Posts Tagged ‘spanish’
A friend of mine told me about a conversation she had with a person she knows in one of the Mexican Prime Living Locations on the west coast of Mexico. This area, one to which many Americans flock, had become too expensive for her to continue living there. When my friend asked her where she might want to move, Guanajuato was her first choice. But, she lamented; she couldn’t live in Guanajuato because she doesn’t speak Spanish.
Three years ago, while sitting in one of Guanajuato’s plazas and doing nothing much but watching the tourists, a lady from San Miguel de Allende approached us and asked if we lived in Guanajuato. After exchanging pleasantries, she said she was in town looking for cheaper accommodations since the cost of living in San Miguel had become unaffordable for her. Then, almost in tears, she said she would have to retreat back to the States since she could not speak Spanish. She concluded she could not live in anywhere in Mexico other than the exorbitantly priced Gringolandias where she didn’t have to speak Spanish.
Four days ago while strolling home from El Centro, we met an American couple from yet another Mexican west coast town that were visiting Guanajuato. They were looking for a cheaper place to live in Mexico because the area where they live has become too expensive for them to keep living comfortably. They were in Guanajuato checking out the lay of the expatriation land. While my wife spoke to the woman, the husband took me aside and spoke to me in hushed tones as if he were revealing national security secrets. He asked furtively, “I suppose we will have to learn Spanish?”
That evening, I was doing some reading on the Mex-Connect forums when I came across an interesting entry. This lady expressed her indignation that while she was in Guanajuato visiting for a week or two, no one would speak English to her. She was, as many Americans seem to be, convinced the locals could speak English but were only pretending not to. She acted as if these Mexicans knew this woman was coming and decided to make a pact in order to torture her by speaking only in their native tongue?
She said, now pay attention to this, “They should speak English.”
I would love to tell you this is an isolated nutty woman but I’ve heard it in person and online too many times for it to be so.
If you really want to see what Americans who do manage to make it to The Mexican Highlands think about the city of Guanajuato, you should read the travel forums. There seems to be a consensus among them that Guanajuatenses are all actually bilingual in English but in some deviously planned plot, all agree never to speak to Americans in English. One lady stood outside a sidewalk restaurant in El Jardin and shouted the “I know you speak English and are pretending you don’t” mantra in front of God and all his witnesses-Mexicans and Gringos alike!
The truth is that when we first moved here, we found precious few who spoke English. We set about learning Spanish with a vengeance. Frankly, we couldn’t have cared less then nor do we care now if we ever encounter another English speaker. When we encountered trouble, we figured out how to handle it in Spanish. Our reasoning was that Mexicans decided long ago that Spanish was going to be the language they spoke and they have been very happy with the decision ever since.
Of the many reasons I write what I do on expat and Mexico issues (I am most certainly an equal opportunity critic) is for the following reason. The people who make their way to Guanajuato, mostly Americans who come with ridiculous and outrageous expectations, go back to the U.S. as self-proclaimed experts on Mexican culture. They spend the rest of their lives mean-mouthing the city to all their friends, family, and neighbors.
Would you not agree that those who return to the States and then write the following should not be allowed outside America’s borders?
“I had to walk an entire block to my hotel and carry my own bags.”
“Of all the nerve! I had to walk up some stairs to my room because there was no elevator!”
“I know they all speak English in this hotel and are pretending they don’t.”
“I screamed (in English, of course, since I don’t speak Spanish) at that Mexican kid writing graffiti on the wall. He acted like he didn’t understand me. I know he was faking.”
These go on and on.
So, how do you get through to these people who are flooding into Guanajuato? You tell the truth.
I tell the truth in my articles so those who do end up coming will not be the types with silly and unrealistic demands. They will be the type who return to America and tell their reasonable friends they had a good time in Guanajuato in spite of the bumps and bruises one is bound to encounter in another culture.
