Bygone places / El Nivel, What is lost when a cantina closes?
"History? No. The hard data is still there and holds meaning: we know that the El Nivel cantina was founded in 1857 and was the first to obtain a license for alcohol sales, signed by President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada."
By: Jajo Crespo / Photos from Wikipedia, (ProtoplasmaKid), Fb Mexicoxeltiempo, and Musseo UNAM HOY.
The geographic reference is not lost either: the building is still there, on the corner of Moneda and Seminario. People can still stop for a moment in front of the UNAM Hoy museum and say, "here stood El Nivel."
However, even if the memory persists, such as the record that Agustín Lara sat among the tables of El Nivel, or the memory of the last manager who saw "most of the presidents" there, and the pride that the cantina was part of the telenovela Senda de gloria; the truth is that with its closure, something was lost, even if it's a brief epistemological slip. We moved from "here" to "there" in the nooks of photography, losing the materiality of meaning: the aromas of "peanuts, white cheese, and diced pork with pickled chilies," the contextual flavors of beer and nibelungo (the house drink), the wooden tables, terrazzo floors, and paintings from the San Carlos Academy that adorned the cantina. The city changes: the Hipsographic Monument that gave the cantina its name, measuring the water level during floods, was relocated in 1925, yet El Nivel persisted. Now, those fortunate enough to have visited must preserve the memory in the continuity of their minds.
El Nivel closed in 2008, after a lengthy legal battle against UNAM, which claimed rights to the property as it had belonged, in the 16th century, to its predecessor: the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico. Ultimately, one story (that of UNAM) overshadowed another (that of the city). This is how it goes: in a place like Mexico City, enormous historically and minuscule geographically, history is self-consuming—a serpent swallowing its own tail (or stepping on it).
