Culture Shock and Expatriation in Mexico

No matter how hard I try, and I've been trying, trust me, I cannot stop thinking about expat issues in the Mexican town in which I live. I think the reason is that no matter how much I think I am going to stop writing about expatriation, I get confronted with expat issues almost every time I walk out the front door. It's constantly in my face.

Let me shoot straight here (as if I haven't been frightfully frank in previous articles).

I wish that the expat guides that were available at the time my wife and I moved to Mexico had had the information that I've written about in almost all of my articles as well as in my books about expatriating to Mexico. The books that were available then, and still are on the market, were ok as far as they went in the information they disseminated. The story they told was one of coming to heaven on earth if you were to move to Mexico. They spoke of all the things that were sugar and spice and everything nice. They did not mention negatives, disadvantages, problems, nor did they cover the cultural differences you would have to face.

What they said about the good things was true enough. However, they did not tell the entire story. They did not go into the bumps in the road to successful expatriation that each gringo will one day face if they really and sincerely attempt to become an Expatriate and not a Fakepatriot. And, the burning question that has plagued me ever since discovering that there was a great deal of information these existing expat-to-Mexico guides failed to mention, was:

WHY?

I mean, where was the whole story about expatriating to Mexico? Where was the truth about moving to central Mexico and not being entirely prepared because these expat guides didn't tell the other side of the coin about life in Mexico?

Here is where I am most often misunderstood: I get hate mail, some of it threatening, from readers who think that to make critical observations about anything means that you must hate the thing you are criticizing. What has been so utterly frustrating is that these readers, and some who live in the same town I do, think that I am the one putting the spin on the things I've observed and reported.

For example: One thing that these Pie-In-The-Sky expat to Mexico guides do not tell you is that in some regions of the country, like the city of Guanajuato, they do not queue. They do not or cannot stand in a line. At a meat counter, you are just as liable to be pushed out of the way by someone who thinks she is far more important than you and shouts her order over you even though the employee is already waiting on you.

Now follow me closely here for a moment:

When I decided to write about this, I asked multiple Mexicans what this meant. We didn't know. We didn't find this in our pre-expat research and were confused. So, having Spanish skills, we asked.

What we were told, and I am talking about the majority of Mexicans we queried, is that these people who push you out of the way at counters, refusing to wait their turns, are Malcriados (badly raised).

Well, you would have thought I had called Mexicans the most vile and reprehensible name in the Mexican culture. The emails I got were horrific. These were from my so-called fellow expats living in Guanajuato. I was told I didn't know what I was talking about, I must hate all Mexicans who ever lived or will live, that if I hated Mexico so much that I should go live in Iraq where I would have my head cut off (they included my wife in this too). I was also threatened with physical harm more than once.

Now, be sure you get this point: I reported what other Mexicans in this town told me it meant when the Mexicans at meat counters (or any other place requiring queuing) pushed you out of the way. I didn't offer my personal spin on this issue and yet I caught all sorts of hell for reporting it.

Another example is the habit of being shoved off the sidewalks in the city of Guanajuato. Incomprehensibly, the locals here, mostly the young people, walk as though they are in an all-fire hurry to get somewhere. Now, mind you, they will never show up for an appointment on time-ever-but they walk at the speed of light on the sidewalks and for what, I cannot begin to tell you. In the process, if you get in their way, they will go through you, over you, under you, around you, and if you get shoved into the street, then, well, too bad.

After the third time getting hit by buses as the result of this phenomenon, we once again resorted to using our Spanish skills to ask why. We were in a panaderia (a bakery) where the store manager is from Chihuahua City in the state bearing the same name. She not only was NOT SURPRISED, but also began a thirty-minute tirade on how the Mexicans in the center of the country, the heartland of Mexico, are some of the rudest in the country.

Don't miss this: Here is a native Mexican telling us this about the Mexicans in the city in which we were living. We immediately consulted others we knew from not only Chihuahua but from Durango. All those we consulted and with whom we shared our sidewalk horrors told us of similar issues and events and pretty much agree with our bakery friend's estimation of the Guanajuato locals.

Once again, not our spin, not our evaluation, not our interpretation, but that of other Mexicans from other parts of the country making these comments about Guanajuato Mexicans.

Number one, is this not newsworthy?

Number two; is this not something you would want to know about an area of Mexico you were considering expatriating to?

These are just two things to which the Gringos here in Guanajuato, not to mention San Miguel de Allende, would love to have my head on a platter for writing about!

The other day I was standing in El Jardin (a central plaza in Guanajuato) talking with "DJ." This friend, a lawyer on sabbatical to learn Spanish, has been living in Guanajuato for almost a year now. His observations and comments were not just astute but made me want to broadcast them over the Guanajuato Fakepatriot Radio Network for those who wish me harm to hear.

He said he thought the majority of these people who call themselves Expatriates in Guanajuato live in a make-believe world. They live in such isolation from the locals that they cannot possibly know what goes on in the streets of this town. They send their maids to do the shopping, mostly because they are Spanish-challenged, or they drive in their luxury SUV's to Wal-Mart Superstores (or something similar) in Leon that is as fake culturally as it can be. They don't interact with the locals because they can't. So, how can they know what's going on?

"DJ" went on to tell me that not only does he get shoved off sidewalks and away from store counters, but just the other day when his wife flagged a cab, she opened the door only to have a local jump in front of her. "DJ"'s wife had opened the door of the cab only to have a local here in Guanajuato push her way in front of the gringa and take the cab. She protested to the Mexican woman but the woman looked straight ahead and said nothing. She would not even acknowledge "DJ"'s wife's existence.

If you suggest even the possibility of "anti-American" sentiment in this town, the Gringos will resort to threatening you or causing you to lose your syndicated column, as happened to me.

The differences in the culture, the cultural shock, the rude and ill-raised Mexicans, you can learn to cope with effectively. Or, there are other cities in Mexico, believe it or not, in which people do not act as they do in Guanajuato and you can move there.

That which is frightening, that which will make you want to move, are those fellow Americans who think it appropriate to make you feel you are in danger for expressing an opinion.

How to cope with Americans who move here and live in a delusional state thinking they are real "expatriates" is a bit too much to handle sometimes.

I could go on and on, but to put it into the words of a fellow, real expat:

"Blow them off!"

And that, I intend to do.