Mexico and its Cities

There is a certain magnetism to a Mexican city that seems to know how to keep its streets clean, its air clear-blue and free of the dreaded brown haze, and make everything in it call out to the tourist to come for a visit. I suppose this is what has driven me lately from my home in the city of Guanajuato, Mexico, to search for something I am lacking here. My time in Guanajuato, over the past four years, has been a learning experience. I would not trade the experience nor do I regret it. But, as my wife said to me the other day, it is time to find a city in Mexico in which there are not too many cars where the infrastructure cannot possibly accommodate them and where the air is breathable.

A problem in Guanajuato is that it was built in a narrow, winding ravine centuries ago. What the advancement of man would bring, the automobile, its founders did not have in mind when designing this city. Modernity has brought better incomes to locals who join the ranks of their American neighbors north of the border in car ownership. They want the status car ownership brings but do so at a terrible price. This city, with its snaking streets, so narrow as to make even bus traffic almost impossible, does not allow the car exhaust to escape.

In some areas of the city, the homes, businesses, and restaurants are right on the sidewalks and are separated from their across-the-street neighbors by a narrow path. The close proximity of the buildings traps the auto exhaust and makes breathing difficult, if not impossible. Those with asthma are reduced to wearing masks or not leaving the house. It is a terrible way to live and one to which I’ve been reduced because of my asthma and heart condition.

Personally, this is such a difficulty issue for me. Under the guise of “the convenience of car ownership,” Mexicans have given in to the delusion of wanting to own a car. This brings status and another notch in their social-class belt. Regardless of whether this is a good thing or not, allowing a material thing increase you sense of self worth isn’t the issue. What this drive for outdoing your neighbor does is bring into Guanajuato a material thing that is poisoning the air, tainting one’s hair and clothes, and making one’s restaurant meal taste like car exhaust. Children in this town have to walk about wearing masks to filter the air they breathe because the desire for car ownership is a greater drive, in the minds of a lot of the locals, than the desire to provide clean air for their children to breathe.

How is this even close to being a good thing?

As far back as February of 2003, I learned of talk in the government of beginning some kind of car rationing as was implemented in Mexico City. This plan failed miserably. This was a plan in which you would be allowed to drive your car on certain days of the week in a staggered pattern. Your neighbor would not necessarily be driving on the day you would. It was keyed according to your car’s license plate number. It did not work at all.

Mexico City residents simply switched out their plates with false ones so they could drive all the time and whenever they wanted to. Or, they just bought another car with new plates so they would not be inconvenienced in having to take public transportation. “The Convenience of Car Ownership.” The car traffic situation in Guanajuato is nightmarish. It is ridiculous that the “convenience of car ownership” is the banner cry when the reality is they spend an excessive amount of time in traffic jams all around the city. In an area near me called Embajadoras, you can see this in action for yourself.

Not only do Guanajuatenses spend time—a lot of time—sitting in traffic, they act as though traffic jams were something that never crossed their minds when they bought a car. If you want to see something extraordinary, come to this area of Guanajuato, Embajadoras, and see the stereotypical patient and understanding Mexican fly right out the car window when they have to stop for a traffic situation. They lay on the horn quicker than ducks on a June Bug and this is where you see Mexicans in a rage. It is as though they never considered that owning a car in Guanajuato, a city that cannot accommodate cars, would mean a lot of wasted time sitting in traffic.

They are impatient of even a cab or bus that is trying to load or unload their fares. I’ve heard them honk the horn, and I mean lay on it, when a cab is trying to load the elderly and handicapped. What does this say about the convenience of car ownership? It not only is destroying the environment but breeds rage.

Another issue driving me to look for another place to live in this marvelous and sometimes confusing country is that Guanajuato is a filthy place. I so hate to say this and know I am going to get such hate mail, but it cannot change the truth. Guanajuatenses seem to have a different philosophy about what constitutes a dirty street and what to do with their trash. I’ve seen people of all ages and classes trash their city. I’ve seen what looks to be educated and well-heeled Mexicans in this town who think nothing of dashing a piece of trash to the ground when a trash receptacle is no more than a few feet away. This is particularly true in the river in the part of town where I live. It is positively horrific. It is as though the river is seen as the city’s dump.

Not all of Mexico is like this.

And, this fact so rattles my cage that I sometimes feel I could scream. Recently we’ve been on a whirlwind tour of other cities in the country. What we’ve been learning and observing has been outstandingly profound. We have been wondering if all of Mexico is like Guanajuato, so we’ve been on a quest to find out.

We’ve found both large and small cities that seem to be able to get this trash thing down to a science. We visited the cities of Dolores Hidalgo, San Luis Potosi, and Saltillo that were by comparison pristine and clean. We walked and walked looking for something to rival the filth in which we live in Guanajuato and could not find it. We not only walked through the central plazas but into the barrios (neighborhoods) and found streets clean, neat, and tidy. It can’t be the size of Guanajuato that is the problem.

Dolores Hidalgo is a much smaller town than Guanajuato and it was clean. We even found the river to check it out. I figured that if there were any indication of how the inhabitants lived with their trash, the river would be a good indication. By comparison it was clean, clean, clean! We saw one tire in Dolores Hidalgo’s river and that was it. The cities of San Luis Potosi and Saltillo are both larger and more industrial than Guanajuato and the streets were neat and clean.

If these cities can keep their towns clean, why can’t Guanajuato? We also visited the towns of Ciudad Victoria and Reynosa, which were dumps. Guanajuato is not as trashed as these border towns but the trash is very prominently evidenced everywhere you go in this city.

What we did not see in these other towns was trash stuffed in window sills behind the bars on the windows, in cracks and holes in buildings, under benches, whole meals of God only knows what left on a ledge, blowing plastic bags and newspapers, cigarette butts everywhere, cups and glasses of this or that stuffed in the knots of a tree, and don’t forget the beer bottles and vomit slicks from last night’s boozing. Nor did we see people dashing anything to the ground in the cities we visited. We saw immaculate cities that evidenced an entirely different philosophy in the minds of the locals.

Think about it: Just what must go on in the minds of the people of a city in which trash is so prominent that it can only mean the majority of the city’s inhabitants are trashing the place? I mean, really!

An expat friend, who has lived in Guanajuato since 1971, told me that in these other cities the cops actually enforce the littering laws. In Guanajuato, it is such a tightly knit place that everyone not only knows one another but also is more or less related to one another. Police see their cousins littering and may castigate them but they never issue a ticket for the offense of helping to destroy the environment.

Car traffic in these cites was also highly tolerable. I have only to guess that the city’s topography has more to do with it than the amount of car owners. These cities were laid out in grids, unlike Guanajuato, allowing the car exhaust to more easily escape. The streets were not as narrow with towering buildings trapping the gas fumes. Also, we did not hear the car horn honking rages that you will hear in a virtual concert of car-cacophony in Guanajuato.

If the other cities can do it, so can Guanajuato.