The Real Mexico vs. Immanuel Kant

Another response to a Lonely Planet “Thorn Tree” posting, this one asking for people’s definition of the “Real Mexico”. One poster didn’t think Mexico City was part of it.




This is a great topic, and I’m using it with my writing classes here in Mexico City. I’ll be interested to see how “Real Mexicans” respond to this question.That is, if my students are “real”. According to one poster, Parisians are not real Frenchmen, nor Romans real Italians. Apparently the 20% of the Mexican population living here are not real Mexicans.What’s real anyway? I was tempted to start discussing Plato and Immanuel Kant, but the moment of madness passed. I once heard an advertising guy say “perception is reality” and that’s good enough. Everyone seems to perceive a different “real” Mexico. Europeans, especially, think Mexico is tropical and Mayan. North Americans tend to see a desert Mexico. For some older “Anglo” Texans, the Juarez whorehouses are the “real Mexico”. I see a culture that’s been dominated by urban people since the Olmecs. My neighbor straps a very real Mexican baby to her back with a very real rebozo. The baby, the rebozo and even the fake Donna Karin top my neighbor wears are the “real Mexico”. Mexico City is my “real Mexico”. Visitors to San Miguel Allende claim that city is the “real Mexico”, but I think it’s the best candidate for a “Mexican Theme Park.” Chiapas (traditionally part of Guatemala) or Oaxaca are the “real Mexico” to still others.In rural Coahuala, I once talked to a couple of teenage boys riding their burros. Are they the “real Mexicans” or does reality end at the video parlor, where the kids were headed? When some traditionalists use Coca-cola in their religious rituals, is it “the real thing”? If I buy Coca-cola at my neighborhood Mercado, is it more real than if I buy it at Oxxo?

“Real México” isn’t the burros, or the coca-cola… it’s the healing service itself, the kid hanging out with his compadres and bringing along his little brother (and having a friendly conversation with a foreigner). It’s the Sunday family dinner whether that means grandma cooks for two days, or the family goes to McDonald’s. Priapos on the Metro, the cynical political jokes, the casual attitude towards life and death (and the gruesome accident photos in provincial newspapers and the baroque crime reports in the “notas rojas”), street dances – traditional Danzon at Parque Morelos and rock-n-roll in a village Zocalo.

The classifieds section of any Mexican newspaper advertises the services of witch-doctors, proctologists, psychiatrists, prostitutes and transvestites. Try fitting that into Kant’s Categories of Understanding! The “Real Mexico” may not make perfect sense to outsiders, but it’s as real as it gets.