Can you imagine a hoity-toity American coming to Guanajuato and trying to make his or her way through the Pastita barrio to visit the Olga Costa Museum and encountering the not-too-unusual practice of some Mexicans who abandon the issue of their hyper-fertile female dogs alongside a trash dumpster? Dumping puppies at the trash bin will send most Americans I know into a tailspin of apocalyptic proportions. They will not describe Guanajuato kindly in any venue. It’s best they know what to expect before they get here.
The Spanish issue is almost an unfathomable one. And, it is sad.
Many could expatriate to Guanajuato if they mastered Spanish. They could live far more cheaply if they could live, shop, and function in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood. Most Americans have absolutely no idea how to begin the process. They resort to taking classes.
One person wrote me and said I had almost convinced him not to come to Guanajuato to study Spanish. That isn’t the point at all. Study Spanish in America by using any number of the home study courses before enrolling in a class at home or abroad. The classroom will teach you a lot of things about the language but impart little to no spoken fluency.
Someone wrote and said they had studied Spanish for nearly 20 years but still cannot speak the language.
I rest my case.
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The following is a quiz that every American expat wannabe to Mexico should be required by Mexican law to take. This will help you determine if moving to Mexico to spend the rest of your life here is right for you. It should be the basis whether Mexico issues you a visa to take one step onto Mexican soil.
1) The following will make you run screaming for the nearest taxi to get you to the airport for an emergency airlift back to the U.S.A.:
a. Large mountainous piles of dog poop on the sidewalks.
b. Pickup trucks parked in front of butcher shops with partially slaughtered, bloodied meat in the back.
c. Men, women, and children placing the snout of a pig onto a flour or corn tortilla, wrapping it, and then consuming it while making loud smacking and squishing sounds.
d. All the above.
2) The following will incite you to flapping your arms like a deranged windmill, cursing madly, and lecturing Mexicans in English (which they probably cannot comprehend):
a. Seeing a Mexican mother serving her child a taco for breakfast rather than Special K cereal with skim milk.
b. Seeing Mexicans eating a Styrofoam plate filled with refried beans, topped with the most virulent chilies, and chips morning, noon, and night.
c. Witnessing the rolling corn-on-the-cob shack woman slathering copious amounts of FAT FULL mayonnaise on corn on the cob and then stuffing it into the mouth of a 2-year-old.
d. None of the above since you come from America where more than 67% of the population is fatter than hogs and so what the hell do you know about good nutrition anyway!
3) You can tolerate the following without needing massive amounts of tranquilizers or an open-ended Prozac prescription:
a. Invisible marching drummer and bugle bands that you can hear every night starting at 7:30 p.m., playing the same hideously repetitive tune, from another dimension that is bleeding over into your reality (you hear them but they cannot ever be seen!).
b. Warfare-grade explosives being set off during the day or night for the advent of a fiesta which rattle windows, cause paintings to fall off the walls and jar you senseless.
c. Banshee screaming men roaming the streets as soon it is daylight screaming the words, “gas” and “water”.
d. Barking dogs, crowing roosters, quacking ducks and geese, screeching parrots, honking car alarms, all going off simultaneously outside your bedroom window at all possible hours of the day or night.
4) You find the following events thrilling:
a. Stores that never open (ever) at their posted hours.
b. Stores that never, ever post their hours.
c. Stores that will only carry a certain item once a year or never again as long as you both shall live.
d. Stores that play wild music so loudly that when your wife asks you something you can see her mouth move but hear nothing coming out of it.
5) You desire to move to Mexico is because:
a. You want to live in an established American expat community where Mexicans, like slaves, wait on you hand and foot for the rest of your life.
b. You want to help Americanize another Mexican town with all your American pathologies until the town is unrecognizable as Mexican.
c. You are on the lam from the law in more than one country for income tax evasion.
d. You want to help drive up the prices of real estate until no Mexicans living or who have ever lived could possibly afford to live in their own town.
Please answer all of these questions as honestly as possible and forward them to The President of the Republic of Mexico (whoever that turns out to be) in care of Mexico City, Mexico.
