Mexico Lindo - Mexico Vendido?
If you’ve ever sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic in line at the Tijuana Mexico/US border for hours on a Sunday afternoon, then you know how hard the street vendors on the Tijuana side work. I used to live in Tijuana and made the border crossing early every morning to my job in San Diego. At 3:00 a.m. the street vendors were there waiting for me with hot champurrado, atole, tamalitos bien calientitos or arroz con leche feeding me and keeping me company on my long wait to cross. On the hottest days or in pouring rain the vendors are there; running back and forth to the cars waiting in line hawking their wares and keeping the drivers entertained with juggling, music and the last chance to buy something Mexican before hitting the US. They go home late at night, often to the poorest of dwellings, to work some more feeding their families, cleaning the house, working on the yard, washing clothes or tending to children. Exhausted though they may be, they wear their dignity like a crown. It is a dignity that comes from hard and honest work. It is the pride of being able to provide for your family.
Enter Tijuana’s mayor Jorge Hank Rhon who has issued a new decree that the street vendors must wear brightly colored costumes to allow visitors to "feel at ease" according to the Associated Press. Wear the costume or leave is the mandate and the vendors have two days to comply or leave. "Que Diablo?!", I say out loud, startling my youngest son. "What the hell?" I read further, my blood already boiling with my somewhat famous (in my family) temper. Yes, it seems that Mexico, Tijuana in particular, want the pinche tourists to feel more comfortable. Two years ago Mexico City had their policemen don the costume of a charro to make the tourists feel at ease. Yeah uh huh, the tourists need to feel more like they are visiting a foreign and third world country. BULLSHIT! The tourists don’t want to feel comfortable, they want to feel superior and that ass kissing vendido that is the worse Mexican President since Porfirio Diaz complies. Now, I don’t know quite whom or where to rail on first, the choices are so many.
Tijuana and Mexico buy this pile of horse manure that is getting sold to them and perform; or rather force the people to be like an organ grinder’s monkey, falling back on the "it’s our culture" canto, yet get their backs up against the wall over Memin Penguin! It’s all fucked up. No, I’m not going to excuse my language because it is all fucked up. Let’s not pretty it up. It’s our culture? That’s bullshit too. Why is it our culture to dress like we’re still living in the 1800’s in order to make the tourists happy? It’s our culture only when it’s convenient and lucrative, you self-serving little boot licker of a mayor. What about our culture when you have poor indigenous people forced from their lands that live in Tijuana? What about our culture then? Do you hand them a brightly colored costume? Hell, no! Those people you have no pride in. Shit, you can’t hide them fast enough. So what about the tourists? They want brightly colored colonial costumes so they can say "Oh how pretty. Look, Biff we’re in a third world country! How charming, how backward!" Seeing Mexicans as a backward people makes them feel superior, more justified in taking from them and dictating how they should be.
The first terrorists (oops sorry meant to say tourists) came and brought disease, famine, genocide, pollution and colonization to Mexico wrapping it up into a nice little package and calling it civilization of the savages. They were a little more honest about it by calling themselves conquistadors but they used the same argument. To the Spanish, the Indians were backward, uneducated children to be conquered and dominated. Some City officials say that the costumes are no different from something you would see in oh, say Disneyland. Again I say bullshit. If I go apply for a job at Disneyland, I know I’m going to have to wear the mouse suit or some other silly costume. It’s part of the job and it’s my choice to apply there. These people have no choice. Well they do but it’s a shitty one. Wear the silly costume or you don’t have a way to make a living. I’m a danzante, I wear my indigenous costume with pride, but again, it’s my choice. I’m not forced to wear it to work and sit at my desk amid my American co-workers in full regalia and feathers while they stare at the poor Indian. Why should the street vendors have to be outfitted like freaks to be gawked at?
Does Mexico have to put on a fool’s mask to please the United States? Come on Mexico! Remember who you are. We’re better than that. We are a country that produced Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Elena Poniatowska, Octavio Paz, Dr. Atl, Guadalupe Posada, Emiliano Zapata, Hidalgo and so many more, too numerous to list, to brilliant to be forgotten. We are a country who has fought for 500 years against genocide, against oblivion. A war is raging now, however swept under the carpet by government; againstthat very oblivion. Are the tourists so threatened by little Mexico that they feel compelled to push the house of cards that is the government to strip us of our dignity? Some will say I am paranoid, that I see a dark message where there is none. Again I say bullshit. 500 years of colonization gives my so-called paranoia some credence. There is a very sinister message here if you’ll only take a look. Let’s take some action. Let’s not just write about this. We have to stop it. We must say no!
There are a couple of quotes from Rigoberta Menchu Tum that sum up what I am trying to say, perhaps ineloquently, about the situation in Tijuana. "What hurts Indians most is... our costumes are considered beautiful, but it's as if the person wearing it didn't exist." And, "We are not myth of the past, ruins in the jungle or zoos. We are people and we want to be respected, not to be the victim of intolerance and racism."
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