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 Vallarta Living | June 2006 
The Realities of Mexican Living
 Doug Bower - American Chronicle
May 31, 2006 - I had an interesting encounter the other day with one of my readers. Actually, every encounter with my readers is interesting. They are never boring. This lady read some of my articles about living in Guanajuato, Mexico. She and her husband live in Mexico already but are thinking of moving to Guanajuato.
We corresponded with a couple of emails and I think I offended this woman. Whenever I get emails from people asking about living in Guanajuato, I immediately make the assumption that they are virtually Spanish-illiterate. I am almost always correct.
You see, what exists in the mostly American expatriate communities in Mexico, like San Miguel de Allende, Puerto Vallarta, and the popular resort areas where American expats have traditionally flocked, is they do not learn Spanish nor do they assimilate into the culture. They do in Mexico what they would be screaming about if they were still in the States concerning the immigrant population in America — not learning English and thus not assimilating into the culture.
I do not want to see in Guanajuato what has happened in other areas of Mexico. In San Miguel de Allende, for example, you could live and never have to speak one word of Spanish. Many of the American expats are quite upfront about this issue and ask why they should learn Spanish. They require anyone who works for them to speak English. This attitude has changed San Miguel de Allende into something other than what it used to be. It is an American colony or enclave in a Mexican wrapper.
My conversation with this reader took on a scary tone. She took offense at the direction most of my writing about Mexico has taken in recent months. In my first book, The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico, I dealt with issues concerning The Ugly American in Mexico. If you want to read some “reviews,” go to Amazon.com and type in Doug Bower. Read the reactions to that book. Americans who review the book negatively say things like, “He is a bitter man.” or “He has issues.”
Americans do not want to confront the reality that they act badly in foreign countries. Mexico is no exception. Though not all without exception come here and act like they were raised by wolves, a great deal of them certainly do. To prove that point, all you would have to do is come to San Miguel de Allende and sit in the Jardin for a while. You would not be disappointed.
In our new book, which will be released in two weeks, I deal with the reality of Americans who do want to learn the language and assimilite into the culture. I also write about what it is we have to deal with on a daily basis living in Mexico. The first book: the reality of Americans acting badly in Mexico. The second book: the reality of how hard it is to live in Mexico.
Mexico is not a perfect society. From the way some Americans react to what I have written about the realities of Mexican culture, one that is vastly different from the American culture and one that is very difficult, you would think that Mexicans personify holy righteousness.
They do not.
Some American expats are so infatuated with Mexico that they simply cannot see there is indeed a dark side to the culture. And, if you point it out, even with proofs and reasoning, they label you a bigot.
For example, I pointed out in an article, “not one shred of logic or an ethic of honesty applies in this country.” I should have clarified that with a, “as we Americans understand honesty and logic.” As Americans, we would regard it as dishonest for a landlord to wire outside security lights into your duplex electric meter, not tell you about it, and expect you to pay for the higher light bill. This happened to us here in Guanajuato.
When we figured this out, we moved immediately. Before writing about this, I asked my Mexican friends about this situation. They told me this is standard practice and it did not shock them. I was told that since I am an American, it is assumed that to do something like this is ok.
Another example: We were told by a Mexican woman we trusted that it is standard practice for contractors to have elabortate schemes to cheat Americans. When you hire someone to paint your house, he will tell you the “American price” for the paint and labor, paint your house, and then pocket the difference.
And, there is the American Price for things and there is the Mexican Price for things. Most expats we know will send a trusted Mexican friend to buy things because when the vendors or service people see the American coming, the price goes up, up, and up!
Just the other day, we got lectured that “We” needed to walk on one side of the sidewalk so the Mexicans could walk on the inside part of the sidewalk. “We” should walk on the side closest to the street.
On three occasions, either a bus or a truck has hit me because Mexicans have shoved me off the sidewalk. The same thing happened to an American expat who is almost 70 years old. A taxi nailed her. Mexicans also shove each other off the sidewalks. On the buses, it is even more horrible.
I cannot count the times I have been on a bus when a pregnant woman, with small kids in tow, gets on and no one will get up so she can sit down. You could be a crippled pregnant woman with kids in tow, and blind as well, and your fellow Mexicans will not surrender their seats for you. This is such a problem that the local television stations in Central Mexico have started doing public service announcements dealing with this “reality of Mexican life.” This is a reality that some American expats, like this woman who wrote me, cannot (or refuse to) see.
They would not be doing these television anncouncements if this were not an issue. Mexicans in central Mexico will not surrender their bus seats to handicapped persons or pregnant ladies. There have been some horrid accidents as the result.
