Is Mexico a Dirty Place?

One of the most repugnant stereotypes about the Mexican people is that they are those dirty Mexicans. I find this a statement worth vomiting over or at least slapping soundly the person who says it. This sort of xenophobia has its roots in history. Read this quote I am using in an unpublished manuscript:

"Mexicans were considered, he wrote, "bigoted, greedy, tyrannical, fanatical, treacherous, and lazy". These characterizations of the inhabitants of México congealed especially during the decades following México's independence from Spain in 1821..."[1]

"Pioneer America could find little to approve of in the Mexican society it collided with, being affronted in all its major convictions by Mexican attitudes, real and alleged. Americans, in their Protestant individualism, in their ideas of spirit and hard work, in their faith in progress through technology, in their insistence upon personal hygiene, in Puritanism and racial pride, found México much to their distaste because of its priestly power, its social stratification with a pronounced sense of caste, its apparent devotion to pleasure and its indifference to cleanliness, and its reputation for pervasive sensuality ... Adding to all this was the Anglo-Saxon's contempt for a people who had lowered themselves to a state of general cohabitation with the Indians and had thus forfeited the right to be considered "white." (Robinson, 1977)" [2]

If you've heard, and no doubt, you have, that Mexicans are dirty, this is where it comes from. Rooted in racial pride Americans deemed Mexicans, among other things, as dirty. They were talking about having hideous personal hygiene practices.

This is so ridiculous that I cannot even call it ludicrous. It is repulsive and moronic. Mexicans are not dirty and they do not practice bad personal hygiene any more than the average American does. When we told one of my wife's relatives that we were going to go live in México we were asked, "Why do you want to go and live with those dirty Mexicans?" So, this crap is still believed by Americans to this day.

What this chapter is about is something that is unfortunately true. It pains me almost to write about it but I am bound to since it is true and maybe exposure will help end it. Mexicans, at least those who live in Guanajuato, seem to have a totally different worldview when it comes to what constitutes a dirty street. They also seem to have a radically different philosophy about what constitutes polluting their environment.

We've been to other cities on the west coast and others within the Heartland and have not seen the problems we have in Guanajuato. However, we've talked with other expats and other Mexicans that do report the same sort of pollution problems in their cities. In Guanajuato, you can see this amazing sight of apparently educated men and woman, dressed like they are moneyed and talking like they have multiple university degrees, pitching their trash to the ground when a public trash receptacle is a mere ten feet away.

Once, in our neighborhood, Pastita, we saw a woman driving an SUV pull up to the river, get out and unload multiple orange trash bags full of trash, and toss them over the wall separating the street from the river. A large, unmistakable and unavoidable green trash dumpster was no more than twenty feet from her. I do not understand this at all.

It would not take you long to see this happening everywhere in this city. They try to keep the downtown tourist area clean as a whistle but once you get out into the barrios (neighborhoods) it is hideous. Our street, Pastita, would be a nice case study. It is dirty and sometimes to the point of looking squalor. The river, such a priceless environmental jewel, is so polluted and smells horrible on some days.

I do not get this at all. I am not in a position to say a word about it because I am not a citizen. I have seen some Mexicans who do care screaming at their fellow Guanajuatenses to pick up their trash. I mean there can be a trash bin in plain sight and they will toss the trash to the ground rather than in the bin. Once, in our Embajadoras Park, I saw this guy sitting on a park bench with a trash bin that had to be maybe six inches from him and he tossed the wrapper of some processed food item over his shoulder and into the bushes instead of into the trash bin.

This is a horrible problem. It not only is killing the environment but also gives a good people a deserved reputation of being dirty. They do "dirty" their environment and if a subjective reporting of what the streets and river look like, they do not seem to care a bit that they throw garbage on the streets and into their waterways.

In an article I found in The Economist it is reported,

" Poor countries have the world's worst environmental problems. They cannot afford to put up with them, argues Daniel Litvin." [3]

While that may be true I am wondering why someone who is poor has to pitch trash to the ground when a trash dumpster is in plain sight? Perhaps poor countries really do have financial problems in dealing with the environmental problems in their country but is it not the individual citizen who gives themselves permission to throw garbage in the river or street? If the individual will walk to the dumpster and throw the trash away will this not minimize the environmental problems that the poor nations who are claiming they have no money to deal with the burden? Am I wrong?

The idea that concern for the environment is something that only the rich can afford to think about and do something about is indeed ludicrous. It is contemptuously laughable. I see the so-called moneyed in Guanajuato pitching trash into the rivers. What about that?

The article in The Economist went on to say that the pollution problems in Latin America is worsening and not improving. Health problems from the air pollution (too many cars.) are severely impacting the health of their citizens. This is true here in Guanajuato. We've seen an increase of locals, especially the young, who have to wear masks just to walk down the street. In this narrow, ravine constructed town there is nowhere for the car exhaust to go. Though you don't need a car in this city, the locals will get them and drive them at the cost of the health of their children. I am at the point with my asthma where I either will have to move or start wearing a mask.

