Mexican Cultural Differences

In Mexico, Mother's Day is on May 10, a national holiday celebrated with loads of gusto! This year it fell on a Thursday, so we were given both Thursday and Friday off of school, as well as Monday and Tuesday due to Teacher's Day (May 15). I headed to Mexico City to visit my friend, Lalo, and conocer the megalopolis and its surrounding area. I had an opportunity to observe how things are done in the big city.

Living in Tuxtla Gutierrez, I often wonder how different the culture down south is in comparison to the largest city in the world. If somebody lived in the southern United States, they would have a different experience that they would living in any one of the Yankee states. The general level of education would vary and this, often more than anything else, determines how people behave. Aside from behavior, there's food, fashion, accent and friendliness to be observed and compared.

I remember learning about ethnocentrism in school, the loose definition being that you view your culture as superior to other cultures. I looked up the word today and found two definitions:

1. Sociology. the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture.
2. a tendency to view alien groups or cultures from the perspective of one's own.

In traveling to various countries, I find it impossible not to view other cultures from the perspective of my own. Culture is so deeply ingrained, the only perspective one has is that from their culture. What I try to do is not use my judgement against people and I try to figure out why a certain behavior is part of that culture. This is not always easy, but it's always fun observing the differences.

Just a few differences I've noted in the past year of the Mexican Culture in comparison to US or Canadian culture (I've worked with many Canadian teachers and I find overall we are extremely similar. I've come across a few Canadians that I'm sure are mistaken for Americans due to their obnoxiousness, loudness or rudeness. Having said that, I find the countries are similar in that they both have their good and bad):

Shopping Carts
While standing in line at the supermarket check-out, it's customary to place your cart as close to the butt of the person in front of you as possible. One of my students mentioned that people are afraid of someone budding in front of them which happens, but is as unacceptable here as in the US (as opposed to India, where it's expected and aggressiveness is required if you want to get anything done).

Movie Theater Etiquette
Being a huge movie lover, this is one of the most irritating aspects of movies in Tuxtla. I average 1-2 movies a week (that should show how little there is to do in Tuxtla) and I have yet to get through an entire film without somebody's phone not only ringing, but the person answering and carrying on a conversation!

I found that this doesn't occur in Mexico City, but the film I watched there cut out on occasion which led to a man yelling, "Borracho!!" or "drunk," I assume at the employee working the movie reel. I felt sorry for the woman accompanying him.

Street Talk
This, by far, ranks #1 as the most annoying cultural difference. Regardless of where I am in Mexico, the men on the street, whether they are dressed in a suit or working construction, find the need to comment about the physical appearance of females as they walk past. Sometimes it's a simple Que bonita and other times they throw in a mamacita. I'd appreciate Buenos días, but I think that's asking for too much class.

What I haven't been able to figure out is the objective of the comments. Are they simply trying to be rude and obnoxious or do they find it complimentary? A male co-worker said a Colombian female he worked with in Sacramento said she missed all the attention she got on the streets of Colombia. I can't imagine missing this rudeness, but maybe it's not viewed as rudeness elsewhere.

Many plans - Little follow through
I can't tell you how many times people have made plans either to go out somewhere or to get something accomplished and there has been no follow through. Sometimes people simply don't show up where they're supposed to be or there are procedures set in place that, when followed, don't result in anything.

I'm fortunate enough not to be involved in either the preschool or primary school meetings, but from the comments made by my co-workers it sounds like they are useless. Heated discussions go on and on, but once the discussion is over, nothing changes. The same conversations take place over and over with the same nothing result. As a foreign teacher you either learn quickly to ignore things (why fight for change when you're only staying for one year??) or you go mad.

I've adopted three kids from the Morales family who take out the trash at my apartment building three days a week. With the awesome generosity of my friends and family in the US, we've raised money to pay for a variety of school supplies and physical education equipment. In arranging to take the items to the kids' school in an area on the outskirts of Tuxtla, I asked the PE teacher if he would give me a ride. He said YES, but when it came to the day we were to go, he told me that he not only couldn't go that day, but any day for the rest of the year because he has a swimming class at 4pm. I told him we could go at 2pm (a one hour round trip) giving him ample time to get to swimming, but he said he has to go home and eat. Wow. Apparently Rafa not feeding his growing gut for one day is too much sacrifice for children in the poor neighborhood of Las Granjas. Glenn and I have arranged to take a taxi on Monday after school.

NOISE!!!!!
In all the 45 nations I've visited thus far, Mexico takes #1 for the loudest country. It's customary for people to yell across a room or even for adults to scream from the playground into a classroom two stories above to get the attention of a teacher or assistant. Parents pull up in front of the school while class is in session and honk as many times as necessary until somebody comes out to find out what they need. Cars pull into my apartment's parking lot with the bass cranked up to such a ridiculous level that the windows in my 3rd story unit shake. I've also come to despise ranchera music because it's typically played too loud and too much.

