Similares mas que diferentes
Here I am in beautiful Mexico, with awesome people, and I'm sick. I was invited to join Lulu, my host mom's sister, and her children to San Miguel de Allende, a nearby city of Gringos (Americans) but couldn't go because I need to descansar (rest). I'm also trying to upload pictures, which is ending up being much more time-consuming and difficult than I'd thought. I guess mexican cable lines aren't as fast, though I did learn that the second richest person in the world is Mexican and is the owner of Telmex and TelCel, the biggest phone/cable internet/cell phone companies in the country. He's evidently quickly approaching Bill Gates' level of dinero (money) domination. Anyway, the last few days have been pretty uninteresting. I have hung out with the students, who are pretty chill...I went to Celaya with Lulu to get hair dye. I got sick, and got to go see the Doctor, who said I just needed to rest and gave me an "anti-flu" medication (which from what I can tell is simply a decongestant).
I saw a commercial for a gel that you put on your body and it makes you lose weight. I also saw a sign that said divorce is not the answer, but Jesus Christ. That was on the way home from the Symphony last night in Celaya at one of the universities there. This leads me to my point--Mexicans are like Americans with bad infrastructure. Let me explain. I am consistently amazed at how the people here who DO have money, live in essentially the same exact way as Americans. Of course, no one can deny that the water can make you sick and that the sewage system furthermore can't accept toilet paper because it's too narrow. However, there is a substantial group of people here who have enough money to live similarly to Americans. They have the same television shows--in Spanish. They have symphonies and universities and nice houses and cars. They send their children to private schools. This can somewhat be summed up in what my host father said I could bring back to the United States--that there are Mexicans who live in Mexico who wish to stay here. People who love their country, as so many Americans love ours. They feel similarly about politics--that it's corrupt but part of how things are. But I am consistently amazed at just how similarly these people (who admitedly are in the upper echelons of the society) live to how I am accustomed to living. They have a much stronger focus on their families and they live more communally with nature, but so many things are the same, and so different than how we think about "mexicans."
On the other hand, I have heard several times now that many of the young people here don't pay attention in school saying that they can just go to the United States. This has ever so much importance in how we, as citizens of the United States, think about our political future. We all know that we already have many many undocumened foreigners "among" us and that it has created a stress politically, sometimes economically. We have lots of problems to solve due to the sudden influx of more people; at that, more people who have more children than we are used to. Anyway, I just think it's something interesting to think about--the two ideas are interesting when put up against one another--that while there is a faction of people who certainly want to stay here and love their country, there are also many young (I assume men) people who have all but given up on staying here and see our country as...the right way, instead of education in their country. I perhaps find this the most interesting thing visiting here, and what I hope to shed some light on in my reseach--that our countries have interlinked fates at this point. To me, it is much more pertinent to us to help Mexico better her economy than Iraq. Obviously at this point, the idea of going to the United States is something that is inscribed on the minds of the young--how do you go about re-working the way they think so that they prefer to better their life in Mexico? I also think it's interesting that of all the people I've talked to, no one wants to go to the United States in the sense that we think of--that they like it more than Mexico. They go only because of money. They don't like our country. They like that they can earn 10 times the amount of money and build things here to make life better for their families. My question is that in doing that, does it change the culture here innately--does it make the wonderful things about this culture sort of a moot point because it gets so inundated by the "culture" of the United States? I've also been thinking a lot, really in the past year, but it comes up here and in the questions I'm asking, about what feminism has really done for women and men, for our society, for our children. Though I don't think it's a horrible thing (I feel quite lucky to have grown up in a culture that at least touts equality to some degree), I am also unconvinced that it's consequences aren't equally as detrimental to our society as the benefits.
Anyway, thanks for humoring the cultural ramblings. It's at least fascinting getting to live in a culture that is not my own. It helps me think in an even more out-of-the-box way about our culure, or lack of it, and I think I will be able to decide better what I like and don't like about American culture. Another interesting thing I've noticed is that this culture is saturated in our culture. They have Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and all the same kids television programs. They listen to popular American songs and use them as ring tones. Bizarre.
Hope everyone is doing well. I'm tring to post some pictures, so when that works, you'll be able to see some of what I see :-). Until then--
Shannon
