Mexico Fuerte
Mexico is my home.
I knew it long before I moved here last September, exhausted from my life in the United States and the recent death of my mother. Sixteen years ago, I first came to Mexico with a group of local educators from a small town nestled in the mountains of western North Carolina.
The teachers came to Mexico to learn more about the conditions from which the sudden influx of Mexican students came. I was a reporter seeking a story about the impact of U.S. immigration on small Mexican towns and cities. For months, I had been covering the stories of Mexicans who moved to North Carolina. I wanted to know the prologue, what happened before they came to the land of Starbucks and reality television.
But I knew why they left. At the time, access to high-quality, affordable education and health care were hard to come by. Public schools were not “free.” Mexican parents told me of their struggles of affording to pay for uniforms, books, and all the extras that came with a public education.
Even if the children made it to high school, there was no guarantee they would graduate. Some dropped out to work and help their families. Others migrated to cities or the United States. Girls, at the early 2000s, still married young, especially in smaller towns.
The idea that one could go from poverty to middle-class comfort through hard-work and a spit-shine of luck seemed improbable then. It seemed like a fairy-tale parents told their children at night to keep the hunger at bay until the morning.
Much had changed in the nearly two decades since I first visited Mexico. Poverty is here to be sure and one doesn’t have to travel too deeply in the country’s thickly forested interior to find it. Nevertheless, a thriving, middle-class roars in its cities. Parts of Mexico City were now being compared to the hipster-heaven that is Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Sophisticated culinary scenes, craft beers, and the ubiquitous Starbucks stores popped up in places that seemed nearly impossible a decade ago.
I fear that much of that hard-won, economic progress may be part of the debris as Mexico City and its surrounding areas were devastated yesterday in the second earthquake to strike the country in as many weeks. Mexican authorities confirmed at least 248 deaths in total, 98 alone in Mexico City. An estimated 40 buildings fell — including one school. People flooded the streets in confusion and anguish.
Glimmers of the Mexican spirit, however, shone in the earthquake’s aftermath.
Mexicans didn’t wait for First Responders to arrive on the scene. They were it. Hundreds of people teamed up with emergency personnel and nearby construction workers to form human chains, tearing the rubble away with their hands in the search for survivors. Unhelpful bystanders were asked to leave. That, too, is Mexico. Get it done or get out of the way.
This country is so much more than the “tacos and tequila” version Americans like to think. Mexico is grit, wisdom, understanding, laughter, and joy. It is the prolonged note held at the beginning of a mariachi song whose soul stretches from the Azteca to the discoteca. It is in the way a Mexican woman indulges her husband, but they both know she is the boss.
It is the dedication a landscaper takes to each blade of grass because each one has a precious responsibility to the whole. It’s the bemused smile a gas station attendant gives to a windswept, nervous, gringa because she doesn’t yet know her hair is standing straight up.
It is a country whose heartbreak and sorrow will go on to lovingly repair itself and its people. Mexico will survive natural disasters with cunning, strength and honor because that is what it has always done. And that is one of the many reasons I am proud to call this country my home.
