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After we had lived in Guanajuato for about two years, we noticed something so strange, so unnerving, so inexplicable that it took another two years before we arrived at a reasonable explanation for a mystery that, frankly, was a little mind-boggling. This apparently is a no-brainer for some of my readers. They’ve written to me and expressed, how I shall I put this, their “consternation” that I would even “waste their time” in mentioning it. But it is noteworthy in Guanajuato and is something we’ve yet to see in the other cities we’ve visited in this country.

We actually set out on a whirlwind journey to see if the rest of the country of Mexico was like Guanajuato. We did this

for many reasons. One is that Mexicans we knew, who originally hailed from different cities and states within Mexico, expressed an amazing observation that “The rest of Mexico is not like it is here.” I mean, really. I find that an incredible statement.

In one sense I find it credible in that we do the same in American when we talk about parts of the country that are radically different from the region in which we are from. Kansas City is nothing like New York City. Nor are its citizens like one another. While we are all Americans, we use different dialects, we have different local customs, and we think differently about life in general we have different worldviews. Apparently the

same is true in Mexico and I wanted to know why.

I find it incredible in that those who expressed to us that the rest of Mexico is not like Guanajuato did so in hushed tones, glancing from side to side as though they were about to reveal a secret of national security import, and then saying it with clenched teeth and acting like they wanted to spit in disgust after being forced to talk about Guanajuatenses.

I wanted to know why, why, and then why again someone from Chihuahua City would speak so disdainfully about the people of Guanajuato. We had just walked into a shop manned by a woman from Chihuahua right after my wife got shoved off the sidewalk

and into the street. Fortunately, she wasn’t hurt. But, what happened to my wife is the sort of thing I have been reporting for the past four years in my column and print venues. It is the sort of thing, I have to mention, that does not surprise the Mexicans with whom we share it. However, when we share it with some of the Gringos, they don’t believe us at all. (Go figure!)

Knowing this lady because we had often shopped in her store, she noticed we were a little upset and asked why. When we told her, she went into a “Pancho Villa Mexican Rage” routine that one rarely sees as part of a Mexican’s behavior. After she uttered

words in Spanish that we didn’t know you could use that way or even existed, she told us her stories of living in Guanajuato, Mexico, with people she called cold, unfriendly, and clannish. Amazing!

If you are a gringo in the city of Guanajuato who lives in the Expatriate trenches, you will see this behavior all the time. A true Expatriate, one who is not a Fakepatriate, is one who lives in Mexican neighborhoods, walks almost everywhere, bothers with the monumental effort to learn Spanish, understands that Linguistic fluency is the first step toward Cultural fluency, and integrates into the local cultural background.

Fakepats live in protected gringo enclaves. Because they are totally dependent on local bilingual Mexicans to hold

their hands in everything in this city, they never, ever, develop linguistic or cultural fluency. Instead of walking, they drive their huge, gas-guzzling SUV’s everywhere.

When an Expat walks the streets of Guanajuato, and especially during the busiest hours of the day, he will see Mexicans who virtually run up and down the sidewalks at a rate that makes one stop and wonder: “Why are they in such a hurry when it is an inviolable and irrevocable fact that a Guanajuatense will never arrive anywhere on time, ever!”

You may think this is a silly thing to talk about in an essay on Mexican Culture. However, it isn’t silly and has everything to do with Mexican Culture. Also, it is

very important to the potential expat to this city who wants to take the course of a true Expat and live in Mexican neighborhoods and walk everywhere. One last thing that drives home the importance of this little cultural bump in the road of Expat life is that these speedy walkers, which is almost all of them, will often times see you as a mere obstacle that needs pushed out of the way. If you land in the street, then tough luck you crybaby gringo. Furthermore, I cannot see a normal red-blooded American (especially a redneck male) taking in stride getting shoved off the sidewalk and very possibly getting “clipped” by a 20-ton city bus.

Americans often shoot each other

for lesser offenses.

Let me go one record saying that I do not for one minute believe that the good people of Guanajuato are all plotting the gringos’ demise. I do not believe they are getting up in the mornings and thinking to themselves,

“I wonder which gringo I can kill today by pushing them under a passing bus and make it look like an accident?”

Maybe a few do. I can think of one girl particularly who serves ice cream and acts like she would love to kill me if she had half a chance. But, hey, that’s just one Mexicana and hey, I’m just one gringo.

