first impressions

ok, so this didn't really happen to me. It's really Dave's story. But I'm stealing it.

This week, Dave was elected "baby-sitter"/ host to a small group of North Americans coming to Toluca for a business trip at Nissan. Basically, the North Americans are so annoying that the Mexicans got sick of taking care of them and elected Dave to do it. Plus, Dave's the boss, so he gets to do dirty jobs like that. His responsibilities included:
1. borrow minivan from Nissan and pick up co-workers at airport, drive them to and from work, hotel, restaurants, and all other locations necessary so that they don't have to spend any time in a bus or a taxi.
2. Provide lots of exposure to "mexican" food, like tequila and tacos. Also ensure that all food and beverages will not cause illness.
3. Translate everything bc they literally couldn't order at Taco Bell if you paid them a million pesos.

But on the way back to the airport, after spending 4 days in Mexico, the silent American finally speaks up, as if he has something he's really been wanting to say and finally worked up the nerve to say it:
"Dave, Mexico's basically a s***hole"
Nice.
We've heard comments like this before, normally more polite, kinda mentioned after the american in question has been here for a while and hasn't heard our complaints, so finally realizes that they may have to give us an opening in the conversation to say our "true" feelings. They are always surprised that we truly don't agree with them.
I feel safer walking downtown toluca at night than I would walking downtown Flint. Detroit, with it's burnt out boarded up houses and street homeless, is dirtier and junkier than most of Mexico City. Rural America is full of people living in drafty trailers with beat-up pickup trucks. But most Americans who aren't poor can avoid the poverty of America, and forget that it's there.
Sure, mexico has more poverty than the US, but they have less homeless. Everyone here has a family, or a friend, or a little shack. When huge swaths of the country are surviving on beans and tortillas, it doesn't seem so embarassing to admit. And rich Mexicans, of which there are plenty, live like rich North Americans - in all ways but one. They shop at Costco, send their kids to private schools, listen to their Ipods, take vacations to cancun. But they don't avoid poverty. They live right next to it. They embrace it - not as someone else's problem, or a "cause" that they can help. But rich mexicans know that but for the grace of god, they would be living in a shack, too. And so they embrace poverty as a group problem. Letting your neighbor live like that is like giving your son a snake when he asks for bread (is that in the bible?). So they're much more likely to share their bounty with others - buying something from a street vendor, hiring a housekeeper, donating to charities, etc.

Thankfully, Dave's a man of actions, not words. bc the nice lecture I just gave would have been lost on his co-worker. Instead, Dave smiled to himself, and took a "detour" through Mexico City. (They guys had no idea) They drove by the embassies, the statue of independence, chapultepec park, and the neighborhoods of polanco and reforma - past multimillion dollar gated homes, before stopping at a starbucks in the car dealer neighborhood - BMW, Volvo, Hummer, & Bently can be seen from the starbucks patio - where every employee speaks perfectly un-accented English.

Sipping their $6 lattes back in the van, the guy(s) admitted:
"Well, this part of town isn't too bad."

yep, we thought so, too.