Mexico: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

The first time I traveled very far into Mexico, I did it for the sole purpose of demonstrating to my children that "poor" is in the eye of the beholder. What I discovered is that it is also largely a state of mind.

We saw people who lived in boxcars and caves. The cave-dwellers were following their ancestral tradition that reached back to before anyone alive remembers. Those same people dressed in traditional garments they made themselves that identified them as members of their tribal group. We saw women who wove fragrant baskets of pine needles in the marketplace for a living, while their children played nearby or napped in their laps. 

We also saw beggars. I don't know how long it's been since I saw a beggar on a U.S. street, but they are not nearly as rare in Mexico as they are here. Some of these beggars were obviously unable to worlk, while others appeared to prefer sitting with their hands out over finding honest work. 

Then there were the thousands of business people. Mexico is a country of entrepreneurs. Every nook and cranny of business districts is devoted to negocios. We saw a shoe-store that lined the stairway to an upstairs cyber cafe and a newsstand that wouldn't have made a good broom closet. There are hundreds of street vendors selling everything from food to flowers. Some of the best food I have ever eaten was bought from Mexican street vendors. 

Mexicans love music. They tolerate street musicians and allow roving bands of musicians to serenade restaurant customers and the general public for tips.

Mexicans are not afraid of color. Being there made me realize that the world I live in is plumb, level, square, and beige. In Mexico, nothing matches. The drab color harmony of our subdivisions is highlighted by the lack of uniformity there. If your neighbor's house is green, that is a great reason to paint yours marigold or rose. Here we call it loud. They don't call it anything, preferring simply to enjoy it.

  Don't get me wrong. Mexico is nothing like Utopia. I met a Mexican border agent who took great pride in making me empty my auto and lectured me severly on the fact that Mexico did indeed have laws. A somewhat short fellow, we promptly dubbed him Napoleon, and he was last seen having his boots polished at work, as we sped off for the bus station.

 There were things about America that I missed. The shoestore in the stairwell had removed the handrails in order to display stock. In fact, many of the standard building and fire code regulations to which we have grown accustomed are completely unknown there. Handrails are not required on steps or stairwells, sidewalks may be as narrow as nine inches, and business doors open in whichever direction is most convenient for the owner of the building. The food vendors' only health regulation seems to be that it's bad for business if they repeatedly make people sick. I saw municipal workers doing things that would make OSHA shut the entire country down forever, all in a day's work, and I saw horrible degradation of the environment in the name of commerce.

But people are important in Mexico in a way they are not in this country. Road construction is done by workers, rather than by machinery. They build masonary structures from scaffolding rather than building forms and bringing in tons of instant rock (concrete). This practice employs many times the number of workers that would be needed by our construction methods. Cities have departments of "limpieza" or cleanliness, which employ people to walk the streets and alleyways picking up trash and sweeping the sidewalks. In Guanajuato, which lives in perpetual traffic gridlock, pedestrians have the right of way.

I stayed in a hotel run by a family whose business consisted of running a hotel, a cyber cafe, and a novelty store in the hallway that ran from the street. Their eight-year-old son, Oliver, served as bellman. Their daughters and daughters-in-law worked as chambermaids. everyone took turns at the desk, and they ironed the bedsheets. This was a $30-a-night hotel in a building that was easily 300 years old. These people never failed to greet me pleasantly whether I was coming or going. 

I also saw American materialism encroaching on Mexican society. Costco, Sam's, Home Depot, and Walmart all do a thriving business there, and I suspect that they are putting some of the smaller local merchants out of business. There are subdivisions being built on the outskirts of cities that promise the good life, where every house looks like every other (except in some, where they are painted different colors). I fervently hope the Mexican people do not loose their soul to the disease of American-brand consumerism and the homogenizing forces of keeping up with the Joneses.