It has now been more than a semester since I have been back from Mexico. I am currently taking full-time summer classes at Wentworth and preparing for my fall semester co-op. Just because I am back in the U.S., doesn’t mean I don’t have anything more to say. I have had many more stories, issues, reflections, and experiences to share that have had a significant impact on me. One of the most significant influences in my time in Mexico was the time I spent with my homestay family. My urban homestay was in Colonia Plan de Ayala, Cuernavaca. I was scheduled to live with them for a total of eight weeks. The father—Arturo Ávalos—is an accountant, and the mother—Ángela Garcia—owns a store that sells cell phone accessories and credit. She also sells as a secondary product to her business this unique franchised frozen-yogurt-like product called “Bolis” that tastes amazing. The son, Marlon, is 21 years old and is majoring in surgery at an institution in Cuernavaca. They have another son that is 12 years old (named Aldo), plays guitar, and loves 80’s music. The family I think has been a perfect match for me because of their business relations, they live in a bustling area/street, they always get together at family gatherings, and they have a son my age that I can relate with and learn from. They have had students before, and they have family that all live a very short walk, like the mother’s mother, who lives down closer to the barrios (poorer neighborhoods) down the hill. They are very close to their neighbor who lives in the same vicinity, but downstairs. It was interesting getting here by taxi one of the first times I had to get to my homestay, because I would tell the driver I want to go to “Plan de Ayala”, and they would take me to Avenida Plan de Ayala, which is about an hour away from Colonia Plan de Ayala. This happens a lot in Mexico, where the names of the streets are named after names of States or Colonias (a colonia is like a borough, or like the neighborhood Roxbury is to Boston). For example, Guerrero—where Acapulco and Taxco (very famous tourist areas) are located—is a State, but there is also a town called Guerrero in the same State. Puebla is also both a city and a State. I would consider my homestay family part of the very small percentage left in Mexico that is middle class. Today in Mexico exists the very rich, and the very poor, but this family is somewhere in between where they are comfortable enough to always have sufficient food, and a pretty nice house, and go out to have fun , or even travel to the U.S. The father and the 21-year old son both understand English, but the son is almost bilingual, so he speaks to me in English, and I to him in Spanish, so we are both bettering the language we are learning. He is a DJ at many events and a very good salsa dancer—the whole family is actually a group of very good salsa dancers.
Before I began my homestay with this family, I was worried about placement because I still felt uncomfortable walking around on the street where I was robbed (I lived on that street for the first half of the semester). Therefore, I was nervous that the program would place me in that area because we were told the majority of us were going to be placed there, and if that were the case I would be psychologically affected on a daily basis, causing me not to have the best experience with a homestay family possible. So, I discussed this concern with Lisanne Morgan, the homestay coordinator, and she responded by promising me that she won’t put me in that neighborhood, and that I would sit with her and the potential homestay family she chooses before a placement decision was final. That’s what happened and it worked out perfectly. The neighborhood was far from where classes were in the main house Casa Verde, but that is what I wanted–I wanted to broaden my experience in Mexico by not containing the wide majority of my experience in that street where I take classes because I did everything there–the Laundromat was up the street, the barber shop right next to it, a burger joint down the other direction of the street, and Spanish classes next door to the house. I didn’t want to limit my experience, so even though it would cost me a little bit of money (aside form that which the program provides every week in travel support), it’s worth it. We met with the potential mother at the time Angela, who was young, hip, has a long history of having foreign students before, and lived in a safe, bustling neighborhood. The neighborhood or “colonia” is called “Plan de Ayala”. We met with her and I felt at ease because Lisanne got me the perfect match–the fact that they had a son around my age who can understand me and show me how his generation interacts in the city. I could help the family out with their small business and learn how business is being done, etc. It really was the ideal fit and more than everything I asked for. Below are some pictures of Colonia Plan de Ayala and the house where I stayed.
The picture furthest on the right is behind the main street shown in the first two pictures; you can see in the last picture how a celebration is going on; just remember this as a sign that in Mexico, every weekend there’s someone’s birthday to celebrate; I can’t count how many I went to and they usually happen Sundays when everyone is off and there’s high attendance
The kitchen and dining area in my homestay house
A significant and very clear sign of economic disparity in Cuernavaca is where the houses are located. Notice in the above picture the view point from where I am taking the picture, which is pretty much at the top of the hills where the main street is, but you can see from the bottom view that there are houses all the way down the hill who live in the ravines. Imagine living so far down there that its too hard to get resources sent to you. When going out to shop for food, you have to climb up like a mile of stairs and carry heavy groceries up and down because no transportation gets you there. If you forgot the milk, well then you have to climb all of those stairs back up again just to get that. Garbage trucks can’t make it down there, so residents just throw their waste in the ravines, leading to contamination of water, and serious physical effects, like birth defects, etc. because the same contaminated water keeps running through, affecting their health. However, once you’re up, the main street is there and no one pays attention to the level of poverty at the bottom.
