Rapid urbanization over the last forty years has swollen Mexico’s cities. In the mid-1960s roughly 50 percent of the country’s population lived in urban areas. That figure now stands at over 75 percent as people have migrated to the cities to find work (or not, in most cases). A thousand people a day are said to arrive in Mexico City alone. Along with the overall high birthrate, this phenomenon has transformed the country’s urban areas.
The type of home a Mexican lives in will depend mainly on his or her economic status. But other factors include its location—whether in a city, in a smaller town, or in a rural area, and also which region it is in. This last variable concerns architecture and building materials rather than size. For example, the Yucatán and southern lowlands are warm year-round, including at night, and houses are therefore left more open to the elements. In the northern states, where the desert bakes in the summer and in places sits under a blanket of snow in the winter, stone is the main building material, walls are far thicker, and houses can look like fortresses, with small windows to keep the heat in or out.
More often than not, however, people in cities live in apartments and those farther out of the center or in smaller towns live in two-story houses or midsize bungalows. In more rural areas, and poorer areas of towns, families live in small one-story houses built around a central courtyard. These often house several families. Government housing schemes, which are generally built by private companies and subsidized by the government, are easily identifiable. They are mostly located on the outskirts of towns and cities and are often not particularly attractive or spacious. Uniform rows of small square houses, often with tin roofs and with tiny plots around them, stretch in long, unbroken lines, but though they may seem depressing they are at least planned, with electricity and water supplies, and provide housing for the poorer sections of society.
There is not nearly enough of this kind of housing, however, and unplanned “boroughs,” ranging from newly and hastily constructed shantytowns, to more permanent and solid developments that have grown out of earlier shanties, are a guaranteed feature of any large city. They are known as ciudades perdidas—“lost cities,” an accurate description of a problem of which mainstream Mexican society is willfully ignorant—and are the Mexican equivalent of Brazilian favelas. To put it in cinematic terms, the run-down, crime-ridden Rio neighborhood in the Brazilian film City of God is replicated in the Mexico City barrio in Amores Perros. They are the poorest and most dilapidated areas of any town, and certainly not where you would want to find yourself on a dark night, or even during the day.
The straightforward answer to this is “Mother.” Mexico is a profoundly matriarchal society and maternal power rules families. It is a question of “traditional” roles reinterpreted: as men are still the main breadwinners, women are in charge of the home, and therefore the family. It makes sense. Reverence for women stretches a long way back: the country’s patron saint since 1531 has been the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Mexican women as a rule are generally very house-proud, and even though an apartment complex may look neglected from the outside it will be sparkling indoors. Daughters may be expected to help around the house, but sons are not, and tend not to volunteer. Some enlightened husbands will help a little, but again that is rare.
Many people in Mexico, whatever their social status (apart from the jobless poor), have someone who helps out around the house. What exactly this entails can vary enormously, from someone who cleans a couple of times a week to a full-time, live-in maid. The richest families will employ a maid (or several), as well as a chauffeur, gardener(s), and a nanny for the children. Other options include masseuses and manicurists who come to the house once a week. None of these services are seen as excessive—on the contrary, if you can afford “home help,” however modest and badly paid (there are so many unemployed people in Mexico that wages are low), and choose not to exercise your right to it, then you are doing society a disservice by denying people a living, or so the theory goes. In practice, the number of people you employ in your home is a status indicator, so it is rare to find people doing society that particular disservice. Even young, single, supposedly self-reliant professionals have a maid.
Generally speaking, domestic employees are treated well and will often work for the same household for long periods, frequently becoming part of the family. In richer families, a nanny may see a child through from birth to adulthood, and deep affection may be felt toward her. There is often less formality and deference than there might be in the equivalent family in the U.S.A. or the U.K.: this is one situation in which class barriers may be broken down, and an example of the Mexican respect for other people’s dignity in action—in many cases, and only up to a certain point. Some families expect their employees to wear a uniform and walk a few paces behind them when out shopping.
Daily life in Mexico is a struggle for many people. In a country where a very few are very wealthy, 40 percent live below the poverty line, and the majority are not a long way above it, this is hardly surprising. It follows from this that most Mexicans work hard: the reality of the caricatured Mexican asleep in the afternoon under a broad-brimmed sombrero is that he has probably been up working since 5:00 a.m. The routine described below only applies with any accuracy to the urban middle classes. Poorer sections of society tend to get up and go to bed earlier, often simply because they will have farther to travel to work every day.
Despite eating late in the evening and staying up even later, the day starts early for most Mexicans, at around 7:00 a.m. Breakfast at home is often rushed, as many people will eat a second breakfast or a snack later in the morning. For office workers, the working day begins at 8:00 to 8:30 a.m., but breakfast meetings (see Chapter 8) are common, and this is where the day’s business (and eating) starts in earnest.
Lunch starts no earlier than 1:00 p.m. and generally at around 2:00 p.m. It is a more expansive affair than in the U.S.A. or U.K., generally taking two hours or more, as it is the main meal of the day in Mexico. If people can get home, they will. If they must have a meeting over lunch, the lunch is never secondary to the business at hand.
Given the longer lunch, businesses tend to be open later, but most will be closed by 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. The evening meal starts after 8:00 or even 9:00 p.m. It is lighter than lunch and will be eaten at home with the family, or out. Mexicans are friendly and sociable, but they are also reserved, and are not quick to invite people into their homes—socializing is generally done outside.
