| | |  Editorials | Opinions | May 2009 
Consequences of Geography and Mistaken Identity
 David Karlsruher - NewspaperTree.com
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 |  | The careless reporting of isolated problems hundreds of miles away from Puerto Vallarta threaten to make it into the city it was wrongly labeled as. |  | | |
Mexico is grabbing more headlines than a pantiless starlet at a fashionable nightclub these days. Drugs, murders, guns and swine flu have been the stories coming out of Mexico in 2009. American media outlets can’t help but run it all. After all, their audience loves it. But what does it do to Mexico?
Well, I traveled down to Puerto Vallarta to find out. Not really. I traveled to Puerto Vallarta to stay with some family at a unique residence for a short vacation. The residence is unique because it’s owned by an American couple who use it infrequently during the year and depend on the rental of the property the rest of the time to pay for their investment (link). It’s a beautiful investment property much like the many others owned by Americans and expatriates looking for a Mexican home with a little earning potential. Unfortunately they are earning next to nothing.
Puerto Vallarta is a beautiful Mexican city unique in many ways and “same but different” in other ways as they say in Southeast Asia. Tourism is their big money maker and the root of their economy. English is spoken just about everywhere and the locals are cool with Americanos ignoring that fact so they can practice their broken Spanish on them. As with everywhere in Mexico I have been the people are exceptionally good natured and a joy to be around. Americans could take a few lessons from them in that category.
As we juked our way through cobblestone streets in a van driven by our host he talked about how badly rents were down on the house. He told me that it’s 80 percent across the board and probably worse for some of the resorts that focus on your average vacationer instead of high-end customers. His house had only one reservation for the summer so far and he wasn’t real sure there would be anymore this year.
While we bounced through the streets of old downtown Puerto Vallarta, I tried to drink my ice cold Pacifico beer without chipping a tooth and quizzed my host on the root of the downturn. What I heard from him I would hear over and over again from locals and expatriates alike – bad economy and an overzealous American media.
I understood that the world economy had taken a hit. Puerto Vallarta has long been the playground for the Los Angeles crowd just the way the Bahamas has been for the New York City crowd. California has been hit especially hard by the decline in home values and other economic catastrophes that have led to job losses and a state government going into crisis mode. Problems in Los Angeles always led to problems in Puerto Vallarta, I was told.
It wasn’t until we had dinner with several expatriates living in Puerto Vallarta full time did I really start to sense what was going on. One gentleman owned an 11-room resort known for its peaceful atmosphere, great cuisine and gay friendly environment. The other couple, who were from my understanding retired from a very successful business, ran a school for lower middle class kids in Puerto Vallarta. The school focused on teaching the children English skills so they could expand their horizons north of the border in the future, or at the least become a more viable employee in Puerto Vallarta’s tourist economy.
Having the owner of the house in town allowed all three of them, who have business interests in Puerto Vallarta, to air out their concerns over dinner. I did the best I could to shake off the mango margaritas I was forced to drink all afternoon in order to try and focus on the very interesting conversation taking place.
They all admitted that the economy had hurt them a bit, but not that badly. I was told that vacationers often book their trips way in advance in order to lock in low rates or simply just to give them enough time to save for the trip.
Puerto Vallarta isn’t a place people just decide to go on a whim on a Wednesday afternoon. While it may be relatively close to fly to, there are few flights in and out and only a few carriers that service that city. Let’s not forget, flying into a foreign country takes a little more planning that flying to Vegas for the weekend. The city isn’t cheap either. It’s moderately expensive for the average American and eye-poppingly expensive to those of us who know Juarez all too well. The bottom line on the economy was that they didn’t think they’d really feel that for a few more months. It was other factors hurting them.
One of the guests immediately latched onto the fact that I live in El Paso and passionately began a speech on America’s drug addiction, the corrupt Mexicans in the north and the American media. I passed over the drug addiction and corrupt Mexicans part and asked, “The media? What did the media do?”
At this point the entire table turned on me. Telling them that I fancied myself an occasional writer for an on-line newspaper now seemed like a bad idea. The gist of their argument was that shortly after the first of the year the American media has been on the trail of Mexican drug lords and killing tourism all across Mexico. “We don’t have cartels here! We don’t have a drug problem!” was politely shouted at me across the table several times. All of a sudden I was expected to speak for CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and every other national television newsroom I left out.
I felt I could sympathize with them given the experience border residents had with the national news and narco violence.
