Tag: Mexican Independence Day

Posted on

The Quaint Idea of a Fourth of July in Mexico

Expats celebrate the Fourth in Mexico

It’s pretty quiet today in my house, though I have some Bach playing in the background. Bach in Mexico is as incongruous as the Fourth of July is here. Not many Mexicans care about Bach, though a few do. The cultural values are just different, viz., tacos and hot dogs. Like so many other holidays, the Fourth has lost its original purpose, celebrating the independence and founding of the USA. Today it’s the Big Holiday: three days off from work, barbecuing, drinking, the beach, family time. Fireworks are the only symbol of Independence Day left that makes sense.

And there isn’t much unity left in the old federalist vision of a mutually united United States, is there? Maybe there never was. I thought for a minute about comparing Trump to George Washington, a man of reason, humility and integrity. Well, no need to go further with that.

There are pockets of Americans in Mexico who do celebrate the Fourth—in places like Cabo and Cancun. But the American Fourth is quite different in tone and style from Mexican Independence Day on September 16th which features marching bands, parades, street food and folk festivals.

For me, American holidays have lost most of their meaning. I know that’s true for many of us whether we live at home or abroad. Big holidays are mostly about time off and Black Friday sales. Much has been written about the dessication of our holidays over time. It’s true even in my lifetime. The old parades and the fire trucks showed the kids some hometown spectacle. My mother used to call Memorial Day Decoration Day, its former name. Some still lament the commercialization of Christmas. Holidays are now major economic events, and that’s also becoming true in Mexico.

As the world has become more money-driven, it’s also turned more authoritarian, which implies a denial (or transmutation) of most historical values and traditions. I wish you a Happy Fourth of July anyway, and you might try putting on some Bach.

Posted on

Coming to Oaxaca

Three days after I arrived here in September 2009, I was with my new Mexican friends celebrating Independence Day in the Zocalo. So were roughly a thousand others, and we were so densely packed that the crowd’s movement moved you. Some pinche ladrón lifted my wallet, containing a lot of cash, recently retrieved from an ATM, and all my credit cards, driver’s license, etc. Not quite the welcome I had looked for.

I had flown in from the U.S. at night, looking apprehensively out the plane’s window at the sparse lights of an unfamiliar city surrounded by mountain darkness and thinking, “Now it begins. What am I into?” I felt a mix of excitement and anxiety, being launched on one of the great gambles of my life. With only a few prior friends in Oaxaca, I had little money and no Spanish. My father would have said, “John, you’re just not prepared.”

Somehow I had the confidence to move on and change my life. As reported last week, there were many things pushing me to make this move. I knew the anxiety was normal though it was nonetheless powerful for that. Slowly I began to adapt to living in Oaxaca, finding the city’s life vital and energizing, its complications more or less predictable, its people more welcoming than I expected.

I rented a fine house near the Plaza de la Danza, which later proved to be kind of a disaster. But I settled in and got to know the neighborhood, the markets and shops, a couple of neighbors.

The first big problem was Customs. I had shipped all my possessions—about 2,000 pounds worth, including a large music collection and stereo equipment—by making a deal with FedEx. But, unknown to me, the stuff got held up in Toluca, and I finally hired a customs broker to get it released and delivered, after much agita and tsuris.

The typical irritations one encounters in Mexico when dealing with its bureaucracies—the ubiquitous paperwork and rubber stamps, the impenetrable processes—require patience and understanding. When you first encounter the system, as in shopping for healthcare, you may think you’re living in Mozambique. Yet Mexico is not by any means a third-world country.

You develop patience by growing to understand the culture, by making friends (both gringos and Mexicans), trying to learn Spanish, and finally by learning to relax and enjoy the extraordinary benefits of the place: the low cost of living, the glorious climate, the food, the welcoming people. One reason I found I could adapt was because I had lived and worked in so many different U.S. locales.

The problems of being an expat in Mexico can be intimidating. Some of the pros and cons are described here. The rewards you’ll find will depend on your personality, your aims and goals in life and, mostly, on your attitudes toward change. Finally, I think it’s kind of a crapshoot for everybody. The winners will learn how to play the game.