Our taxi swept around more than one traffic circle—six lanes of cars jostling in and out in a whirlpool of exhaust and honking horns—and passed numerous public squares dotted with pedestalled statues. Some of these were human figures: rifle-toting revolutionaries, top-hatted statesmen, the Aztec king Cuitlahuac in his feather headdress and cape, and a winged "angel of independence." Others were statues of the gods. I couldn’t see much as we whizzed past, but I got an overall impression of fearsomely grimacing skeletal monstrosities.