It is to this sort of rheortic that the woman who wrote me took offense.
What then does an American Expatriate who is a writer do? Ignore it? Pretend it does not exist? Look the other way?
I think not.
I’ve been trying to think, “just how did this woman who wrote me manage to miss this reality if she already lives in Mexico?”
Here is what I came up with:
Americans, the vast majority, come here and do not learn Spanish. They depend on cable or satellite television, all in English, and would not watch the local television station’s public service announcements. How could they understand the announcements if they did see them?
They live in isolated Americans-only gated communities. They live in an isolated situation and never (or at least rarely) mix with the nationals — as in San Miguel de Allende — so they do not see the realities of Mexican living.
They’ve invented their own reality.
The Realities of Mexican Living Part II
Doug Bower - American Chronicle
June 6, 2006 - Because of the flurry of email responses I got from “The Realities of Mexican Living”, I decided to write a part two. Hard as I try not to let them bother me, negative comments from readers still get to me. It isn’t because I cannot cope when someone disagrees with me. It is that, as a writer, I want to write well. I want to get my points across. I do not want readers to miss the point. I take responsibility when that happens.
I should be clearer.
Anyway, I got all manner of comments. Even my naysayers were not uncivil. One lady from San Miguel de Allende disagreed with me in an unusually civil manner, for which I am thankful. Recently, an American woman from New York (which explains a lot, actually) threatened to come to Guanajuato and slap me for what I wrote in our book, “The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico.”
I guess you can’t win.
So, in the interest of fair play, and in an attempt to be even clearer, let me explain what I wrote in the previous article. I was trying to communicate “my” observations of what seems to be endemic to Mexican culture, specifically to Central Mexico.
I guess when Mexicans from other parts of this fine country tell me that Guanajuato is different, as a writer, I want to know how, why, when, where, and how I can report it.
In Christmas of 2004, we went to Puerto Vallarta for 15 days. During that time, we spent the better part of each day on the streets interviewing shopkeepers, hotel staff, waiters, and restaurant managers. What we found amazing was that most with whom we spoke had never been to central Mexico. Isn’t that amazing? And, the entire atmosphere of Puerto Vallarta was radically different from what one experiences in Guanajuato.
We did not find people getting pushed off sidewalks. We did not hear of pregnant women suffering accidents because they had to stand in a bus. We did not hear of gringos being refused service in restaurants (this happened to a retired district attorney friend here in Guanajuato). The town and its locals were massively gringo friendly. And, just why shouldn’t they be? Their economic survival is dependent on tourism, mainly from the USA and Canada.
Guanajuato’s survival is not.
Guanajuato has traditionally been a Mexican tourist hangout. By far, most of the tourism here is from Mexicans and not gringos. The reason I know this is because I asked and was given a spreadsheet showing the ratio of Mexicans to Gringo tourists. I would quote this to you but I cannot find the data since we moved to our new apartment. So, when I say that Guanajuato is not gringo friendly, I do not mean it in any pejorative sense. I mean that Gringos have a really hard time here.
Some of the negative comments I get from our books (available at Amazon.com) are because some people think my point, “Mexico is not America”, is stupidly redundant. The lady from New York told me that she wants to slap me for this waste of word space in the book.
The issue is, Americans and some Canadians come here not realizing at all that “Mexico is not America.” In fact, they come here expecting English to be widely spoken. When they find this is not true, they, quite frankly, act out like spoiled children. They think all of Mexico is like the resort areas where English is widely spoken by those in the service industries. A magazine for which I write recently featured an article with a sidebar telling their potential American real estate buyers in Mexico that “English is widely spoken in Mexico”…an absolute falsehood!
By far, the majority of American tourists in the streets of Guanajuato who act like they hail from a long line of burros and monkeys act that way because they expected the people of Guanajuato to speak English, take Americans dollars, take their American credit cards, and the list drags on.
In writing the books, I’ve tried putting myself in the shoes of American expats who want to move here. I want to cover what is going to freak them out. But, alas, the readers’ reviews of those books reveal that they have missed the point. I feel responsible for that.
I think the reason is that those Americans who have or want to expatriate to Mexico think that all of Mexico is like those American enclaves whose motto is “We Are Gringo Friendly.” That is the essence of San Miguel de Allende: “We are Gringo Friendly.” And why not? The Americans now own the town. They bought it.
More and more Americans are flocking into Guanjuato at the speed of light. I am told so many are coming the real estate market cannot meet the demand. What I see happening here is what happened in San Miguel de Allende forty years ago.
The Americans will set about shaping Guanajuato into their own image. They will make it gringo friendly at the sacrifice of its unique culture.
Their money will buy it. |
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