Joe,
Jeezus, I have laughed, sitting here in Boca del Rio having discovered your site about 20 minutes ago! I mean seriously! And yep you have it exactly right on a hell of a lot that matters. Like you I grew up in the age when there was still community. People here ask me if I miss my home culture in the US (Mobile, Alabama) and I tell 'em, no it does not exist any longer.
Whats even more disturbing is that people here are changing. What I originally came here for is dying and particularly here in Boca del Rio, a small suburb of Veracruz, it's dying rapidly. The new monied Mezzicans are taking cues from thier North American brethren with an avarice and drive that runs over everything just as bad as any rat running the streets of NYC. Courtesy, civility, community are of course the casualties. Here where in 2002 they still played a pick up softball game on the sandbar at the mouth of Rio Jamapa three days a week, now is industrial sprawl.
In the 19 kilometers between here and Anton Lizardo, someting like 16 high rise developments under construction. Want a condo? Prices start at US$300,000. Where before the outfielders stood in ankle deep water and a deep right fly was either caught by swimming or a passing fisherman in a boat, now there is a new seawall, and the new complex where you can keep your boat, replete with three 20-storey towers abuilding each with its own pool, laundry, shops yadayadayada. The natives are slowly being displaced by the booming prosperity, relegated from lives of fishermen to pool technicinas and cleaning women for the new rich, living in Infonavit low income fuckboxes and the sea only seen anymore through windows or from the pool. Maybe in a generation they won't notice anymore.
The new rich are incivil, their feet never touching the ground, driving their Porsche Cayennes and BMWs, they are agressive in traffic to the point where they would be easily road rage victims in the US. Their wives are equally so breaking lines in the local stores and banks, rude, sure that the world revolves with them at the center. The children are equally rude, having invaded this once quiet fishing community roaring about on four-wheelers at 3AM through the neighborhoods in gangs and they are dangerous as well -- a life of consumerism with no consequences for anything they do in a nation where much of the wealth is gained by less than meritorious means -- and where the new rich have the money to buy their way out of almost anything. Rats eating rats.
Where does one go? Isolationist in the mountains of Nevada or Colorado or Wyoming live alone with one's books and computer? Chile is beautiful. A lot there costs $40,000. A small lot. The rats are there already. Here, not far from where I am in Coquite, one can buy seven hectares for $35,000, but then it's only a matter of time until someone invades that small quiet Mexican farming village and it's overrun like here. Plus the claws of the Company will reach there eventually with the North American Union possibly and certainly avarice driven and here as in the US nobody is awake to notice.
So, if you are 55 and reasonably well off and want a quiet place to stay out of the crap, where do you go anymore. I always thought I would retire here or in Venezuela or Peru or Argentina but anymore I'm not so sure. Maybe Belize.
Great work on Deer Hunting with Jesus.
Carr
Boca del Rio, Mexico
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Dear Carr,
You have touched upon so many points I am going to try to reply to them individually. It's gonna sound a bit preachy and unrealistic to the American ear, but here goes:
"I like you grew up in the age when there was still community. People here ask me if I miss my home culture in the US (Mobile Al.) and I tell em no it does not exist any longer."
Carr, there is still community, plenty of it in the world. But it is among the world's poor. And my experience has been that to partake of it you must live among them and live just like they do -- with no safety net but the community itself and whatever true respect you may have earned.
"The new monied Mezzicans are taking cues from thier North American brethren with an avarice and drive that runs over everything just as bad as any rat running the streets of NYC. Courtesy, civility, community are of course the casualties."
Having more money than it takes to obtain shelter and enough food to shit regularly does that to all human beings, regardless of race or culture.
"Here where in 2002 they still played a pick up softball game on the sandbar at the mouth of Rio Jamapa 3 days a week, now is industrial sprawl. There are in the 19 KM between here and Anton Lizardo someting like 16 high rise developments under construction. Want a condo?? Prices start at $300 K US. Where before the outfielders stood in ankle deep water and a deep right fly was either caught by swimming or a passing fisherman in a boat, now there is a new seawall, and the new complex where you can keep your boat, replete with 3 20 story towers abuilding each with its own pool, laundry, shops yadayadayada."
Well, this ain't 2002, it's the end of the world. Things are bound to be a tad different.
"The new rich are incivil....and have the money to buy their way out of almost anything."
Same as the old rich
"So if you are 55 and reasonably well off and want a quiet place to stay out of the crap where do you go anymore."
Again, I say, to the poorest places on earth. Then you give all your money away, but in a responsible manner, making life better for others. Live like the poor, with little or no medical care and no guarantees whatsoever in your old age. Then you will die. Which is what you went down there for in the first place, right? There is no way to "stay out of the crap." But there is nobility in dying the good death, instead of trying to live "the good life."
In art and labor,
Joe
