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09/04/2005 Archived Entry: "For the love of Mexico"
What makes one love or hate a country? A not wholly incorrect analogy is to consider a nation like a star with its unique spectral signature. In the case of our celestial friends, we can have an idea of their composition by breaking-down and analyzing the spectral frequencies they radiate into space. Likewise, a state is characterized by a distinctive profile made of thousands of specific traits, ranging from the flavor of its dishes to the political system in place.
As individuals, we orbit around the country in which we live like planets around their star (with more or less facility to escape the gravitational force of our homeland if we decide to do so). As opposed to planets we will exhibit an exclusive reaction to the perceived spectrum of experiences produced by that nation, functioning as human prisms decomposing in our highly personal way the jumble of incidents and accidents that life will throw in our path.
Playing the game of causes and consequences, Mexico’s government was instrumental in the Tlatelolco massacre and if I were the father of one of the students shoot on that infamous day of October 1968, I would have a hard time being in love with this country. Likewise, my perspective as a European entrepreneur makes me more sensitive to the phenomenon of malinchismo in IT in Mexico than to the quality of the nightlife in Acapulco or Cancun, which of course is a vastly more important parameter for an American Spring-Breaker.
As a single guy, the women populating a given country play a tremendous role in the way I will relate to the place, let’s not be shy about it. Besides one’s personal pursuits, don’t we all aspire to find the perfect mate, or failing that just getting laid? I confess loving England in spite of the average English female, having a passion for Colombia because the girls there are as amazing as the land they inhabit, and having had my attitude towards Mexico strongly biased by the status (or absence thereof) of my love-life here.
For many Western males, landing in Mexico is like opening the doors of the Valhalla and seeing a thousand virgins awaiting them with open arms! As an average looking, shy and quite boring guy, it took me one week and a single intrusion into a seedy disco of Zona Rosa in Mexico City to proudly (sigh, was I naïve!) display my first Mexican girlfriend. All the sudden I graduated from being a creepy nerd to becoming the incarnation of god-like Apollo, a wonderful boost to my self-confidence to say the least.
I spent 1998 and part of 1999 on a fluffy cloud, loving Mexico with all my heart and making my English dry cleaner rich by handing him stacks of shirts requiring removal of lipstick marks. Why didn’t I take the logical next step and wed a Mexican lady? Because of a slow realization and a charming Colombian girl that was to rescue me and change the next 5 years of my life.
Statistically, a regular visitor from overseas is most likely to date a Mexican girl belonging to the bulk of the lower to lower middle class population. This means having to simultaneously overcome a language, a cultural and a social barrier – not for the faint hearted. On the bright side, these girls are accessible, gifted with the qualities usually associated with Latin females, fairly independent, often university educated and not too unhappy to parade their non-Mexican boyfriend.
We are all looking for something different in a relationship and the fact is that I couldn’t find that elusive missing ingredient that would keep my interest awake after a couple of months of dating. Harshly said, I got bored of Mexican girls.
However, Mexico is like an upside-down iceberg when it comes to females – the immensity of them are in plain sight, but their most intriguing representatives, a tiny minority, are safely hidden below the surface. Protected by their social circle, their parents, their friends, secluded from the rest of society, upper-middle and higher class girls are rather unapproachable by short-term tourists in Mexico.
Does this make them more desirable? As far as looks go, you will encounter the finest specimens of the Mexican female population amongst them, gorgeous, sophisticated, fashionably dressed, etc. – and fully aware of their God-granted superiority. Most of these girls display a properly gob smacking degree of superficiality, arrogance, blissful ignorance of real life where money is earned not given, and so many more defects that can only dash the hopes of any diehard Romeo.
They are the perfect match for the pimply “juniors” showing off daddy’s money at the steering wheel of some German car manufactured in a town that they could neither name nor locate on the map. Few of these women will escape from their dull destiny of easy life, especially amid girls who do not have the spirit of their European counterparts, those courageous damsels who crossed the Atlantic to clear a new land and more recently have won their right to be equal with men.
Perhaps I have been lucky enough to meet a girl who does not fit this intentionally provoking yet not totally inaccurate depiction of Mexican women. If this is the case, my perspective on Mexico will once again change, to my own selfish delight. I look forward to learning more about a society that I still know too little about, correcting my misconceptions and sharing my thoughts with you, my dear readers.
Replies: 4 comments
Hey I just found your blog and it is awesome! I am a Mexican girl that always went to private schools and trust me, I am not a the typical superficial Mexican stuck up girl! But I do agree that most "rich" girls are like you describe them. Oh by the way, I also remember reading in your "Naco" conversation about people from the Tec de Monterrey, and I will have to disagree with you on that one. I studied high school and two years of college there (then transferred to the US), and trust me it is a great school where people have to study hard! It is one of the best business schools in the world. They also have great engineering programs. Just like Patroduida I am also a malinchist and after living abroad (in France) for a while I bowed never to marry a Mexican guy. Now I'm happily married to an American!!!
Posted by jackie @ 11/01/2005 11:34 PM MEX
I love all of your posts and don't mind waiting for them.You are a man with uncommonly good insight and excellent writing skills.
Posted by Gary in Texas @ 10/11/2005 07:27 PM MEX
Truer words were never uttered. I attended private schools all my life and my female classmates, though charming and funny in their own detached and superficial fashion, were a continuous source of vexation for someone like me.
Eventually I fell prey to malinchismo myself and ended up marrying a hard-working european girl the likes of whom I have rarely met in my own country. Sad.
Posted by patodruida @ 10/06/2005 05:20 PM MEX
I was never in Mexico except for the in between border town of Nueva Laredo (across from San Antonio), a lifetime ago.
The Mexican people I have known in the States were warm and friendly.
Great Blog!
Posted by EuroYank @ 09/13/2005 02:23 PM MEX