Their point was a good one. The violence was mostly along the border and not in Puerto Vallarta where young men work in the tourist industry and do not have to resort to cartel work to survive. Other than the occasional business put up to “wash money” as the locals call it, they have little problem with drug cartels.
To bolster their argument they plopped a very glossy magazine down in front of me called Vallarta Lifestyle. It resembles El Paso Media Group’s El Paso Magazine greatly. In fact, their mission seems to be the exact same – promotion of local activity, culture and people through positive portrayal of the city. The letter from the editor, Paco Ojeda, eerily breaks from that tradition when he explains:
“Have you been watching CNN lately? So have we, and we’re not amused by the media’s portrayal of our country. So, despite our best effort to always accentuate the positive in our publications, we couldn’t help but throw in our own two cents by way of Cynthia Beare’s excellent article on page 142.”
Ms. Beare’s article skewers the American media on their portrayal of a problem that she claims is a Mexico-U.S. border problem. She correctly asserts that the American media threw all of Mexico under the bus, which hurt tourism everywhere in the country. She attributed the media frenzy north of the border to an attempt to distract the American people from their economic crisis.
I had no defense for my beloved American media after reading that article.
Sensing I was on the retreat, even though I had never been on the charge, they thought it high time to blast an American media “focused on scaring the masses in the name of advertising dollars,” as one guest put it. He was speaking of the H1N1 Virus, also known as the “swine flue,” that had not only been a deterrent that created numerous cancellations for Puerto Vallarta’s hotels and villas, but it eventually led to cruise ship bans and other governmental mandated travel restrictions.
They hadn’t had much of a swine flu problem I soon learned. The only Mexican national at the table laughed as she told me that Americans are “always interested in a very dramatic scenario whether it’s as big as advertised or not.” A short conversation about how Mexico keeps its “tella novellas” separate from its nightly news even though they love both.
The insightful resort owner told us that since Puerto Vallarta offered restaurant and hotel jobs to many of its citizens, hand washing and overall good hygiene practice was popular even among their poorest citizens. That’s why they don’t have a swine flu problem, he explained. He even mentioned that Mexico tourism has been fighting the myth of “Montezuma’s Revenge” since Cortes arrived and they were hyperaware of the stigma. This has made eateries and hotels extremely sensitive to that reputation and they work very hard to keep tourists off the pot and on the beach.
The bottom line message I received from the group rant was that business in Puerto Vallarta was down because of media hype in the U.S. coupled with a sagging economy. Of course there was a small discussion of a theory that the Mexican government over-played the swine flu problem in a ploy to get billions of dollars in foreign aide. Plausible, but can not be proved.
My question to them was simple. What do they care? They’re all rich and this shall pass, right?
I didn’t ask them that directly because I was their guest freeloading off of their good nature and I didn’t want to ruffle feathers. I did, however, get my answer.
The owners of the school had seen a severe dip in attendance because of two issues. First, the small tuition couldn’t be paid by the parents anymore. Second, kids are being told to stop learning and start working. There are plenty of things for kids to do to help the family make money in the jungles around Puerto Vallarta. Even a small gap in educated lower middle class children in Puerto Vallarta could set the whole city back decades I was told.
I was also told of the lure of work for drug cartels by out of work young men. Up until now getting a job on the right side of the law was much easier and safer than the alternative – cartel work. Once the jobs are gone because the tourists have left, the cartel life becomes necessary, if not attractive as well. A city once proud of its lack of cartel presence is now in a situation where cartels thrive – lots of unemployed young men looking to make a buck.
To top all of it off the swine flu over-reaction by tourist and governments will set up Puerto Vallarta to be more susceptible to a similar outbreak in the future. A culture of cleanliness coupled with a decent living wage has insulated Puerto Vallarta from diseases common to other Mexican cities. With large layoffs and the standard of living dropping, it can be ventured that the health of the Puerto Vallarta citizens will suffer. At the least the extra income for care not covered under Mexico’s healthcare system will be lost and this means trouble for those dependent on those extra services. Again, a city that defended itself from the swine flu is now in danger of suffering badly from it next time.
The bottom line as related to me by the crowd that night was that Puerto Vallarta is on the brink. The careless reporting of isolated problems hundreds of miles away from Puerto Vallarta threaten to make it into the city it was wrongly labeled as. The mass hysteria was unwarranted before, but has had its effect on the future of Puerto Vallarta.
They weren’t a sick, drug addicted slum in the past, but they may be in the future and it all can be tracked to a case of mistaken identity.
David Karlsruher writes an occasional column for NewspaperTree.com, and blogs at Refuse the Juice. |
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