By Tom Bridges
Sept 2005
Once in a conversation with a Mexican friend he lamented that here in Mexico there is a culture of littering. He noted that people who live here their whole life can go to the U.S. for a visit, and as soon as they cross the border they start to place their waste products in plastic bags. As soon as they cross back over the border, they throw the plastic bag out the window of the car.
For a long time I had a hard time rationalizing that fact. After a number of years of thinking like an American, I finally realized that most Mexicans respect the beliefs of others. They may not agree with those beliefs but they try to respect them. When they go to the U. S., they respect the belief in clean highways, for instance, although they themselves may not actually believe they are necessary.
For those of us who change our residences from the U.S. to Mexico, the idea of immediately accepting another belief or ideology is a largely foreign concept. We tend to define ourselves by our beliefs or political thinking, and we tend to resent a differing belief or point of view, as though an attack on us personally. Mexicans tend to talk about such things as though putting on clothing. (The actual phrase is putting on my playera or team jersey to mean they are now engaged in politics, for instance.) They tend to define themselves in other manners.
In the United States people all too often try to change the beliefs of others through unsubtle means. In Mexico subtlety is the watchword. In Spanish you often hear someone say that a person is “halfway difficult” to mean the person is hard to get along with. You never hear someone flat out say that an individual is hard to get along with. You hear people say that she is “delicate” to indicate that she is bossy. You hear about the guy who is “very special” which means that nothing is ever right for him.
I always thought I was being “truthful” or even “righteous” when I made such hard-nosed direct statements as, “So and so had a bad time with such and such a mechanic.” Or, “Where I come from, we don’t condone children dropping out of school in the seventh grade.” (This one was met with a resounding “Y qué?” which roughly translates to so what.)
However truthful I may have been, I certainly did not impress the locals. In fact, friends for being too forthright have chastised me. They considered me to be “uneducated,” which is the subtle local way of saying that I was rude. They felt that since I lived here I should adopt the local custom and belief of being more nearly subtle.
The first time that point was illustrated for me occurred once when I wanted to have batteries changed in a pocket calculator and went by a local puesto (stand) to ask the operator to do it for me. There were two batteries and if both were removed at the same time the memory would be lost. I turned the calculator over to the man and he began to open the battery compartment. As he removed one battery I much-too-forcefully said, “Be careful to remove only one at a time!” He kindly replaced the screws and gave the calculator back to me. I tried a time-honored method of forcing him to replace them by stating that I would take my $10-peso business elsewhere and that was no way to run a railroad. He ignored me. I went back several days later to apologize. He ignored me some more. I finally found someone at a market to change them and I kept my mouth shut.
You see, the nice man at the battery puesto didn’t think I had the right to be an Ugly American. He thought that since I lived here and had the right to obey traffic laws, civil laws, and federal laws, whether I understood them or not, I had the right to obey social laws, too.
Many times we from the North are nearly missionary in our insistence that others adapt to our ways, although we hesitate to take our own medicine. I know I have had many instances of rethinking my attitudes to reflect those of where I now live. The ad running on Spanish-language television now sums all this up nicely: “Those who love Mexico don’t look for strife.”