Me at a cookout one weekend with my homestay parents in the front of their house: Arturo (my left) and Angela by his side.
In the living room listening to my homestay brother (on my right) mixing music.
I want to talk more about the business of my homestay mother. It was interesting being able to see business being conducted in a different context than what I normally study in my Management classes. The store is probably the standard size of a bedroom and is down the street from the house. People stop by and pay for extra minutes on their plan from different subsidiaries of the pretty-much-monopoly called TelMex, whose subsidiaries include TelCel and Móvil. When in the Centro downtown, you will find a TelCel store almost in every street corner and dozens especially in the shopping district; it’s crazy how much power they have. Because TelMex is almost a monopoly, they heavily influence market price, so can pretty much charge whatever price they want. I used a cell phone while down there and noticed most people pay as they go; calls cost 5 pesos per minute (so that you can understand how expensive that is, imagine you had to pay US$5 per minute you used; each text message is about 82 cents). So, why would people prefer such an expensive method? Because unless you make an incredible amount of phone calls each month and have to get a plan that holds a lot of minutes, it’s not worth it. If you make an average amount of calls per month, it’s cheaper to come to my store like that of my homestay mother that don’t belong to that monopolistic corporation and you ask “Let me get $50/$100/$300 (you fill in the blank) pesos on my phone”, give them your phone number and provider, and they update it to you. Below is Angela in her store, selling the minutes.
Even Aldo, the 12-year-old son, works the store. I thought that was interesting because in the U.S., with our highly privatized companies and child labor laws, we would never allow that, but customers don’t see any difference between getting the service from the kid and the adult. They make a lot of sales selling what I previously mentioned are called “Bolis”, which are hand-size frozen yogurt packs. Bolis is wholly owned by a sole proprietor who sells the products in bulk to different distributors (like my homestay mom) at MX$5 each and she sells them at about $7 each to earn a bit of profit. Out of the two remaining dollars, one goes to her, and the other goes to her boss who distributes the Bolis to her and other vendors around the city. She keeps them in a freezer at the store and they sell like hot cakes, especially when the kids across the street get out of school every day. It always amazes me how much money she brings in every night to count with the family. She has told me that business can be difficult, however.
It’s interesting seeing how the family works together. Everyone in the family fills different shifts to help get business for the store. The father would come home from work in his accounting firm and go straight to the store to fill in time monitoring it while the mother comes home to cook and prepare the house. If the sons are on vacation or a day off, then they would fill in there, while the father works late hours and the mother is home doing housework. I think it says a lot about the community-oriented lifestyle Mexicans live in contrast to the highly independent lifestyle we have here in the U.S. In the U.S., work is separate from play, family separate from career, and love for someone else cannot be mixed in the same environment with love for your job. Everyone has their own separate jobs, and live separate lives once they leave that house every morning, but not here. Even though the family lives in a city environment, which we would normally assume is a highly independent society, they are still very interdependent on each other–the fact that even though they have school and work responsibilities, they all help out the mother’s business, work together, and always somehow with their busy lives manage to get home for comida (lunch-time and the main meal of the day) to sit together at the table and share their stories. So, they are always connected. Another sign of their sense of community-over-self is that they aren’t the only ones that live in that house; somewhat similar to my experience in the rural homestay, they also have the Arturo’s parents living underneath them, but in the same property/space. So, they have generations sharing the same house, and truly living amongst each other, not simply just living together, like I feel we do in the U.S. Every night, the last one to close brings hundreds of pesos home, and the adults in the house get together and count the money. Angela brings a portion of the money to the bank every week as well.
