# NY Times personal essay on Mexico



## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

This personal essay written by a transplanted Mexican now living in the United States made me feel sad for the author. Your reactions to his attitude towards the land of his birth would be welcome:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/keepsakes-from-across-the-border/?hp&rref=opinion


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

Isla Verde said:


> This personal essay written by a transplanted Mexican now living in the United States made me feel sad for the author. Your reactions to his attitude towards the land of his birth would be welcome:
> 
> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/keepsakes-from-across-the-border/?hp&rref=opinion


I'm wondering why you felt sad for the author. Was it this:



> In December, my family and I went back, and spent Christmas in Toluca, my hometown, for the first time. It was a more sobering experience for my kids, as Central Mexico showed them a side of the country Yucatán hadn’t — the wild gap between rich and poor, slums alongside skyscrapers, kids their own age begging at the stoplights.


Or something else? 

My reaction to his "attitude" is that it's the same as I see expressed, no matter the country I visit. And I've visited many. It's so easy to be impressed when on vacation ... because vacation isn't lifestyle, day-to-day reality, for most of us. The author was privileged to have been born into a Mexican middle-class family, because more than 50% of the population lives below the Mexican poverty line (which, obviously ... is much less than the same demarcation point for the poor in the USA).

I think it's a natural assumption, oftentimes ... that "the grass is greener on the other side" of where we live. And most of us have learned that it's not so, not as often as one would assume.

Though there are some very nice gated communities close to Toluca, I doubt the author's children would enjoy living in that area.

So, not knowing what you think about the blog entry ... these are my comments.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Isla Verde said:


> This personal essay written by a transplanted Mexican now living in the United States made me feel sad for the author. Your reactions to his attitude towards the land of his birth would be welcome:
> 
> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/keepsakes-from-across-the-border/?hp&rref=opinion


I don't understand what you found sad about it either. I found it touching and enlightening and a reflection about how we often don't appreciate our own heritage because it is just there; it is not enticing like a foreign culture.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

TundraGreen said:


> I don't understand what you found sad about it either. I found it touching and enlightening and a reflection about how we often don't appreciate our own heritage because it is just there; it is not enticing like a foreign culture.


I found it sad that he grew up thinking that Mexico was inferior in most ways to the United States. It strikes me as an example of Malinchismo.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Isla Verde said:


> I found it sad that he grew up thinking that Mexico was inferior in most ways to the United States. It strikes me as an example of Malinchismo.


He does have a couple of sentences that imply an element of Malinchismo, "infused with prejudices about my own country, would dismiss as too rustic, too dull, too low-class", "My 7-year-old self firmly believed that life Up North was better, more advanced and irresistibly alluring. Isn't some of that just the allure of the exotic and different? 

I grew up in Alaska, but had no interest in the artifacts that are now sold in all the tourist shops. I might have made the same statement with "Up North" replaced with "Down South".


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## surfrider (Oct 4, 2011)

I think that there is also a time and age issue thing going on with the authors comments about how he viewed America vs. Mexico as a youth. My own relatives that grew up on a farm in Colorado in a town that had one market, one pharmacy, one movie house and that was downtown three buildings. So when they came to visit my family in California the thought that my family lived in a whole different world. My cousins thought that I was this supper cool person cause I lived by Hollywood and I surfed. They later on did move to California and then moved back to farmland....but when they did they found something surprising had occurred. The farmland was being sold and new houses were being built and California families were moving in.....


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## AlanMexicali (Jun 1, 2011)

Isla Verde said:


> I found it sad that he grew up thinking that Mexico was inferior in most ways to the United States. It strikes me as an example of Malinchismo.


Isla, I have to agree with you on this one. Some Mexican immigrants I have know over the many years in San Diego and even my ex wife do do this and do rub it in the face of their family and friends who still live in Mexico at times, not uncommon reaction to being a US resident or a naturalized citizen in my experience.

My idea is this is overcompensation for being: 

1. A minority in the US and not speaking the languge well and many are illiterate in English.

2. Not being close to their family and lifelong friends still living in Mexico.

3. Not having a full life they would have as part of an extended family if they remained in Mexico.

4. Not having their children knowing the Mexican way of life thourghly and becoming Americanized to the point of becoming Pochos, picking the easeist part of each culture to embrass and forgeting the rest. A sense of hypocracy seems to be present in some immigrants I have known.

5. Showing up in Mexico with presents and throwing money at the family and friends and driving a newer vehicle whether they can afford it of not. [I call this the "Big Shot" act]

6. Not telling family and friends in Mexico what it really like living in the US and exaggerating a lot and reflecting the myth the streets paved with gold there.

7. If you want to impress someone just make it all too good to be true and see the jealiously some immigrants prevoke back home.

They actually seem to me to simply be overcompensating for not being back home with their loved ones and enjoying the benefits.


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