We had a teacher appreciation dinner and raffle after school on Friday and the Mexican teachers were yelling and carrying on obnoxiously throughout the raffle. It was really quite humorous and explains a lot about my students and why they initially came to class wanting to yell out answers and be in an almost constant state of chaos. They caught on quickly and now it's as if they not only enter an English-speaking environment, but also the US culture of peace and quiet when they come to class.

The word obnoxious doesn't even exist in Spanish. The translation given is repugnant (taste or smell) or hateful (person), a bit strong. It's similar to the word pacifist not existing in Arabic, according to my colleague Glenn. There's no need for a word that everybody is nor a word that everybody isn't.

Trash
Mexico has a lot more trash laying around than the United States, but I noticed that in places where there are proper trash receptacles, there is much less trash...naturally. It was similar in Thailand. The custom seems to be that you hire street sweepers to sweep up the trash each morning instead of hiring people to empty the trash. Using logic, it seems easier to empty trash cans, but logic isn't always at work.

Parasites
The infamous Montezuma's Revenge has claimed all of the foreign staff at least once this year. Some people have had bad enough bouts with parasites that it prevented them from making it to work. I was fortunate enough to get sick only once this year, but it never kept me from work nor did I visit the doctor. More than anything it's an issue with cleanliness; people's hands just aren't washed as much as they should be.

Nepotism
Who you know is important anywhere, but especially in Mexico. One can earn a degree in any field for a very affordable price, but often obtaining a job in that field is the hard part. Similar to the US, teacher pay and benefits in a public school are far better than in a private school, but in Mexico it's virtually impossible to get your foot in the door unless you know somebody. Some teachers at my school are hoping the wealthy, well-connected parents of our students will pull strings for them in a public school.

My friend Lalo said he's a lawyer, but is unable to find work in his field so he works for his dad's Whirlpool business. He doesn't have any connections in the field and said the only jobs he'd be able to get would pay less than $10,000 US per year. Hardly a decent salary for a lawyer, even in Mexico. I'm unsure of the Mexican standards (a bit of an oxymoron) for obtaining a law degree, but I'm guessing they're not as demanding as in the US.

After working for a year in the education field in Mexico, I also don't believe that a degree from the average Mexican university is equal to a degree from a US university. I work at a private school that is thought to be one of the best in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of one of Mexico's 31 states. If my school is one of the best in the capital, I'm afraid to see what the other schools demand academically from their students.

Humor
At the beginning of the year, I went to a few bars for happy hour on Fridays that provide botanas, snacks, free with your drink order, as well as a "comedian" for entertainment. It didn't take long to figure out that the "comedians" are overly fixated on gay jokes. There are jokes about all groups of people, but spending hour after hour bashing one group in particular is annoying. It's embarassing to watch and leaves me with a lack of intellect taste in my mouth.

The Mexican Change Shortage
I just returned from the grocery store where I went to get a sugar fix. I bought a chocolate cupcake from the bakery for 4 pesos (40 cents) and paid at the register with a 50 peso bill ($5 US). The cashier, looking annoyed, asked me if I had any change. When I replied no she actually rang her buzzer and had a manager come over to break the bill?!?! She doesn't have change for five bucks in her register? Although this isn't an unusual scene, I still don't get it. Other than fruits and veggies, things in Mexico cost around the same as the US so breaking a 50 peso bill shouldn't be an issue, but it often is.

Where are the toilet seats??
I understood in Thailand why there weren't toilet seats. The custom is to use squatters, simply a hole in the floor that requires squatting to properly use (do you have the visual yet?). When people from various Eastern cultures come upon a Western toilet, they often lift the lid and seat and stand on the rim, squatting, as they're accustomed.
In Mexico, I'm confused. They don't use squatters and I can't find any reason not to provide at least a proper toilet seat, if not a lid. Even in my school, a private school supposedly with nice facilities (although, we have no library - I came in this morning to boxes of library books in the 6th grade girls' bathroom), there's no seat or lid on the toilet in the female faculty bathroom.

Along these same toilet lines, I'm very thankful for the waste treatment facilities we have in the States, allowing us to flush our toilet paper instead of placing it in the trash. Although I did just read Excrement Happens (I've truly gone over the edge) and it sounds as if there's work to be done in the treatment area, it still beats the system in Mexico.

Although I've listed all the cultural differences above, Mexico does have numerous similarities to the United States. The people typically enjoy the same things, have the same jobs, drive the same cars, live in the same houses and take the same vacations. The major difference is there are A LOT more poor people and a lot less in the middle class. The corruption is so rampant that nobody wants to pay more taxes for improvement because they know the money will make it into the wrong hands. There are rich people who are good, but many more who are not.

Confucius said it best: In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of; in a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.