Yet, the fact remains that the locals, the Guanajuatenses, will walk like

they are terminally late (Oh, what am I saying? They are!!) and yet they will never arrive for an appointment, class, your funeral, or whatever on time. On time for a Guanajuatense means something different than the rest of the planet. However, if something is in the way, say, like a person, then he will go around you, over you, through you, and will not stop when you begin screaming in pain from being run over by that bus he didn’t mean to push you in front of.

I met a gringo, visiting from Irapuato, when I was hit by a bus and was flung into him. We both were slammed through the front door of a house (fortunately, the

door was open!) and onto the entry floor. We got to know each other by exchanging phone numbers and Guanajuato walking tips. I still have his business card.

These Wild Sidewalk Walkers that slam into you are almost always women between the ages of 20 and 30 and they are almost always alone. They aren’t in a group and are all but speed walking doing whatever they have to in order to get around you, under you, over you, or through you and knocking you for a loop in the process. Then, inexplicably, almost miraculously, you catch up with them down the road and find them now in a group and walking like they are a bunch of old ladies

on the way to the bingo hall.

In fact, you will encounter groups of them who are not walking casually but like they are a bunch of cripples. Sometimes, they will stop suddenly, open up a bag of something, and have a small picnic right there on a sidewalk (and I am not making this up) that is less than two feet wide. They will stand there laughing, talking about how much they hate their boyfriends but can’t live without them, and having a bite to eat.

Once again, you are left with having to face the dangers of the street. In this variation of the Sidewalk Nightmare, they aren’t trying to speed past you and knock you into the

path of an oncoming tank-of-a-bus but you have to voluntarily step into the street to get around them, only to get smacked by a cab. Otherwise, you have to stand there until they finish and hope they would pass you a sandwich and a few pork rinds (which is a staple in this country, it would seem) to stave off your hunger (since you were on the way to lunch).

During the months of March and April of 2007, we went to several cities in Mexico, some in the central regions and some in the eastern parts of the country, to see if their folks walked down a sidewalk in such a frenetic hurry, shoving people into the streets along

the way. We saw none of this at all. In fact, we saw little to none of the same behaviors in other cities in Mexico that we see so often here. We went to small stores to see if their locals queued in a line. There they were, like the rest of the world, standing in line instead of the mob-group mentality of provincial Guanajuato.

I just have to ask, what is the deal? What is going on in this city that makes it so different from the rest of Mexico? What causes Mexicans who hail from other regions to exclaim when referring to Guanajuato:

“The rest of Mexico is not like this?”

I’ve been reading several books by Cultural

Analysts specializing in Mexican Culture. One fellow mentioned a situation in Mexico City in which they drive like bats-out-of-hell like there’s no tomorrow (and for some there isn’t). They are in such a hurry to get somewhere they speed around you. Yet, when they get outside the city, they drive slower than seven-year itches in the midst of a small caravan horde of cars. On the back roads, they drive as though they have fallen asleep and the car is driving itself.

When I read of that little piece of news, the light bulb came on! There were my Guanajuato sidewalk walkers. When alone, a single woman (or man) will not walk with any semblance of casualness but when she

sees you THE OBSTACLE she will speed up in order to pass you. She will get around you in any way she can, and will keep tooling along at an Olympic Racer’s clip until she catches up with someone she knows. Then, she will slow down like she suddenly aged 100 years and is in need of double hip and knee replacements.

Why? Why? Why do they do this?

There are two issues here that have everything to do with Mexican Culture.

1. Why are they racing on the sidewalk knocking not only gringos out of their way but also other Mexicans? We’ve had

to pick up a few older Mexican men and women who have been knocked around by Mexican youth racing past them too. Then, why if they see a group they know, do they slow down so much that you still have to walk in the street and risk being hit by an automobile?

2. Why don’t they get to appointments on time? When you tell them to meet you at your house to paint the living room at 9:00 a.m., why do they show up at 11:00 a.m., expect you to feed them, and not start work until 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon?

If

they are running so fast, back and forth, on the sidewalks of Guanajuato why can’t they show up on time to work?

Each time you run into a Cultural Bugaboo in Mexico, and especially in a provincial town like Guanajuato that is stubbornly resistant to changing with the times, there are three criteria with which you should judge these events to help you understand what’s going on.

1. The Mexican’s understanding of space.

2. The Mexican’s understanding of time.

3. The Mexican Group-Oriented Life.

The Mexican worldview is totally different than ours and, therefore, we Americans have to interpret everything we see and experience in

this culture through the Mexican worldview and not through our own.

