Nostalgia

A guy on one of the local expat message boards — his wife having recently been carjacked —  is apparently moving back to the United States because:

I want my wife and daughters to live in a place that is like what Mazatlan used to be when I first came here in the eighties.

While not making light of the guy’s real sense of fear or anger or bitterness I doubt there’s a place on planet earth that is “what it was like” thirty years ago. While presumably with less of a tourist footprint, and a hell of a lot less foreign residents, thirty years ago expats were relatively isolated from the slings and arrows of outrage and misfortune.

The 1980s is remembered in Mexican history as la decada perdida (“the lost decade”).  Mexicans, especially the middle- and working-class Mexicans were wiped out financially, social reforms were at a stand-still and the political system ossified.  Life sucked, but that was a great opportunity for foreigners with ready money.   Thirty years ago there weren’t many private automobiles, supermarkets, container ships, cruise ships or condos here… which may be a good thing, but those foreigners selling a  “paradise” south of the U.S. border were selling to people who wanted both to flee change in their own countries of origin and to maintain a lifestyle suitable to more affluent societies (air conditioning, big houses, massive water use, etc.).

Some statistical studies would say violent crime has dropped since the 1980s, but then again, media coverage of Mexico (always crappy and sensationalistic) was even spottier then, and 24-7 news coverage wasn’t the norm.  There was only one television network back then, and violent crime simply wasn’t reported much.

And, while rural Mexico was in trouble in the 1980s,  this was the pre-NAFTA era, when subsistence farmers could at least survive, or at least expect leaders to pretend to give a shit about their concerns… a situation long gone with the “new economic order” or whatever it’s called these days.

Thirty years ago, our … ahem… “unregulated agricultural export market” was pretty much ignored by the media (and everyone else for that matter).  The so-called “War on Drugs” was still a U.S. domestic issue although George Bush the First began calling for military and CIA involvement in 1982 and cocaine was entering the United States through other venues back then.  Even so, the trade was flourishing then, perhaps under “better” rules, but any complaints about the present situation should be directed to the present U.S. and Mexican administrations and not some website for grumpy gringos.

Change happens — where, in 2010, is there anyplace “like it used to be” in 1980?  And, is the past really any better, or were those of us who were around just forgetting we were a lot younger and our lives and concerns were a lot different then?