100% Homogenized Mexico

Mexico’s is one of the world’s greatest cultures. The manifestations of its Mesoamerican and Colonial pasts—tamales and piñatas, Aztec iconography and Baroque churches—are immediately recognizable from Australia to Zimbabwe. A recent issue of Vuelo, Mexicana Airlines’ in-flight magazine, profiled the twelve greatest Mexican exports; among them figure, of course, food products such as corn, chilies, tequila, chocolate, and vanilla, but also cultural concepts like mariachis, Mexican wrestling, the fanciful handcrafted paper-mache creatures known as alebrijes, and the oft-commented, peculiarly Mexican imagery of death.

Yet the perception, as much outside as inside Mexico, of Mexican culture’s unmistakable identity depends on an insistent and mythical homogeneity that strangles diversity. It seems ridiculous to have to point this out, but there are poor and rich Mexicans, Catholics and Jews, tall and short Mexicans, Afro-Mexicans and Chinese-Mexicans. Folks from Puebla tell jokes about the stingy citizens of Monterrey, while the regiomontanos tell jokes about the stuck-up poblanos, and everybody takes shots at the chilangos, as residents of the sprawling capital are somewhat jokingly known.

The counterpart to the 100% homogenized Mexican is the 100% homogenized gringo. And stereotypes work both ways: to be a gringo in Mexico, as Carlos Fuentes paraphrases American satirist Ambrose Bierce in Gringo viejo: ah, there can be no greater euthanasia. Even the use of the term gringo—ubiquitous, unflinching—would seem to reveal a uniformity of Mexican mindset; some might venture that, as the favorite Other, the gringo even helps define that uniformity. Most Mexicans will insist that there is nothing insulting about the term, that it’s just easier to say than the polysyllabic norteamericano or estadounidense. Believe that and I’ve got a bridge to sell you, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where former President Fox’s administration grandly opened an extended puente that cuts three hours off the driving time between Mexico City and Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital. Even in Chiapas, where the residents proclaim proudly that the Revolution never arrived, the stereotyped gringo represents someone powerful but woefully ignorant and rude who will screw you over as fast as he can mispronounce Buenos días.

Couldn’t the same be said for the image of the American in Paris, in Istanbul, in Luanda, or just about anywhere outside the United States? Yes, but the Mexican’s relationship to the gringo hinges on the “Tortilla Curtain,” the delicately porous and sometimes transparent scar that pretends to be a border between our nations. Theorists speak of “Greater Mexico,” an area including the Mexican Republic in addition to the full third of current US territory that used to belong to New Spain and then Mexico, plus other Mexican enclaves in the cities of North America. The term’s significance, however, is more contemporary than historical, and although it embraces a kind of cultural unity, it better serves to break down exactly this siesta-under-the-cactus homogenized stereotype. Vast and various populations roam and home in Greater Mexico, spawning a more intimate familiarity amongst them, and creatively thwarting the stability of not only “American” and “Mexican” identities, but also and especially that of the “Mexican-American,” who may or may not want to embrace the label “Chicano/a.” Many people, definitely the most opportunistic and perhaps the cleverest, play it both (or several) ways, assuming whichever identity is more convenient at any given moment.

Confronted with a gringo who doesn’t conform to type, the 100% homogenized Mexican response is to adopt a monumental indifference, the impassivity of an Aztec monolith. For the stereotype is that the Mexican believes he already knows the gringo’s secrets. Anyone can tell you the gringo’s basic belief systems—just watch the US channels on TV, go to a Hollywood movie, listen to the US pop hits on the radio, talk to your cousin who worked in Dallas, your aunt who lives in Los Angeles. Similarly, on the north side of the Curtain, the more that folks support the homogenized beer-marketing Cinco de Mayo and other staples of the grand old imagery of serapes and tacos, burros and sombreros, the less is truly known about real Mexican wants and needs.

Unfortunately, even earnest and talented students of Mexican history, literature, and culture who travel to that country may be met with suspicion and perhaps derision if they do not happen to share the mestizo phenotype of the Mexican majority. Will Mexico ever open up? There has been hope since the 2000 presidential win which overthrew seventy years of one-party control. Yet in spite of the large number of Mexicans who struggle to become American citizens, Mexico itself is notoriously xenophobic when it comes to nationalizing foreigners. In his fashionable-to-deride essay El laberinto de la soledad, Nobel laureate Octavio Paz sought the image of the Mexican in his mask. I would clarify, that despite all evidence to the contrary, a common perception on either side of the border is that all Mexican masks are alike, and thus they allow only one view of the gringo from behind the mask. Herein lies the easy strength of closed unity, the promiscuous resemblance of comfort to conformity.