Convenience shopping in large, anonymous supermarkets is not yet a big feature of Mexican life, although it is becoming that way in the larger cities. Generally, people shop for fresh produce on a daily basis in local street markets, and that is built into the daily—generally morning—routine.
Shopping is also a social occasion, with the actual transactions often seeming to be the least of it—news, gossip, and pleasantries are exchanged between shoppers and with stallholders. As you will see in Chapter 8, business in Mexico is all about personal relationships, and it is no different at street level.
Mexicans spend a large proportion of their leisure time with their family, at home or out. As has often been said before, the family is at the center of Mexican life. Having said that, Mexicans do get away from the family now and again! Later we shall see what they do when they go out in the evenings or watch sports on weekends, but Mexicans also play sports.
Soccer is the sport. Just about every male in the country has kicked, does kick, or will kick a ball around with his friends on weekends or in the evenings. Some take it more seriously than others and there is a large amateur league structure in place. To a lesser extent, this is also true of baseball, an increasingly popular participatory sport, while American football, in the form of NFL games beamed in from the U.S.A., has inspired many to play. Women often play volleyball or go swimming.
Education is very important to Mexicans. The fact that bien educado means both “polite” and “well educated” is no accident. Education is a means for bettering oneself. In adult life, professionals address each other formally by referring to the level of qualification each has earned: you would refer to Maestra Hernández if Mrs Hernández were a teacher, not Señora Hernández, because she has earned the qualification, and therefore the right to be known, as a teacher. Such respect for professionals, especially teachers, is rarer in the U.S.A. and U.K.
Children often attend school from the age of three or four, and although preschool is not compulsory at the moment, it soon will be. There are six grades of compulsory primary (primaria) school, from ages six to twelve. Some schools are state-run and follow a strict curriculum, but most are private. Private schools cover a full range of options, from the quite basic to the very grand and exclusive, producing the ruling elite. All primary schools have to follow SEP (Secretaría de Educación Pública, or Ministry of Education) regulations, which dictate the core curriculum.
Most parents who can afford it are attracted to private primary schools by the range of subjects they offer in addition to the core curriculum. At the most basic, this involves an hour of English a week—not much, but still one more hour than in most state schools. In some states English is compulsory in all schools, state and private, although in most cases only a bare minimum of English is taught. In the more expensive private schools a significant number of lessons—ten or more hours a week, including science and math in some cases—are taught in English. These schools are called colegios bilingues (bilingual schools), and charge a premium.
Primary school hours are generally 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 or 2:00 p.m., with some private schools offering extracurricular activities and sports in the afternoons.
Secondary (secundaria) school is also obligatory for three years, up to the age of sixteen. Again, there are state (secundaria oficial) and private schools, and generally speaking the state schools are of a mixed standard at best.
English is a compulsory subject at secondary school. One anomaly is that even if you have studied six years of English at primary school, you have to go back to the beginning and start from the basics, as pupils’ levels of English are not guaranteed. In practice, pupils are streamed into classes according to their ability.
Secondary school hours are the same as primary, although many schools also have lessons in the afternoons.
Prepa (short for preparatoria) is the next stage up, and involves preparing students for entry into university. This level is not compulsory, and the reality is that most young people leave at the end of secondary school (and some before that).
As will probably be apparent by now, learning English is something that many people do in Mexico, both at school and afterward. It is seen as a way of getting ahead. English is the language of international business (most foreign businesses operating in Mexico are from English-speaking countries, the U.S.A. in particular), and that spoken by most tourists in the country. So the fact that English is compulsory in secondary schools and common in many primary schools is hardly surprising, but many adults also like to learn or refresh their English, either in courses (paid for by themselves, or in some cases their company) or by talking to foreigners. This is more of an urban-oriented view, however, and people in rural areas often speak no English, and even Spanish as a (distant) second language.
Mexico has nine television channels, two of which are state-run. Some cannot be seen across the whole country, although the two state channels (11 and 22) can. They are generally more interesting than the seven privately run channels, and broadcast cultural and scientific programs, rather than pandering to the advertisers and going for lowest-common-denominator TV—mainly American programs dubbed into Spanish, as well as the phenomenon of the telenovela.
Telenovelas are the Latin American equivalent of the British or American soaps. The most popular of these long-running programs are homegrown, but they may also be Brazilian or Argentinean. Interminable and unlikely as their plots are, they provide a distraction from the harsher realities of life. A stereotype fixed in the Mexican popular imagination is the housewife profoundly addicted to these melodramas, who suffers along with their characters, though it is questionable how specific this is to Mexico.
Other long-lived series include comedies, the most popular being El Chavo del Ocho. Other prominent items in the TV schedules are sports, wrestling, and news.
There are also a number of cable television channels in Mexico. The most popular is Cablevisión (owned by the country’s largest TV company, Televisa); it is relatively inexpensive and carries a number of sports channels and mostly lowbrow American programs. Also on its signal are international news channels such as CNN and BBC News 24.
You will be able to pick up at least one local radio station in every city in Mexico. In larger cities and tourist areas, these play songs in English all day, as well as transmitting English-language programs at set times.