A travel story by Tim Vanderpool in the Tucson Weekly:

It was late afternoon and we were on the bus bound for nowhere. In a classic Mexico City mash, our driver was facing off with a panel truck, which had turned crossways against a sea of cars.

Years before, looking down upon the madness from a roadside perch was Cuitláhuac, an Aztec leader best known for his valiant, last-ditch stance against the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés.

That doomed rally occurred in 1520.

Nearly 500 years later, Cuitláhuac the statue, now oversees impasses of another sort, namely the motorized mosh-pits on tree-lined Paseo de Reforma. Today’s traffic jam, by turn, is the direct result of a political protest blocking part of the main thoroughfare. This tactic for getting attention and boosting official blood pressures is legal in Mexico City and subsequently quite popular.

But for us, it had the curious effect of installing our bus squarely before a banner that referred—and none too warmly—to our own stomping grounds. “Repudio a la Ley Anti-immigrante de Arizona,” the banner read. Which essentially translates to: “Repudiate Arizona’s Anti-Immigration Law.”

So it was that we had endured three airports, a hair-raising cab ride and smoke-belching busses, all for a 12-day respite from the ugliness of Arizona politics. Unfortunately, it seemed that Arizona was not so easily shed.

Read the entire feature here.