Guanajuato: Teenage Pregnancy and the Church

You do not have to be an expatriate to notice that the young people of Guanajuato are excessively demonstrative in showing public displays of affection. They are much like the Italians and think nothing of groping each other on one of the fountains, mounting each other on a very public park bench, and all but have sex in front of anyone who cares to watch.

It doesn't matter the time of day, who is in their presence, if there are children watching, they will go at it much like a pair of dogs and complete with the appropriate sound effects. I wonder why they bother to remain clothed. I also wonder why some Mexican mother doesn't turn the water hose on them. They have absolutely no inhibitions and apparently regard it appropriate pro-social behavior to go at each other like bunny rabbits in heat.

Let me be frightfully explicit. My wife and I, in broad daylight, have seen these teenagers and college students playing touchy-touchy on parts of their bodies that would be listed in a sexual technique manual as foreplay. They do it in front of everyone as though they are pretending that no one is watching. The kicker is that people of all stripes will walk by them and act like nothing is happening. It is incredible.

We were once meeting friends for lunch in the San Fernando Plaza in Guanajuato when this college-age couple was lap dancing right there in the middle of the plaza with children watching. The girl mounted him like she was a lap dancer in a strip club and went to town. This old man sitting next to me asked me if someone should run and buy the guy a condom. We felt we were watching a porno movie complete with hi-fi sound.

Now, I am no prude. I have no objection to someone choosing as an act of his or her free will to engage in sexual activity. I have certain moral and religious conviction that prevents me from doing that rot (and I didn't do that rot at that age), but I do not go around forcing my views on others who do not share them. However, are not the participants in these sexual hyjinks forcing God and all His witness to watch them engage the expression of their sexual delights? Are we not forced in a public place to have to rush through a plaza when these people playing "prelude to breeding?"

Should not the public areas be a "touch-my-nasty-bits" free zone?

That is the thing with those with a liberal worldview. They scream like banshees at a conservative who would dare take a conservative stand on an issue insisting that we are trying to force our religious views down their throats. Yet, they will sit in a park and have sex in front of children. Does this seem a little off to you? But, I digress.

Apparently, in this massively Catholic nation where the Judeo-Christian ethic is supposed to still reign supreme compared to the States, teenage pregnancy is a horrible problem. This does not take a genius to see why. Guanajuato teenaged girls and boys are now, just as in America, left to their own devices by parents who do not want to stifle their creativity or suppress their self-esteem by putting controls on their teen's behavior. These are not my words, by the way, but those of a Mexican friend who is a professor at one of Guanajuato's universities.

He went on to tell me that the "modern parent" in Guanajuato wants to be their teenager's best friend and not someone who exacts controls or rules. They give their child every conceivable material thing-denies them nothing-including unsupervised time to get themselves into a lot of trouble. In other words, the adults do not want to be the parent.

We see this sort of thing daily. When the adolescents get out of school there are no adults there to rein them in. They go to the parks, the plazas, the Callejóns (alleys) and go at it like rabbits. What ding-dong would not expect sex and then babies to be the result of not keeping your teenager on a short rope? And, the babies are popping out every nine months and ten minutes in this town.

One thing we did not see until we moved here, as permanent expats, was the extent to which this is a problem. Teenaged girls are chronically pregnant here. You might ask me is this just a subjective opinion or observation? I would have to have answered yes until I finally dug up the statistics.

"Teenage pregnancy rates were escalating throughout the country, but this trend was especially severe in Guanajuato. As a university town, Guanajuato has a high density of college-age students and offered fertile ground to implement a project of this nature. In terms of the provider market, privately owned pharmacies were the main source for youths to obtain contraceptives and were identified as a key entry point for the intervention." [1]

This was not a shock to learn that this trend (don't you love how liberal academics term what is a moral problem-a trend?) was particularly severe in Guanajuato. You have but to sit in the plazas or take a walk through the Callejóns to see it right there in front of your face day or night. And let me tell you that they seem to go for their foreplay follies mostly during the day so they can get home in the evening and perform the "see-what-a-good-Catholic-I-am" routine for their family members.

The boys, after getting their girl friends pregnant, usually run and are hidden away in another part of México leaving the girl and her family to raise a new baby.

"Based on a survey conducted in 2001 by the State Population Council, el Consejo Estatal de Población (COESPO), approximately 16 percent of births in Guanajuato were to adolescent mothers, of whom 25 percent did not finish primary school and over half were single. The survey also showed that over 80 percent of the youth in Guanajuato did not use contraception the first time they had sex." [2]

Children are having babies and what exactly does the Church have to say about this?

I've heard that some of the really poor and uneducated families actually encourage their sons to go out and "prove their manhood" by knocking up a young Mexican girl. The parents are so afraid their sons are gay if they haven't had sex by a certain age that they encourage their sons into contributing to this heinous problem. Then when the "you-know-what" hits the fan they hide their male kid from the girl's family's retribution.

Again, I want to know exactly what does the Church have to say about this issue? It seems to me to be a huge contradiction that in the Heartland, where time stands still, that some Mexicans call "A frozen part of Mexican history suspended in time," that is regarded as a hyper-conservative area, that the problem of teenage pregnancy is the severest. What is being preached from the pulpits of all these churches one has got to ask?

I think the answer could be two-fold. One is that I see as a rational explanation is the liberal Americanization that has happened here in infecting the minds of the parents who want to be their kid's best friends and deny them nothing. "Why," the kids then reason, "If I am given an inch should I not take a mile?" Start being parents and not pals and rein them in a bit.

The second thing is to start becoming confrontational. It is a cultural thing in this country to avoid confrontation. I would almost say that there is a taboo but I've seen Mexican become confrontational. They need more of it. I see women and men walk by the teenaged love beasts in full heat mode and some may shake their heads disapprovingly but that is the extent of their censure.

Here is the point that needs driven in like a nail. The plaza bench lap dance we saw is not an isolated incident. It is like these sexpots can totally block out that they are going at it in public. They engage in their foreplay in open, plain sight. And there are children playing around them that stop to watch all the bumping, grinding, and grunting. If I was a parent I would become unglued, but the Mexican mother or father generally ignores it or scoops their kids up in their arms are removes them from the nasty show. I would slap the wannebees porno actors senseless.

But, as a gringo, I can do nothing but write about and here I am doing just that.

[1] YOUTH FRIENDLY PHARMACIES AND PARTNERSHIPS: THE CMS-CELSAM EXPERIENCE December 2005. This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by Kelly Wolfe a consultant for Private Sector Partnerships-

[2] Ibid