Why Mexico?
I just got back from Mexico, so the last entry seems kind of silly (I will explain why in a later post). Being there and not being there (in Mexico) makes all the difference. I have been to many cities in Mexico, admittedly on short jaunts, and I have never seen any type of confrontation or violence. Quite to the contrary, I find people very civil, polite, and tending toward reticence. In general, most Mexicans I have interacted with (myself included; more about that later) come across as rather reticent and reserved. For the most part, Octavio Paz's famous observation still seems to hold true today: Mexicans live behind masks.
But maybe I just haven't spent enough time there. Of course, this will soon change: starting in July, I will be embarking on my own Great Mexican Adventure, living and studying in Mexico for two years. Well, not really an adventure of the "Great Adventure" type, like when people go treking across the Andes or ride a train across India. My adventure will be rather staid: I will be in a relatively modern city, spending much of my time on a university campus, two hours by car from the Texas border.
It has been a long time in coming, after years of obsession, fantasy, and, yes, desire, culminating in those two days in Monterrey that confirmed me on my "final trajectory": interview with the department head and entrance exam.
Monterrey, Monterrey . . . there is something in the name. What a strange city! So grimy and gray and yet strangely inviting to a particular type of traveller . . . From the perspective of someone having lived in the United States almost all his life, the city seems decidedly hand-made. The streets are all crooked, even the "straight" ones. By this, I mean that in most areas, the curbs, the edges of the street, and the sidewalks do not form straight lines. Maybe they have been chewed up after many years of being driven over by buses and heavy trucks, or maybe they were never built properly in the first place, but the fact remains that they are not straight. I refer here to the old core of the city "El Primer Cuadro de la Ciudad" as they say in Mexico, not the outlying municipios like San Pedro and other up-scale areas, where you might be tempted to pretend you are in El Paso or Las Vegas.
Everywhere there are young people in Monterrey: children and teenagers and people in their early 20s. I know that by Latin American standards (and, in fact, by global standards, since billions of people around the world are desperately poor), Monterrey is a prosperous city. You rarely see obvious signs of poverty here. Almost everyone appears bathed, groomed, well-dressed and perfumed, except of course for the construction workers, but I imagine that even they get all gussied up on Saturday nights to go to the baile (dance).
I say **almost** everyone, because this is Mexico, and extreme poverty is always somewhere in the picture, to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the part of the country. In my own private Mexico, the Mexico of universities, placitas, pretty little churches, waterfalls, VIPS, and Oxxos, I would prefer that poverty did not show its ugly face. But in the real Mexico, in our shared Mexico where we work, study, live, party, drive, and walk, poverty is all too real. Even if it were only a single wrinkled indigenous woman, begging in the pedestrian zone while the rest of use go shopping for cheap T-shirts, the latest pop CDs, and 10-peso tacos, it would be too much. Extreme poverty in Mexico is a scandal, given the relative wealth of the country. It has to end, and I hope that ("populist" or not)the same policy is implemented in Monterrey as in Mexico City, where all of the elderly are given free medical care and a monthly stipend to at least be able to eat well and clothe themselves decently. Mexico can afford it, and it is something any decent society is certainly obligated to do.
Yes, although there is very little poverty in the absolute sense, most of the city, I estimate about 75 percent of it, is definitely quite shabby-looking if you are used to middle class neighborhoods in the US or Europe.
Sooner or later, I will have to ask myself this question, so I might as well ask it now: Why Mexico? Like a brown Hamlet, am I on the trail of my father's ghost? Am I just trying to run away from my 'old' self, the one with all of the traumas and the wounds? Am I embarking on some Quixotic quest, doomed to failure? Who knows, but it is not likely.
In the end, I think that Mexico will hardly even notice I'm there. Whenever I go to Mexico, I just seem to blend right in, in a rather pleasant way.
posted by Crazyhands @ 6:00 PM
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