54 Observations about Mexico

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I’m finishing up a few weeks in Mexico. I’ve been visiting Mexico for 20 years, and more often for the last 10 years since I married a Mexican. I’ve mainly driven around Yucatan and Quintana Roo and visited Mexico City and Queretaro, plus other tidbits. That’s a pretty narrow aperture given how big and diverse Mexico is. So the below observations are limited accordingly.

1. Mexico is culturally, economically, and ethnically hierarchical. This has deep cultural roots going back to both native and Spanish social structures.

2. You would expect low socio-economic mobility given the high stratification. And there is — class is super sticky. But new-ish immigrant groups have done very well over the last century, such as the Lebanese and Jewish communities. (I am a Maronite appreciator.) What does that say about the opportunity available in such a society?

3. To answer my own question, perhaps Mexico rewards tight in-group capital (family, trust, ethnic networks) more than abstract merit. Diaspora ethnic groups succeeded because they arrived with merchant traditions, internal credit, intra-marriage, and distance from indigenous caste logic.

4. (Bit tangential but ‘distance from indigenous caste logic’ is underrated in other ways. You can ‘arb’ status cross-culturally, ie. find a mate that would be out of your league in your own country offshore, because your status is illegible to him/her in theirs. For example, I know a few upper class Mexicans that married Joe Blow Aussies, but would have never dreamed of doing that in Mexico. I have also seen the other way — a strapping Aussie lad finds a Mexican or Asian girl that would be of middling social status in her home country, but is fine for Australia where such things are illegible. It’s a bit funny in the case of (white) upper-class Mexicans, who implicitly misread all Aussies as ‘upper class’ based on ethnicity. This applies to many cross-cultural matches.)

5. It’s very difficult to make good money as an employee. Equity is ~the only path to wealth. The opportunity to build businesses is real. A Spanish woman who started a business in Mexico

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