Posted on 02/25/2017 3:33:15 PM PST by Ennis85
Americans' patronising views of their southern neighbour are ill-informed, outdate and about to backfire on them Visiting California, I'm always shocked how Americans-even vaping, Prius-driving liberal Democrats-treat their Mexican staff. Need someone to toil in the sun for 12 hours on minimum wage? Need a nanny who won't kick off when you're constantly late? Hire a Mexican. Employers engage little with these people who inhabit their yards and homes(the language barrier is cited) but if they do, the tone is exquisitely patronising. Mexicans aren't so much individuals as a class of biddable brown Untermensch. Likewise President Trump has addressed the Mexican government like a lazy pool-cleaner, a bus-boy who dropped a tray. We'll build a wall-and you'll damn well pay for it. And latterly, we're going to deport all illegal immigrants and dump them over your border, even if they're not actually Mexicans. Travelling around American's southern neighbour these past few weeks. I've wondered if Trump knows what he is dealing with. Has he seen Mexico City's skyscrapers and glittery airport, the growing middle class who fill vast malls and VIP cinemas? Roads, even in the poorer south, are no worse than in New York City. This is the second biggest economy in Latin America, an upwardly mobile, modern democracy of 120 million people, being dissed as a tin-pot, dust bowl loser. Not all Mexicans are as livid as their former president Vicente Fox whose "we're not paying for no f**king wall" tweets have so amusingly breached diplomatic protocol. People I met were more baffled, insulted and hurt. And these feelings, already being harnessed will benefit Mexico and damage America. The term "malinchismo" describes a Mexican self-hatred, a sense that foreign products, ideas, even people are inherently superior to home grown. White faces dominate magazines in a majority mestizo land. All things American have long had a special allure and a status often unequal to their quality. As I tried on a jacket in a fancy department store, the assistant warned me: "You do know it is a Mexican brand?" But already Mexicans are spending less on US goods in part because Trump's belligerence has crashed the peso, but also a defiant new nationalism is brewing. A businesswoman reports that all her Mexican friends, even apolitical socialites, have changed their WhatApp avatars from Cancun bikini snaps to the national flag. Fanners at recent nationwide anti-Trump rallies called for dignity and respect. A student told me; "He might just unite us all."
As a tourist I kept thinking facetiously, it's Mexico that should build the wall. Keep out the American visitors who demand that a deep, delicate ancient culture bows to their thin, tinny one bringing diabolical coffee, gargantuan portions, the Cola-Cola that has caused Mexico's obesity crisis, the corruption of a fine, fresh local cuisine into bowel-clogging Tex-Mex. In lovely colonial towns like San Miguel de Allende, snowbirds trying to eke out Minnesota pensions have driven up house prices. Lathery, pony-tailed hippies browse English bookshops full of atrocious, self- published, expat memoirs about suburban moms "finding themselves" here. "Americans have not looked for Mexico in Mexico". said the poet Octavio Paz, "they have looked for their obsessions, enthusiasms, phobias". That Trump's wall will keep out the "bad hombres" is a particularly pointed insult. Overall crime in Mexico is marginally- 2 percent-higher than in the US. But in America, gun crime is six times greater. In Mexico there are no street-corner gun shops, as in Miami or Houston; indeed gun laws are closer to those in Britain. In theory citizens have a right to bear arms; in practice; it is virtually impossible. And where do the guns come from used by the brutal narco gangs of breaking bad fame? They are bought legally in America. Between 2009 and 2014, around 70,000 firearms seized by Mexican authorities were found to originate in the US, mainly from Southwest border states. The "bad hombres" are armed by America. Indeed the ruthless drug cartels that kill and maim, ruin whole communities and corrupt local democracy, feed a degenerate and wholly American appetite for heroin, cocain and crystal meth. Mexico's drug problem is negligible, use of opiates is opiates is six times lower than in the US. Moreover, it is the choas and violence caused by the cartels that drives migration across the border. If America wanted to keep down illegals, it could save $15 billion on a wall, stop partying, put its alienated addicted youth into rehab and reform its guns laws. Of course, it never will. It is possible that every brick in Trump's theoretical(and most likely unfeasible) wall could help to build Mexico. Already there is evidence of "Trump Slump", with European holiday inquiries about America tumbling. With his every utterance, Trump pulls up the national welcome mat a little more. Meanwhile Mexico's tourist trade is booming. More significantly, a high-level US banker remarks that the smart money is betting on Mexico inward investment will flourish. Meanwhile malinchismo will fade, making it patriotic to buy local goods. And its politicians are growing braver. If Trump tears up NAFTA, imposing tariffs to pay for his wall, Mexico will retaliate: already it threatens to stop buying an annual $2.4 billion of US corn and look instead to Argentina or Brazil. A temperamentally chilled-out nation is rising. America may find that the hardworking neighbour who mows its lawns, cares for its kids, clears up its mess without complaint won't be bullied any more.
We are here in Mexico on extended business for eight months now.
Yes, people lug liters of Coke home; but there are cheaper drinks to be had; aqua frescas are made with blended real fruit. It’s a choice. Food is cheap and plentiful in Mexico. No one looks like they are starving.
The stupid expats here in Lake Chapala had anti-Trump march last month, through the streets with effigies and disgusting signs.
The other week, we were at a party with a mix of expats and Mexican locals. One of the locals who makes his money off the expats told me and my husband, that he “hates Americans.” Then he qualified that: “Only Republicans, everyone else can stay.”
Then, they were passing around an iphone with a picture of our president fellating a rainbow colored dildo. Everyone was laughing.
So many Mexicans we meet can speak English because lived in the US for a while. They are bringing up the quality of service and professionalism in the work they do.
Just my little two cents...
I was just at the pool and lakeside restaurant (here in Mexico, where we live in a resort community) and the kids had blond hair from their light haired, light skinned parents, and they are what many Mexicans look like that we encounter in our neighborhood.
The poorest ones live in the bottom, SH!T does roll downhill you know.
Potemkin village.
Good grief.
A pleasure to simply skip the entire thing.
Who cares how the Mexican invaders feel??
Moving right along...
mehico: you suck. Your lousy country is run by euro-spanish elites who hate you and want you to continue as their serfs. Rise-up!!!
Challenge the Nazi bitch to a duel - frying pans at 30 yards.
Is there a point to that post?
I visited CSL every year between 1993 and 1999.
Until I got tired of "hearing" about Americans who disappeared almost yearly, and it didn't even make the local English-speaking papers...
The picture looks an awful lot like Venezuela. The workers paradise.
And during World War One, they conspired with Germany to, in return with helping Germany with spying and other kinds of active war help, to get the entire Southwestern U.S. after Germany "won."
See The Zimmermann Telegram, Barbara Tuchman
Changed my mind - she’s fake news and fake boobs. I want nothing to do with this English scarecrow.
i bet they will.
if they start something it will at least give us an excuse to thoroughly clean house down there.
Brazil?
Venezuela?
Equador?
What neighborhood is that, really?
Never accepted this grammer - use of oplates is six times less than in the U.S. So if a million opiates are consumed in the U.S. in a day, Mexico consumes six times less. That means they consume six million less. That is nonsense. How about Mexico consumes 1/6 in the comparison or we consume six times as much as they do.
“if we took over the territory of the northern mexican states, the length of the wall could be reduced by about 25%”
That’s how Mexico could pay for the wall - with land.
Unfortunately, they’d give us Tijuana.
Note to self. When complaining about grammar, spell it correctly.
Did the regular writer take the day off, and the paper substitute a teenager?
No mention of Mexico City’s slums.
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