The Bierce Account
http://bierceannals.blogspot.com/2009/11/pobre-mexico.html
It´s quite fun to kick back and watch the misunderstandings fly . . . and fly they do.
Nowhere touch two nations, two peoples, two languages, two worlds that are so utterly different.
The Americans do not understand the Mexicans, though they think they do, even Gringos who live among us. Those poor Mexicans are just like us. They only need a helping hand.
Helping hand = charity.
Truth is, explaining Mexicans to Americans is akin to explaining a sea society to a desert-dwelling people who gauge everything by its relationship to saguaro cacti and blistering sunshine.
Neither do Mexicans understand Americans, but they really don´t care that much, being far more introspective. Mexicans focus on themselves and their families. They care about other Mexicans only as a cuddly patriotic concept.
Their attitude toward their American neighbors is a conflictive brew of envy, wonderment and resentment.
Putting aside the current global economic crisis (which is cyclical and will pass), let us ask ourselves why the economy and society function remarkably well north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and just the opposite south of the border.
To twist that old campaign slogan: It´s the culture, stupid.
Yours truly defines culture very broadly as the way a nation, a people, looks at the world. And that world view passes through the prism of their language, which is one issue.
Spanish is a Romance language and, like love itself, it is shadowy and unpredictable. You can hide in Spanish. You can dance, this way and that. You can be quite unclear if that is your desire.
. . . as it often is. Octavio Paz famously wrote: A Mexican´s "face is a mask and so is his smile."
English, like the English-speaking people, is far less prone to masks. English is often directly in your face. It is a tongue with Germanic undertones. It is efficient.
* * * *
We are very different. Contrary to common notions, Mexico is a younger nation than the United States. It´s 1810 versus 1776.
But that measly 34-year difference is deceptive. The United States began as a democracy, and has been one for over 200 years. Mexico, on winning independence, promptly slid into chaos and into the arms of Gen. Santa Anna.
. . . then the mess with Emperor Max . . . and the dictatorship of Díaz . . . the murderous revolution . . . the comparatively benign dictatorship of what became the Revolutionary Institutional Party, lasting until the year 2000. Almost yesterday, amigos.
Mexico is still staggering, bruised and bloody.
What did the past 200 years (yes, we are about to celebrate the bicentennial) do to the Mexican mind and heart?
It made us stunningly cautious and suspicious. We do not trust others, and we certainly do not trust any government. Many, perhaps most, men toted pistols down into the 1950s.
But we smile a lot, and we love to say yes. Doing otherwise, we have painfully learned, can be quite counterproductive.
And potentially lethal. We have learned to act happy.
. . . which totally flummoxes the Gringos, a fun side effect.
* * * *
Mexico is a large country with lots of natural resources, a mother lode of possibilities that we waste due to the distrust and suspicion that has been pounded into us over centuries.
Like the bright, high school student with poor grades, we are not living up to our potential.
The nation above the Rio Bravo totally misreads us, and how not? The Gringos had no Santa Ana, no inept emperor shipped in from Europe, no moustachioed Generalissimo Díaz . . .
. . . no bloody revolution that ended only one long lifespan ago, no slick "political party" of oligarchs stealing elections, sometimes at pistol point, for most of the 20th Century.
So here you have two nations. One has progressed successfully through two centuries of democracy. The other has crept two centuries from one bloody disaster into another. What do these people have in common? Absolutamente nada.
And yet they are neighbors, shoulder to shoulder.
Mexico has changed, especially in this decade, just the final five seconds of the nation´s time-line.
It´s time to grow up, time to don long pants, come out of the house, say hi to our neighbors, learn to see long-term, recognize that what helps the neighborhood helps us too . . .
No one will shoot us although our guts signal otherwise.
. . . time to quit sneaking up north to cut the Gringos´ grass, time to stay here and check out the many opportunities we have within our own borders. And, sí señor, there are many.
Our biggest enemy faces us in the mirror. It is time to take off the mask and be sincere, time to do what we say we´ll do . . .
. . . arrive on time, say no when it´s appropriate, trust others and see that usually we´re not disappointed.
. . . though at times we will be. We´ll get over it.
