STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
It is hard to live in the big city. But in Mexico City, NPR's Eyder Peralta found one thing that is easy - getting a driver's license.
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EYDER PERALTA, BYLINE: Driving in Mexico City is so complicated, so disorienting, so chaotic, that the only way to describe it is to mix metaphors. The city is an anthill that someone has kicked. The roads are a river after a flood.
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PERALTA: They're an unsolvable maze, a game of Mario Kart, a three-ring circus. On the streets of Mexico City, I've seen fire breathers, men juggling machetes, mariachis, protesters.
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PERALTA: It's the kind of place where changing lanes with a turn signal is a declaration of war, where red lights and lanes are often a mere suggestion, where 18-wheelers teach you the real meaning of defensive driving.
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PERALTA: And yet, when I show up to the DMV, there was no line, no jostle. They just took my money, my picture and handed me a driver's license. It's the same for Misael Gonzalez, who just got his first license at 25. Did they even ask you if you could drive, I ask.
MISAEL GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I searched the internet," he says, "found the nearest payment station, and that was it." Mexico can often be a place of mind-numbing bureaucracy. An extra curl on your signature can get a deposit rejected. Cars have to be inspected every six months to stay on the road. School kids can't do PE without medical clearance. But a driver's license, in a city where 22 million people and 10 million cars bounce around like a game of pinball, there, all you need is $50 and a smile.
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: Gonzalez says, "yeah, they probably should do it old school, at least a driving test. But maybe they should start tomorrow."
GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "I mean," he jokes, "I'm glad I didn't have to take one." Nobody really remembers a time when this was different.
ALEJANDRA TAPIA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "It's always been this way," says Alejandra Tapia, who runs the private transport division of the city's mobility agency.
TAPIA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "We work on the honor system," she says. "In fact, in the old days, the agency used to hand you a permanent license. You paid for it once, and you had it for the rest of your life. Now you come to the DMV every three years. They hand you a sheet of paper."
TAPIA: (Speaking Spanish).
PERALTA: "With your signature, you swear that you know how to drive, and you're off." She says they've looked at fatality statistics and they decided against the driver's test. Most traffic deaths are actually caused by motorcycles, and those drivers are tested. As I leave, I say, could it also be that you all believe that anyone crazy enough to take the road in Mexico City must know how to drive? Definitely, she says, laughing.
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PERALTA: In his book "Namerica," the Argentine writer Martin Caparros writes that Mexico City is the proto-city. And what's a city but runaway matter? It is energy and movement, uncontainable. The Earth may stop, he writes, but not this city.
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PERALTA: What I've learned is that on the roads of Mexico City, there are no rules. So the best you can do is just roll with whatever it throws at you.
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PERALTA: Eyder Peralta, NPR News, Mexico City.
(SOUNDBITE OF HERMANOS GUTIERREZ'S "CUMBIA LUNAR") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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