Mexico’s smallest state has marked a milestone of modern development. Tlaxcala gets its first escalator, a device first patented in 1859. Tlaxcala, is the smallest state of Mexico which is only 70 miles east of Mexico City. It’s hard to believe in a fast developing world that this state got its first escalator just recently.
The news prompted a crush of reaction on social media, welcoming the mostly agrarian state of Tlaxcala to the 21st century. Tiny, agrarian Tlaxcala gets its first escalator and it became butt of jokes on social media. This news was mocked by the statement stating “History was made in the state of Tlaxcala, because they now have their first escalator”.
Tlaxcala gets its first escalator
The occasion even brought out the governor who, with his wife, was the first to ride the device. They took the first ride on Wednesday. The inauguration was at a department store in the state capital, 70 miles east of Mexico City. “The place was very good!” Said the Tlaxcalan president Graciano Guichard González, general manager of Liverpool, whom he accompanied at the opening gala and with whom he toured the different departments of the store.
The celebration was reserved for Governor Marco Mena and businessmen in a private cubicle.The meeting included gifts for the president and his wife.
The excitement was evident among the first shoppers in the store, wrote El Sol, moving from one floor to another on the escalator and avoiding the fatigue of greater physical effort. But others in the Mexican media had a field day making fun of Tlaxcala, an oft-overlooked state just to the east of Mexico City.
History of Tlaxcala
The tiny state is often the butt of jokes by the inhabitants of the country’s capital, possibly because of its controversial place in Mexican history: in the 15th century, Tlaxcala’s indigenous population joined forces with the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés as he waged war on the Aztecs. Unlike the capital city, Tlaxcala has clung to traditions, agricultural economy and local merchants and kept out multinational retailers such as Walmart.
Tweets on support of the launch of escalators
“Don’t be such bullies with the escalator,” tweeted Antonio Martínez Velázquez, a writer from Mexico City who pointed out that a similar wave of excitement surrounded the arrival of the first lifts in Tlaxcala in the early 2000s.
“It’s an involuntary meme. The arrogance of national media seems to be not believing that there are escalators everywhere,” said Martínez, a Tlaxcala native. He objected to the idea that opening shopping malls with escalators – common across Mexico over the past decade, was a sign of progress.
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