Mexico City, MexicoDeep in a barely-seen patch of Chapultepec Park, so remote that taxi drivers, balloon sellers, and kids racing scooters may not know it’s there, a giant effigy of a god sprawls in a green pool, spitting rain into the sky. It’s Tlaloc, god of water. All powers good and dangerous flow from this god, so old that he was worshipped before the Aztecs gave him this name—and so huge that he’s visible from airplanes approaching Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport.
Even lying down, as he is depicted in this 100-foot pool, Tlaloc is monumental. Maybe frenzied, maybe ecstatic, he is frozen mid-stride. On his body, mosaics map symbols of Mexico’s myth and history. On his head, not one but two