Mexican Culture
Mike H has read some of my stuff and has encouraged me to send some posts. I've lived full time in Baja Sur for 9 years. I've been a "lurker" for
some time but I like to think of it as "learning". So many views, spirited discussion. Great stuff. Here's another little piece.
Quiz?s
Yesterday the beach was a war zone. Well, maybe a miniature war zone. Squadrons of dragonflies, wave after wave of tiny helicopters, strafed the
beach. The mission: find and eat every small bug on the beach. A million sorties following some unseen leader with orders to move west but stay
between the shore and the palms.
While I was pretending to be an heroic war correspondent (Cody Savage would be a neat name) risking my neck to give the world the real-time sights
and sounds of the action along the beachhead, two Mexican fishing boats roared through the surf, up onto the beach. Pepe and his brothers said their
hellos. Pepe said the sigarones, the dragonflies, signaled rain. When I asked him when we could expect the rain he answered with his grinning-pirate
look, it said it pleased him to be vague.
His brother, Juan, said they come out after a rain. Juan has the look and demeanor of a Mexican Archie Bunker. Who should I believe? If we throw
out the niggardly constraints of time, they are both right.
This is how I spend my time in Mexico -- having to choose between two (or more) answers to every question. The land may be mostly implacable granite
and prickly cactus but it is pure quicksand for anyone looking for a hard-and-fast answer to anything. In order to better communicate I have forced
myself to be a better listener. I have not learned enough. I use the words siempre and nunca, always and never, as and when the conversation
dictates. These words are rarely spoken in this pueblo -- perhaps used little in all of Mexico. In a land where nothing is what it appears to be I
should expect to hear probables and posibles, a vezes, quis?s manana. (probably, possibly, at times, perhaps tomorrow) The language demonstrates
the basic fatalistic view of the Mexican people. Fatalism defines the culture, pervades every sector of society.
The bending, warping of time is not culturally unique but it stands out like a c-ckroach on a wedding cake when compared to the U.S. cultural
imperative, the atomic clock exactitudes we are so proud of, the "seventeen jewels that dictate the rules".
The western world misinterprets the Mexican time view and world view, sees the people as non-productive, lazy. Time, taken in the abstract, the
Mexican way, offsets the Judeo/Christian stigma of guilt. The time-bending thing allows Mexicans to enjoy the leisure and forgiveness of a mas o menos
attitude about how they run their daily lives. Being a day early or three days late does not call for a trip to the confessional, a single mea culpa.
When two compadres joke with one another, the word lazy, flojo, is often used but it evokes laughter not scorn.
Only now, after spending a few years in Mexico, am I beginning to understand and appreciate the subtlety of these quirks of culture. One day I may
reap some of the benefits myself. I won't bore you with a long list of wonderful side effects but we can both feel the obvious orgullo de patria,
country pride, a Mexican worker must feel, arriving a week late for work, upon learning that his whole crew was laid off several days ago.
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