The family’s history is very interesting to me. Let’s start when she got married with Arturo when they were 19 years old. They had a nice wedding, but the father would not let them live in the house anymore, and told them that they will “appreciate it in the future”. The newlyweds thus had to figure out their options: they realized that above here the father lived was a relatively large-sized space that wasn’t being used, so they asked if they can revitalize the space to make it their home. Arturo’s father agreed, as long as they find a way to make a living because he wasn’t going to let their proximity to his home be an excuse for them to depend on him for financial support; he wanted to teach them to be independent and show them that that is the world they live around, where there is little help and you have to fend for yourself. They thus started their life together there, but it was extremely difficult for a few years. The father worked wherever he could to make a living for them and their then first newborn baby Marlon. But times were tough, so they looked to the U.S. for opportunity. Arturo had family in Texas, so they moved over there with the family to find a better standard of living. When they were applying for their visa, they had to lie to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City when they were asked if they had family over there. The US Embassy asks this question because if they suspect you have family in the U.S., they won’t let you in because there is the chance applicants will overstay their visas and never leave the U.S. because living with family over there facilitates it. And it seems in my observations that, for the U.S., the less Mexican immigrants, the better. Since they didn’t indicate they had family in the U.S., and they filed for a tourist visa as if they were going on vacation, then they were accepted to come to the United States of America. When they came to the U.S., Arturo worked in a “Panadería” (a bread bakery store) in Texas, and because there is a large Mexican community in Chicago, they later moved there, and Arturo began to work in construction. Angela noticed marks and burns on his body from working endlessly in the sun, and from being fatigued, depressed, and stressed working multiple jobs that paid little; she knew it was too much struggle to stay in the U.S. They took the money they earned back to Mexico, and there, Arturo got into accounting.
To help him provide for the house, Angela started thinking about employment. Her friend had a local store in the pizza business, and introduced her to the industry. Even though Angela didn’t have any experience in business, she created her own pizza shop and started making good money off of homemade pizzas. She had to learn about the basics of finance, and learned how to make the best pizzas Mexican style (that was the first meal she served me during my first arrival to the homestay–with hot green chili peppers on top)! This form of success says a lot about Mexican life. One of the issues with education in Mexico I learned is that, because of the highly relational mentality and form of communicating, it is the main way of succeeding and getting around nowadays. I heard from many Mexicans that making it through college and graduating is not worth it, because you can’t really do anything with your diploma. If you really want to make it and get to the next level, you have to know people; it doesn’t matter that you have been working your entire childhood to get a career. Consequently, many of the youth today in schools lose hope because they know the traditional route, and decide to drop out, leading to more economic and political disparity in the country. So, people like Angela have to do whatever they can–independent of a structured education–to be successful, and get by just fine. But then they run into another issue–globalization. Angela eventually had to close the pizza shop because Pizza Hut came into the neighborhood and took all of the business.
Angela had to get into some other business to provide for the family, especially with their then second newborn son, Aldo.
Angela was in “El Mercado” one day, and saw a packed crowd around one of the vendors, so she stopped by to see what it was all about. She saw that a guy was selling this frozen yogurt-like product that was selling like tamales on a Friday night to a bunch of hungry locals. They had a chat and the rest was history. Angela opened up her own store down the street from her house, and started selling the frozen-yogurt products called “Bolis”. That wasn’t the only thing she sold, however. A family member of hers was making a decent amount of money from selling cell phones, so she taught Angela, how to do it herself, by selling the service of the three main wireless providers. Angela today is still running her store after a few years, and is not showing any sign any time soon of closing down. People love the Bolis, so she always sells out of that quickly, especially since her store is across the street from one of the local elementary schools and when the students get out of class that day, they flock to the store. People need minutes on their phone, so that keeps her business running—so, demand is always at a high.
I ran into a lot of cultural conflicts while at the house that gave me a completely different perspective on Mexico. First of all, I learned that it’s not the stereotypical, farmland-ridden, poor, third-world are. My homestay family had money! It never seemed an issue to them to cut back on something because it was getting too expensive. They’re not super-rich, but they live comfortably. The house was in a much better condition than the one in which I stayed in my rural homestay. They always watched American movies (translated into Spanish, of course). They were very into 80’s music from the U.S.—especially Aldo—even when we were driving around from place to place, I never wanted to listen to that, because I didn’t come to Mexico to listen to listen to music I already know. I wanted the full 24/7 Mexican experience, so always asked to listen to Mexican music like Banda. Then I realized that I was in the wrong. I can’t have a literally full Mexican experience without a piece of American culture in it because globalization has become so ingrained in Mexico and other countries, aspects of American culture become a part of that country. In this case, I can’t always listen to Mexican music because American music is around just as much as Mexican music. If I go to the clubs, I hear Reggaeton, which although is in Spanish, is typically sung by Puerto Ricans from New York City. To take this even further, I wondered the same in an international context. I went to a salsa club with my homestay family once (clubs in Mexico are 18+) and they played salsa (Puerto Rican), Merengue and Bachata (Dominican), and Cumbia (Colombian) genres of music. We had a lot of fun dancing that night until 3 in the morning (unlike in Boston, clubs close when everyone leave, which could last until 6 am!) with my Mexican girlfriend and her mother.
But I asked my homestay father why no music that comes from Mexico? Is there such thing as a Mexican salsa singer? I’ve heard from Venezuelan, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Colombian, and Peruvian singers, but never Mexican. He told me he has never heard of any neither. It made me wonder what kind of situation this puts Mexico in; it makes it more difficult for them to move up in the international game and be recognized because they aren’t able to share their culture around the world. I never heard of Banda music here in the U.S. or Ecuador (I went there when I was in high school).
