Mexican Patience & American Arrogance

I’m not particularly religious. To be more accurate I should say I’m an atheist who gets an occasional case of spiritual hiccups. And because I don’t live my life having much personal interaction with organized religion I haven’t ever looked at the effect that organized religions have had on the cultures I’ve interacted with and lived in. Until now.

When I moved to Mexico I knew it was a Catholic country. I knew it was the most Catholic country in the world (it has the highest number of Catholics as a percentage of the population of any country). But what I didn’t know what was how all that widespread Catholicism would effect the culture or the way people in Mexico learn to think.

I also didn’t understand just how much I was myself a product of a predominantly Protestant culture. I didn’t understand that even though I wasn’t raised a Protestant that I was still formed by a Protestant culture.

But living in Mexico and being married to a Mexican man (himself an atheist who was brought up loosely Catholic) has given me insight into just how strong a role religious ideals do play in the formation of culture and in the way we are brought up to think.

There are specific examples that jump out at me. One is the sense that I and many of my fellow (largely Protestant) Americans have that we are masters of our own destiny. I absolutely believe that ultimately I can and should try to control most major and nearly all minor aspects of my life. I plan and I plan and I plot and I worry and I guess and I wait for my future. My husband doesn’t. My husband often seems, from my perspective, to not even see how the choices he makes form the future he will live. And he hates to plan anything, just in case he might not want to actually do that thing when the time comes.

I think that Americans in general are seen by many as arrogant, pushy and dominant. And I think that it comes directly from that thing in our Protestant culture that tells us we can make things happen, that we can and should use the power we have to influence our lives and the world around us. And often I think we Americans use our power too freely and try to influence others too strongly. We are arrogant bastards. But we believe and know that we can control our lives. We are also organized enough, and plan well enough, that we can and do have a very strong influence on the world around us.

Mexicans, with my husband usually among them, often don’t seem to believe that they can change anything. They seem resigned to take what God gives them. They accept their fate much, much better than I ever could. They are a people who epitomize patience.

In fact patience is the number one thing that I have learned from living in Mexico. I’ve learned to be patient with others’ incompetence. I’ve learned to be patient with the lack of logical thinking present in everything here from the way people drive to the way they manage businesses to the way the government works. And I’m grateful to have learned patience. It was about time.

But to me there’s something tragic about the way that most Mexicans just accept that drug violence and corruption and environmental destruction and exploding populations of street animals are normal aspects of daily life. People in Mexico largely just accept those horrors and get on with their days. I’m constantly amazed at how happy people seem to be as they drive past a dying dog in the street and around a pile of garbage.

I’ve lived in Mexico for over 5 years. And I’ve learned that I’m never going to accept that the horrors here can’t be changed. I will never be able to see a newly beheaded body on the front page of the paper and just say ni modo (which loosely means “I don’t like it but whatever,” ) and move on about my day. I will never be able to feel that it’s “right” to bribe a cop. I will never be able to understand why people here can’t put their garbage in a trash can. I will never accept these things because I’m not made that way. I’m not made to accept tragedy and corruption and suffering. I’m a master of my own destiny remember, so when I see all that horror I feel I’ve got to change it and to fix it.

It’s my hope that Mexico will someday learn to respect its land and its animals and its people so that people here don’t have to ignore so much suffering just to be happy. Maybe someday Mexicans will be able to have faith in their own ability to make things better. Until then I guess it’s good that they are patient people.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Life in Mexico. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.