Your expatriation depends on it!
tm
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This morning I got up early and had a nice breakfast in the inner courtyard of La Nuestra. Shortly before 9 am Andie and I left for her monthly meeting of the Newcomers Club, a group of about 170 mostly English-speaking expatriates from all different countries who have settled in Cuernavaca. Andie Grater has been the president of this volunteer organization for the last 4 years.
We didn’t have to drive very far and arrived at an Episcopelian Church where several people were already setting up chairs and coffee for the monthly reunion. Two staff members from the American Consulate in Mexico City were setting up a table with information about taxation, voting and other issues relating specifically to US Citizens living in Mexico. The Newcomers Club often invites speakers or experts on topics related directly to the expatriate community.
I had a chance to speak with a few of the club members. There was a gentleman roughly in his late 50s who had emigrated from Israel three years ago and was now working in real estate and providing catering services for Middle Eastern foods. I also chatted with a young gentleman in his 30s who had emigrated from Poland and now had a wood-working company with his partner, making special wood toys that they sell throughout organic food stores in Mexico. Then I connected with a lady who was originally from Germany, and she and her husband have been working for a long time for a German charity helping blind people all over the world. She has lived all over Latin America as well as Pakistan.
Cuernavaca’s Newcomers Club is definitely a very interesting and diverse group of people. Most of the members I saw were in their 50s, 60s and up, although I saw a few younger people. The majority are retirees who have settled in Cuernavaca permanently.
After the initial refreshments were taken, the group settled in and Andie, as the President, made a variety of announcements. Then a lady by the name of Ana Gonzalez, talked about the special project run by an NGO called Caminamos Juntos para la Salud y el Desarollo (“Walking Together for Health and Development”). The project was founded by Susan Smith, a Canadian woman, who has adopted a very poor Mexican village. One of the greatest problems of this village is that its water has been contaminated with arsenic, so drinking water is a real issue. The people of this village are very poor, and every month Susan asks the Newcomers Club to donate different items, from pots and pans, to blankets, toys, school supplies and much more.
Then after a few more announcements, Bob Vockerath, a distinguished looking gentleman in his late seventies, originally from Vancouver, Canada, got up give a special presentation. He talked about several books he had read (Plan B and Limits to Growth) which talk about human impact on the planet and the sustainability of our human activities.
He talked about population growth, resources, industrial output, pollution etc. and showed several charts of projections of where our future might take us. Limits to Growth was first published in 1972 and several experts modeled the development of these key factors and projected them well into the 3rd millenium. From about 2050 onwards their models predict a stark drop in population as resources get depleted, pollution takes on an increasingly destructive level, and industrial output multiplies.
He mentioned some interesting statistics: between 1950 and 2000 the global population increased from about 2.5 billion to 6.1 billion. Average incomes tripled and so did the demand for grain. Economic output multiplied 6.6 times from $7 trillion annually to $46 trillion. The demand for grain is interesting because 1 ton of beef, for example, takes 10 tons of grain to produce, a very resource-intensive form of food production.
Bob Vockerath also went into a brief description of the book Plan B and that its author expounds on 6 basic social goals:
1. Basic universal – primary education
2. Adult literacy programs
3. Family planning
4. School lunches
5. Assisting pre-schoolers
6. Universal basic health care
In addition these social goals are supplemented by earth restoration goals:
1. Reforestation
2. Protection topsoil on croplands
3. Restoring rangelands
4. Restoring fisheries
5. Protecting biodiversity
6. Stabilizing the water table.
Social goals and earth restoration together are forecast to cost an additional $191 million per year over and above what is being spent already.
This contrasts to annual military spending of $975 billion, apparently in the US alone every year $475 billion are spent on defense. So if we simply reallocated our spending we would be in a position to effect tremendous social and environmental change for the better.
The crowd in the room was listening attentively and asked many questions. I was really impressed by this meeting since many people in the audience were in their 60 all the way into their late 80s or beyond and they showed such a strong interest in this topic although the future consequences of these issues will have a much stronger affect on their grand and great-grand children.
As someone with an interest in ecological issues, I found this presentation very informative and concluded that the immigrant community in Cuernavaca is involved in some pretty interesting things…
