celebrating their sexual differences, the sheer size of the crowd. We hadn't expected so many people, given that this is a highly Catholic country that practices its double standards quite openly. But to our delight, it seems things are improving, at least in that regard.

My husband and I, who years ago attended an enormous march in Mexico City protesting insecurity, hadn't seen that many people taking to the streets since then.

The sad part of Mexico is the police, and the way they go about pretending to control everything.

There's an overwhelming need to feel like we belong to the first world (whatever passes for "cool" in Mexico), so in trying to imitate our closest model, the United States, we put on a show of acting swiftly and with precision.

Reality tells us we're nowhere near doing things properly, and the proof is what happened just a few days ago at a nightclub, where the police and those commanding them demonstrated negligence in its purest form.

In a supposed attempt to catch young men and women drinking or taking drugs, they tried to surprise them and ended up being the ones caught off guard.

Twelve innocent people died at the hands of incompetent officers, themselves commanded by equally incompetent superiors and politicians.

I say this after investigations showed that neither the club nor the young people who were simply dancing and having a good time were drunk, much less on drugs.

Only at the very end, and without much credibility, did they mention that four or five minors had shown traces of alcohol in their tests.

But what society came away with is that police procedures in Mexico are neither just nor remotely humane.

This is a city of contrasts like few others in the world. I'll write more about that soon.

I've been writing this over the course of several weeks because we went to Cuba in the meantime, but no sooner did we get back than yet another kidnapping hit us, one more among the thousands that have been happening in this country for so long I no longer want to, or can, keep count.

But this time it reached very high up, and very conveniently timed with the nightclub incident I mentioned above. They kidnapped the fourteen-year-old son of a well-known businessman, owner of the Marti sporting goods chain.

Between one negotiation and the next, one blunder after another (as always), they killed the boy, and today the scandal is enormous. Those responsible turned out, apparently, to be police officers, and not just officers but police commanders, which has only made everything worse.

A lot of people immediately object to the attention this case is getting because the victim was someone important's son, but crime in my country really is democratic, I mean that sincerely. It doesn't discriminate. We know of cases involving very humble people who, having saved up a small amount of money and mentioned it to the wrong person, had their daughter kidnapped. She ended up in captivity alongside the son of a tire company owner, and that case we heard about firsthand through a family member.

Faced with all of this, and the heavy negative energy you pick up the moment you land at the international airport, we decided to go see The Dark Knight. Since we're not really superhero-movie people, we didn't love it.

Too many special effects, exactly the kind of thing most people enjoy, and of course the violence. But what depressed us most was realizing that Mexico is in worse shape than Gotham City, and we don't even have a Batman.

The mafia and society have merged to destroy this country together. I don't see how anything gets resolved when, day after day, we learn that the police and every security institution are the ones robbing, kidnapping, and killing us.

What a sad reality our reality is. We'd better just go for a bike ride down Reforma on Sundays and dance alongside the protesters who have been occupying the plaza at the Monument to the Mother for over a year, strolling naked down that beautiful avenue, adding even more color to what it already has.

Sanuk