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 Editorials | Opinions | February 2007 
Guanajuato, Mexico, Marriage, and Freedom of Speech
 Doug Bower - American Chronicle
| An American Expat in Mexico's Heartland - click HERE for info
I hope what I write in this book will make you think twice about moving to México. I am not saying that in any sort of selfish sense as if I want to keep México all to myself. Not at all. What I mean is that México does not need more Americans who try to conform it into their American image. That is what happens in expat enclaves and American sectors and it is why I write what I do and how I do. México has had enough Americanizing Colonization with its horrible results seen in San Miguel de Allende.
- Doug Bower |
Experiencing culture shock is very much like getting married. You spend the first year or so in rapturous enjoyment of one another in martial carnal pleasures and intellectual stimulation. One day, you wake up and wonder “What have I done?” and “Who is this person in bed with me who kept me up all night with her farting and snoring?”
Suddenly, the shock sets in that this person whom you promised to love and cherish until death do you part, is full of faults, has blaring weaknesses, and keeps you up at night with all manner of explosive bodily sounds. She is full of foibles and you know every single one of them. Worse yet, she knows every one of yours.
Moving to a new culture, as I discovered when moving to Mexico to live, is very much the same. You spend a year or two, maybe three, exploring, discovering, and having a grand time figuring out this new relationship you chose to have with another country and her people. You can’t believe your good fortune to move here, a dream come true, and you can’t wait to find out everything you can about your new country.
Then it hits.
You wake up one morning, turn to your wife and say, “What have we done and who are these people in whose country we live?”
Things were fine the first two or three years. Then things began to happen.
One day, while walking down the street enjoying the pleasantness of your expat home, you notice a well-dressed woman driving an American-made SUV. She stops at the small bridge over the tiny river (really a creek) and removes half dozen orange plastic garbage bags, which she proceeds to toss over the bridge and into the river. A trash dumpster stood no more than 20 feet away from her.
Another day, you are at the meat counter in the local butcher. You give your order to the butcher in your fractured but getting-better Spanish. The butcher acknowledges your order and begins filling it. Suddenly, from behind you, some Mexican woman approaches and literally elbows you out of the way. She begins shouting her order in a voice loud enough to break glass. She actually expects the butcher to stop what he’s doing (filling your order) and wait on her. You soon discover that this practice goes on everywhere, everyday, without fail, and your ribs, swollen, bruised and aching, begin feeling like they might break from one too many Mexican elbows crushing them. This goes on in the post office, butcher shop, pharmacy, or on the street in a food kiosk. It doesn’t matter where you are, someone will try to cut in front of you.
You soon begin asking,
“Oh, honey, did I miss something in all those expatriation guides we bought and read before coming to Mexico? Did they mention this stuff?”
Perhaps the thing which was the final straw that pushed me into the depths of the black pool of culture shock was getting shoved off the sidewalks. This happened not once, not twice, but three times. I was pushed into the path of buses that all promptly hit me and sent me flying into a building, or as in the case of one incident, into my wife. Oh, wait! That was the beer truck that hit me. My poor wife broke my fall that time. I was hit three times by buses. One time, a brick building broke my flight through the air.
Two things that added to the ever-deepening shock and which threaten to take me under the waters for good. One was my wife getting sexually assaulted on the streets of Guanajuato. The other was when one of Guanajuato’s landladies wired her outside security lights into our meter and then denied that she had done so.
Then, if this is not enough, you begin sharing with your Mexican neighbors and friends all that has happened to you. To your utter shock, shock that threatens to send you into full “tilt mode” and “this does not compute, hard drive breakdown is imminent mode” is when they tell you they are not surprised at what has happened to you.
You asked.
They tell you.
I was told, more than once, that to have the landlady wire her security lights into our meter then not tell us was because we were rich Americans and able to afford it. I was told, more than once, that to have been shoved off the sidewalk and into the path of oncoming vehicles the size of Orcas was because Guanajuatenses are “anti-social” and “bad mannered.” The same explanation was offered for getting elbowed out of the way at store counters. We were told some Guanajuato men apparently think it is appropriate to attack gringo women. And to verify this, I asked at the language schools, which attract a fair amount of Gringas each month. The schools reported several attacks.
One school had to have the police come to the school to watch out for the women.
And mind you, Mexicans offered all of these explanations. Some even told us they were trained and taught from a very young age how to cheat Americans out of their money. Also, since we are all so fabulously wealthy, cheating Americans wasn’t wrong. A different set of ethics rules here.
So, what does one do? Throw in the towel? Run away? Leave? Do what most do in the States, referring to my analogy of marriage—divorce?
What does one do when the light of the Mexican cultural day shines on you and the expatriation honeymoon comes to a screeching halt?
You make a choice.
Just like when you finally come to the realization that the person you married is not perfect and is full of human flaws, you make a choice.
Are the differences a deal breaker? |
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