Whereas we Americans think of space as “me, myself, and I”, the Mexican thinks of space as “we, us, all of us.” There is no “I” but “we in the mindset of the Mexican. The American draws a circle around himself and asks, “Am I doing ok?” The Mexican draws a circle around the group and asks, “Are we doing ok?” Americans are so individual-oriented that we draw a line around ourselves as individuals and all but have panic attacks when our personal space is called into question.

This is one of the reasons why Americans are so notorious for acting out the Ugly American Syndrome in every country

on the earth. They come to Mexico, for example, and for reasons only known to them, expect everything to be Americanized. Even in resort areas of Mexico, where the Mexicans do try with all their Latino might to cater to the spoiled and pampered, Americans all but blow a gasket when they are forced to come in contact with the Mexican worldview. If you ask me, Mexicans are the most astoundingly strong and humble people to put with the likes of Americans (I can just see the emails flooding my inbox for that statement).

Whereas Americans regard time as a straight line along which we have to run to catch up, with the segments of our life notched along that

line, requiring us to have to pay heed to it, the Mexican does not. We perceive time as clicks on a clock. The Mexican regards time as a flowing current along which they ride on the raft of life. They float along, going with the flow, and getting to the destination sooner or later. Space and time in Mexico are filtered through the group dynamic always!

The second issue mentioned above is by far the easiest to figure out. To arrive to an appointment on time for the Mexican always happens. In the mind of the Mexican, they always get to where they need to go on time On Mexican Time. Once they get to the appointment is when they

are on time. It does not matter if they make it by some deadline. The time set for the appointment, the deadline, is the suggested time. And because time is a flowing current, many things could have happened while riding that current. Sometimes the ride on that flowing and very liquid current of time goes quickly and sometimes it goes slowly.

Besides, it does not matter why the Mexican did not make it “on time” as long as he showed up. The important thing is that he is there now. It does not matter why he didn’t make it right at ten on the dot. He got there and that’s what counts. For the gringo to go into a fit

of apocalyptic proportion will do no earthly good at all. It just will not! It won’t change a thing so you might as will get your life’s raft on the Mexican time current and start going with that flow!

The issue of why they race down the sidewalks knocking people out of their way is not so easy and may be a combination of the criteria I mentioned above. This is Mexico so why can’t this explanation be a little convoluted? Convolution seems to be a way of life here.

When I am strolling down the sidewalks between the Embajadoras park and downtown Guanajuato, I stroll at a leisurely pace. What I’ve perceived is when a single Mexican woman (and

they all seem to be women) comes walking up behind me, it is very much like driving down the highways in central Mexico when a truck zooms up and tries to attach itself to your rear bumper. It is as though they simply cannot stand that there is something in their way. It isn’t as through they really care that I might make them late for anything since lateness isn’t a consideration in the mind of a Mexican. It is that there I am an obstacle in the current of time they are riding and I need to be dealt with. She wants to go faster than me. When my presence suddenly dawns on her, she sees me as an obstacle to get past. Once around me, I am forgotten.

If she sees someone she knows further along the sidewalk, then the Mexican Group Orientation thing comes into play and she slows down because now she is ready to employ the group mentality. If there’s no one to “group with,” then she might continue on at that speed and course she just used to knock me down. Who knows? On Mexican Time anything can happen, as it often does.

The more provincial the town, the more you will see all of this dynamic come into play. I heard a business woman who was originally from Monterrey complain how her Guanajuato employees would constantly show up for work “late.” Her traditional concept

of time and lateness had been so altered from living so close to America that she was no longer provincial in her thinking. I’ve heard this over and over again from Mexicans whose personal Mexican worldview has been changing and coming more into alignment with the rest of the business world’s view of time and punctuality.

A school in Leon, Guanajuato, that offers Spanish to Gringos has to offer a come-on-time-to-class bonus to the Mexican teachers they’ve hired to teach Spanish. At the University of Guanajuato, some of the students have told us that sometimes professors don’t show up to teach a class with no explanation offered. Remember, if you confronted him on his tardiness or absence, the Mexican would say,

“The why isn’t important. What’s important is that I am here now.”

Just this evening we sat with a lady whose deceased husband was responsible for building many of the modern hotels in this city as well as some of the newer tunnels. He was an architect and the family is very well connected. I asked her about the differences in the Mexican people from region to region. She confirmed what I have been writing about over the past four years.

She said that the further north you go in Mexico, you will find the locals have a much more accommodating attitude towards Gringos. They are “nicer” and “sweeter,” according to do a Carmen, and not as “cold” as in Guanajuato.

Here is

a 72-year-old woman who had lived in Guanajuato all her life. She was born here and she is making this comparison about the different regions of the country and her hometown of Guanajuato.

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