Generalizations and Stereotypes

(Bob writing here) When we were in Loreto last week, we saw a newspaper article pinned to the wall at a gringo-owned restaurant that I’ve been thinking about on and off ever since then. The general theme of the article was that the local Mexicans, and Mexican business people specifically, were not providing quality customer care to the “precious tourists” (read: North Americans), and that this was a problem that ought to be addressed. Now the local gringo weeklies down here, of which there are quite a few, don’t exactly rival the NY Times for editorial content, and the writing style would fit well with most high school newspapers, so maybe I should let this self-centric screed go without letting it bother me, or giving it much weight.

But the article did raise some issues that the writer thought might contribute to the tension between the local population and the very strong, almost overwhelming presence of US and Canadian residents in parts of Mexico. Among them were: the dramatic wealth differential and treatment that Mexicans receive in the U.S., which apparently is widely reported down here and viewed as being the result of racism. There was no mention that perhaps some of the behaviors and attitudes displayed by these North Americans in Mexico might contribute to the problem. The article went on too long, and was quite defensive in tone, but I’ve been thinking on and off since reading it about what the Mexicans’ attitudes toward us really are.

Overall, our experience with individual Mexicans we’ve met has been quite positive. Much of it is superficial, as it is in any environment in which you’re a tourist and the individual you’re dealing with has no expectation they’ll ever see you again. When I’m out running, I usually wave at folks driving by. This isn’t truly being friendly on my part; mainly it’s a defense mechanism. I hope if I wave and make eye contact, maybe they won’t run me off the narrow road. I often get a wave back, but it seems mostly perfunctory, without any real warmth. One place I’ve particularly noticed we haven’t received pleasant responses has been in stores. The people checking us out have been almost universally unwilling to converse more than the bare basics, even though Cathryn tries to engage them with her Spanish. Today as we were checking out at a store, the young woman bagging our items put the first couple of items in a bag, then proceeded to put the remaining dozen or so in the cart without bags. Cathryn asked if they could please be placed in bags, and was told they were out of bags. This was true, at that checkstand. But not 3 feet away at the next checkstand there was a pile of hundreds of bags. When I reached over and grabbed several and started to bag our things myself, the girl just stood there and watched. Eventually another woman came over and helped me out, but what exactly was happening here? We were the only gringos in line, and only people whose items weren’t being bagged, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because of this that we received this treatment. (We imagine our black, latino and asian friends saying “So what? This kind of thing happens to me not infrequently in Seattle”).

It’s too early to make generalizations, but I’m troubled by the potential that a gulf exists that it’s unlikely we’ll ever be able to bridge. When we were in Tanzania last year, a local man whom we got to know fairly well eventually told us that most Tanzanians assumed we were racist “because all white Americans are”, and therefore defensively expressed anger toward Americans. Again, nothing we could really change. I’ll probably never be able to answer this issue satisfactorily, which makes me sad. I guess we will just try not to behave in way that contributes to the gulf.