CurrentAffairs
Inside Mexico:A hierarchical society
By IAN CAMPBELL,
UPI Chief Economics Correspondent
WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- This week your correspondentis in Washington, the home of power, not inside Mexico. He thinksback to a small incident that occurred recently, a trivial one,although also related to power. It set him thinking about Mexicansociety. He invites readers to consider it, too.
I went out late one afternoon to round upmy four-year-old son for his meal and met two of the gardeners,in their white straw hats. They greeted me friendlily but theirmood was not good. One of them owns an old pick-up truck thathad been blocked for hours between two cars. What made it worsewas that they insisted the blocking had been done deliberately,to teach them a lesson. Who are these gardeners? Perhaps gardeneris a grand name for them, for they do not have specialist knowledgeof plants. They are the workmen in the gated community of privatehouses in which I live. There are about 80 houses and the privada,as it is called, employs a number of men to keep the grounds tidy,make repairs, water and tend to the plants, maintain the swimmingpool, and open the gate as cars drive in and out.
The work is unskilled and not particularlyonerous though the men work long hours and the Mexican sun ishot. They earn about $50 per week, and the privada pays statehealth insurance for them, which means they receive good healthcare. Any pension payment they receive on retiring from work willbe small. The men supplement their income by doing private workfor some of the residents, mowing a lawn, or tidying up a garden,or painting a house. And so, in common with most Mexicans, theseworkers are low skilled and earn little, though enough to getby. They eat a reasonable diet and live in simple homes. Theydo not own much but some may be able to purchase a car. The atmosphereamong the men and between them and the administrator of the privadaand the residents seems good. And so I was surprised that afternoonto find that something had upset them.
"What do you think of that?" oneof the men said to me, "We've lost three hours. We were caughtthere, trapped. Three hours!" I knew the man they said hadblocked them in, liked him, and said it must have been a mistake.But they insisted angrily it had been deliberate.
I grasped the story slowly. One of the menhad parked his pick-up truck in front of a house. The owner ofthe house, a man of about thirty-five, had backed up his old Volkswagenvan so as to be hard against the pick-up, and then had parkedhis car behind it, also up close-and perpendicular to the pick-up.That was something I had noticed previously, a car bizarrely parked.It lent credence to their story that the act had been deliberate."Why didn't you complain to him?" I asked. "I did!"the gardener said, "he said he was busy and would move thecar in fifteen minutes. Three hours later he did move it.""Why would he want to do that?" I asked. "He wantedto show us that we should never park in front of his house again.But we were there to work in his garden. We are going to workthere tomorrow!" the man said, peering angrily from beneathhis worn straw hat.
I tried to imagine the same thing happeningin the United States. A house-owner pulls up his two cars so asto trap the pick-up truck of some workmen. They would not standfor it. If a request to move the car did not lead to immediateaction, there would be shouting, there might even be violence.In short, the workers would not stand for it. They would not allowtheir time to be wasted. Am I wrong? In Mexico these workmen becameangry and frustrated, but I discovered that their anger did notextend even to calling on the man a second time to move his car.They waited. They accepted that the house owner had some kindof right to do what he had done.
I was reminded of a comment made to my motherat least two decades ago by a woman who had lived in South Africaand liked it. "People know their place," the woman hadsaid. Some years on that had changed, violently.
Coming back to this incident in Mexico,what about the owner, what was his motive? Apparently it was toshow the workers his place. Why is Mexican society so stratified?Perhaps it goes back to colonial society, the division betweena small ruling class and a small ruled one. Whatever its roots,the influence is pervasive and damaging. Not all Mexicans acceptthe stratification. In the towns where the old divisions of ruralsociety are weaker, crime is serious. The upper class, more andmore, hides itself behind walls and security.
Social mobility is an important factor ineconomic development. The working class American who helps fundhis education by driving around with a lawn mower on his pick-uptruck, then goes on to college and a successful career emulatesthe millions of predecessors in his country who, from humble beginnings,prosper. A common feature of all of them was that they didn'tknow their place.