Well I’m back from good ole Mexico. Some of the insights gained on this trip were pretty amazing (for my own internal world any way).
For one, the idea that Mexicans are lazy is almost unilaterally false. At least in B.C. (Baja California), the locals worked long days six days a week. I hear this is the way it is in most of B.C. (and really all of Mexico, but the people I talked to were most familiar with B.C.). Now I’m sure there are lazy Mexicans, but I think the percentage of hard workers in B.C. may be much greater than the percentage of hard workers in the states. I don’t consider that necessarily a good thing. I talked with one guy who wants to break out of thte lower class who is sleeping about two hours a day. On his day off from the two jobs that consume most of his time, he’s a real estate agent trying to sell a beach lot a year (which would probably double his income and allow him to cut back at the other jobs finally have time with his family).
Another insight really is just how different our cultures are. We take much better care of their land than they do (“we” being the U.S. citizens). What amazes me is that they recycle there, and yet so many poor people trash their recyclable goods (which they could at least get a little bit of peso action for).
Something I’ve thought of for a long time is how wasteful I’ve become from being in the culture I’m in. While we may be better wtih recycling, this trip reminded me how little we really need to live. And many of the “poor” seemed much happier than the Americans I know with much more material wealth.
There are drawbacks, of course, but I’m trying to learn from this experience. Oh, one more thing. The idea that all (except a corrupt upper class) in Mexico are destitute is also a misconception. There were many, many Mexicans there wearing new clothes, going out to dinner at the same places we went (of course we like the local real Mexican food… there it’s just called food… so that helped), and buying drinks in the same bars we visited in town. It was a very enlightening trip. I’d been to Mexico before, but for some reason this time was more impressionable for me.
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