Mexican Thoughts

I've recently had the opportunity to make a visit to Mexico City. Given that my occupation is measuring and understanding cultures, peoples, beliefs, values and opinions, it has been an eye-opening experience. I now see Mexican immigrants and US immigration in a different way.

It seems that Mexico is a country where you can readily get just about anything, domestic or imported. This makes it different than many other places I travel. The problem is that the disparity in income between the rich and more is so marked that there are only certain classes that can afford things we take for granted in the US. Thus the power of our dollar.

So with that in mind it suddenly makes sense to me why Mexicans would come to our country for a few years or seasonally to earn greenbacks and then go home. It makes since that they are the slowest to integrate into our society and learn English. With a wad of US cash, a Mexican can suddenly live a couple social classes above his native income level. The disparity is so flagrant that I can understand why some people would risk so much to do so.

For example, across from my hotel, in the wealthy Polanco district of the city, is a huge sports field surrounded by stadium seating and impressive buildings. I once asked the steward in the hotel what it was. "A polo field," he said, "though in all my years here they've never played polo. It's used mostly for government speeches and such."

During my trips to Mexico, I have also reconfirmed again that once you've really learned one Romance language you can generally hack your way through all of them, except maybe French. Many thanks to Imperial Rome. My Romanian has helped me through Italian and now Spanish. The French language though, just like the people, is still just....different.

Mexican food is great. My wife converted me many years ago in Utah to liking Mexican food. As a Midwesterner, Mexican food to me had once meant Taco Bell, and was disliked. On my trips this year I've found I like Oaxaca cheese and dislike papaya. And as with the restaurants here, I've enjoyed the mariachis walking down the street outside the office playing their instruments in the afternoon.

Mexico City also has its disturbing sides. Illegal airport cabbies who charge more than the going rate of unsuspecting visitors, for example.

There is also apparently a growing subcomponent of the Catholic religion called the Cult of Death, replacing the Virgin Mary with Santa Muerte (Saint Death); a female skeleton. Its members worship the power of the finality of death, as an affirmation of the value of life, rather than the gift of the Virgin Mary. A little creepy, to say the least.