"Populations in poor countries are growing so fast that improvements in water supply have failed to keep up with the number of extra people." [4]

In Guanajuato, water is a dwindling resource. It is undrinkable. I just learned that in Monterrey you could drink water from the tap. This would be unthinkable in Guanajuato. The water is dirty and it is dwindling. Tourism is one reason for this.

Have you ever wondered if mass tourism actually spoils the very thing it comes to observe in a foreign country? I've been wondering this a lot lately. Does the onslaught of tourists flooding into a particular place to enjoy what that place has to offer end up becoming the source of that place's ruination?

This is both confusing and, of course, a bit hypocritical of me, a travel writer, to even suggest. It has, however, been on my mind.

More than once, I've met or corresponded with those who have visited my adopted home of Guanajuato because of the articles my wife and I write. Based on our first two books, one couple attributes their moving to Guanajuato to us. So, in a very real sense I am a source of this problem. I am drawing people here.

Hypocrisy?

Massive tourism can put a strain in the infrastructure of any place. Basic services such as water gets stretched to the max. Water, something Americans take for granted, is not as renewable a resource in Guanajuato as it is in most places in the States.

Guanajuato is a mountain desert with a Steppe Climate. It is dependent on the annual rainfall (or lack thereof) to refresh and replenish its reservoirs. The current problem is the last two rainy seasons have not been "up to snuff." The rains have been sadly lacking and now we're in trouble.

The influx of tourism this year is making it worse. It seems the tourists just keep coming and coming. This is a good thing for the merchants but how will the city keep the water flowing? Normally, the city implements water rationing measures.

The city cuts off the water supply to certain residential areas throughout the city in hopes of conserving water. Rationing in the neighborhoods is even more severe when the tourists come in hordes, straining the system in the hotels and hostels. The city officials cut water off from the residents so the tourists can bathe and flush the toilets.

The priority here seems a bit a skewed. Are not the city services meant for those who support these services by paying their taxes? I mean, who should come first, the tourists or the citizens of Guanajuato
One of my wife's private ESL students told her a horrifying example of how this water shortage works:

1. They have to take sponge baths with their bottled drinking water that they heat on the stove.

2. They have to find a friend or family member somewhere outside the neighborhood with running water to take a weekly shower.

3. Her husband and son have to walk to a public water source to fill buckets with water to flush the toilet.

This goes on while water for the tourists' flows freely. I can guarantee you the tourists don't have to go in search of water to go potty or to sponge out their pits.

It would be lovely if there were a steady and renewable supply of water all the time for everyone. There isn't. And it seems to me that those who live here, who raise their families here, should have priority.

The main problem is the tourism season for most Americans and Canadians is June through August. That is our rainy season, and if the rains don't come-there is no water.

Would the tourist season suffer? Maybe. But, the tourists would then be able to have an opportunity to see first hand how real Mexicans in Central México are often forced to live.

Urbanization is another contributor to pollution. If someone burns trash in the country no one blinks. If you do this in the city you send half a dozen people in your tightly bunched housing to the hospital with asthma attacks, or worse. The more tightly packed people are in the city housing, the more likely an individual's actions will affect his neighbor. It is unavoidable.

It is rainy season right now as I write this chapter. The rains should be a time of refreshment. But as I walk down my street here in Guanajuato I look each day at a river of brown milkiness. There is no clarity to the water. There is no life there. What is there are old car tires, plastic bottles, shoes, old machine parts, and anything else you can imagine someone might throw into the river as their garbage dump. No one seems to care.

It seems to me that being rich or poor has nothing to do with the individual who can make the personal choice of how to deal with their trash. Who exactly is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to throw anything into the river, on the streets, or in the bushes rather than walking to the trash bin and tossing it in? I mean, really, tell me, who is forcing you?

Another issue that is every bit a pollution problem is smoking. If subjective observation means anything then it appears that the vast majority in this town smokes like dragons. What is so alarming is to see how many very, very young people are addicted to cigarettes. The American tobacco companies probably laughed their heads off at the thought the American anti-smoking activists actually believed they could break these companies financially. What a hoot.

They have addicts all over the world smoking their brands and most of them seem to get hooked at extremely young ages.

This is such a perfect example of México having thousands of laws on the books but no rules to guide ethical behavior. Each store or kiosk I've seen has the signs stating that it is against the law to sell to minors and yet you can see them selling to kids all over the place. It is pathetic and so sad to think of the deaths of these addicts where they will choke to death from the lung cancer they are destined to contract.

It is extremely hard to avoid the cancer causing and heart attack inducing second hand smoke. Few restaurants have smoke free zones and even then you are forced to smell it and walk through it to get out the door. And smokers in Guanajuato seem just as careless and thoughtless of how what they do behaviorally affects others. If they care so little for their health that they would inhale that crap into their lungs what makes you think they care a wit about your lungs? Truly, they love their neighbors as they love themselves-which is not much. They care about your health about as much as they care for their own. Again: Which is not much.

If you have any sort of respiratory illness then you will not be going out to eat a lot. Sad.

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[1]EXPERT REPORT OF ALBERT M. CAMARILLO; http://www.umich.edu/~urel/admissions/legal/expert/camarill.html

[2]Ibid

[3]http://www.economist.com/surveys/displayStory.cfm?story_id=157999

[4]Ibid