El Desarrollo

Due to my lack of continuity with this blog, I've decided to reward you, dear readers, with not one, but two posts in two days. Extraordinary, I know.

This post is much more about Mexico itself. I realize that I'm always talking about the food, the places I go, the people etc., but what about the entity that is Mexico? What is it like? Honestly, Mexico looks and feels so much like Ecuador sometimes it's kind of eerie. Like I went back in time two years. It has the same dishevelled and eclectic character, the kind where you don't know what you will see around the next corner, or even what to expect. I think this is a quality that most developing countries have to a certain extent (Morocco as well) and something we just take for granted. We are so used to order, neatness and control that anything which appears to the contrary jolts us out of our comfort zone.

For instance, on a normal bus ride from Bucerias to Puerto Vallarta, I will see cowboys with sombreros on horseback riding along the highway. And no, they are not a tourist attraction, but the real thing, off for a day's work. On the same stretch of highway, a brand-new 2010 Porsche can go screaming down the road at high speeds, passing the trucks where people ride in the beds on their way to the fields while police officers drive by, either with apathy or ignoring what's not in their jurisdiction. From the outside, what to my norteamericano eye may appear to be a run-down, shabby building turns out to be a respectable world-renowned banking office. Children run around the streets, playing with the many skinny street dogs wandering around and both are perfectly content with this arrangement (contrary to popular belief, most of the dogs here I've met are like the people -- despite what may seem a hard exterior, warm, extremely curious and friendly).

So where does this leave the "development" that is the catchword of foreign governments and nonprofits alike? Well, this too is complicated. In all aspects of consuming, Mexico is fastly approaching the United States. I mean, there's a Walmart, Costco, billboards advertising nightclubs, electronic's stores, the works. A person may seem to be working a low-paying menial labour job but if they're young, they will still yank out a Blackberry that I could only wish I had the income for and text furiously to their friends. At the same time, most toilets can't handle toilet paper and many of the roads in the area are still as yet unpaved. Those that are fortunate enough to be paved often seem in bad need of repair. Some children spend their days trolling the beaches and selling knick-knacks to sympathetic tourists instead of attending school. Meanwhile, Mexico remains the biggest market in the world for Coca-Cola products and is the number 2 most obese nation in the world. As in the United States, there is fabulous wealth here as there is incredible poverty, but the extremes are more pronounced and the struggles much more visible.

Confused yet? I know I am. It feels like what has happened in Mexico is that the quickest, easiest, most superficial "development" has taken over at full speed and been hugely successful. But the much more significant and profound development that needs to take place is stalled. Bribing is still common here and the informal economy makes up a massive share of the overall national income. It wasn't always this way. At one point, a US dollar was equivalent to a peso. But because history labeled Mexico a subordinate, it continues. Yes Mexico is not the poorest of the poor and thinking about it as a developing country seems rather strange at first. It's in the comparison with what I know that I find compelling. This is not my first time in a developing country, nor will it be my last, but because of the nature of my visit, everything is much more real and much more heightened. So, with that complicated and colorful description, I'm off to do something substantial. Like take a dip in the pool.