During my time spent with my homestay family, I attended my first Mexican wedding in Tepoztlán, which is a municipal city next to Cuernavaca. It’s a bit different than an American wedding, even though it is a Catholic ceremony, because the ceremony is span across two days: the first being the social day and the second the religious day. On the first day, there is a festival/reception and the young girls who are relatives to the bride dress up in a fancy traditional dress and do a dance that is very typical of a Mexican wedding. In the night, there is a dance. It was funny because the special guest signer they had was singing the Macarena; I didn’t actually think Mexicans liked dancing the Macarena. Just like Mexicans don’t eat hard tacos.
On the second day, the religious ceremony officially starts at the entrance of the church, when the bride and groom march into the church, and everyone invited follows after them. The procession that includes a Mariachi band goes to the church.
After they say their vows and “I do”, the procession leads towards outside when the women do a procession and the bride brings the “rama” (bouquet) to a Virgin de Guadalupe statue.
Then, it’s off to a different, fancier private venue that took place outside for the after-party. My homestay brother was rocking the dance floor with his Cumbia/salsa dance moves and I was chilling at the table with my homestay mother and father from the day, through the night, all the way until the wee hours of the morning celebrating like never before!
I danced a lot and ate a lot and participated in some of the games they had with the bride, groom, and all the attendees. The more tequila my homestay father drank, the more English he would speak to me—but, note that he rarely speaks in English. Fireworks came out to set a high-energy mood for the night.
Marlon and the homestay family’s neighbor/friend kept dancing into the wee hours, and I sat back and thought what a privilege to be here. Americans go to foreign countries all the time to have fun, but this type of fun for a foreigner was unique; it was priceless. What American can say they have had this experience instead of the beach in Cancun? With the good and the bad, I am glad that the first wedding I ever went to was a Mexican one. In terms of the bad, I had a conversation with my homestay family that was a continuation of a trip I took to a “pueblo” (town) adjacent to Mexico City called Atenco, and we had a disagreement.
Atenco is a rural community that has struggled to keep its land from the government trying to build an airport there, which would force thousands out of their homes, farmers out of their land, and many impoverished. They are a community that has become a model across the world for a good example of how a community who can stand up for their community can outlast oppression. They were involved in many violent protests and revolts against the police, but in the end kept their land. However, there are still other laws, threats, and efforts the government has authorized that are trying to slide in a loophole to get the airport built.We visited them to learn of this struggle and see it in person, and it was a harsh reality. In the below picture, they show us where the government proposed to build the airport.
However, before I went, I mentioned my homestay family about the trip and they were annoyed by it; they told me that they disagree with the school sending me over there, but will explain more to me when I got back. So, when I came back, I brought it up during the after-party to the religious reception of the wedding. They explained their opinion: they said the Atenco people are historically a rebellious people, a “violent community”, so their story has little merit—pretty much saying that the stories of the Atenco people and the struggle against corrupt government is a lie. And then it all made sense. My homestay family says that because they know about Atenco only as much as what is shown on T.V., just as many of us Americans know only as much about Mexico as we see on T.V., because we have never been there. Therefore, the media is our only source to get an understanding of the culture, even though many times it’s false, misinterpreted, or stereotypical information, like we think in the media when we see tacos, sombreros, violence and drug lords. The Mexican government controls most of the media in Mexico (newspaper, news channels, etc.), so if they are the oppressor, of course they aren’t going to allow or show that the Atenco people are right and that they are abusing the Atenco people—they are going to discredit the people’s story, so that they can continue to look good in the public eye and get votes. My homestay family fell right into that trap, because they believe that discrediting of their story—and they fight it vehemently. It shows how little voice people have for their society, and how it can get to the point where, instead of supporting each other, they are metaphorically in civil war against each other. he increased militarization and criminalization of social movements makes community organizing a lot more difficult to acheive. Criminalization of social movements justifies the government’s decision to militance against a group that organizes against them, and thus can make those on the outside side with the government against a delinquint community. Criminalization of social movements also justifies the government’s want to do megadevelopment projects. Because poor or indigenous communities like Atenco are already seen as primitive and don’t understand development, then if they act against the more generally accepted view of government’s development, then they are shunned, and it makes it more difficult for them to stand up for their rights, so they lose their rights, territory, language, and customs. However, seeing these issues is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to be confused—to be uneasy about living among this culture, because that is how I learn and that is how I grow. If I just went to Mexico to see the good stuff, the urbanization, the beaches, the tourist areas, how much would I really learn about Mexico? My homestay family helped me a lot in that process.
