el crispito

I do not base this on any formal study, although I'd love to conduct one. I have arrived at this theory solely through our experience here in Mexico, which I grant you is very limited. Furthermore, I do not wish to be misconstrued as saying that Mexicans are rude. Some are, just like there are some rude people in every country. Yet there are certain situations where you are likely to notice Mexicans throwing the idea of a social contract completely out the window, and while not all Mexicans might behave this way, enough do to make it shocking to your average gringo.

I first noticed this while standing in line to ask a question of an employee in a pizza joint. We just wanted to know what time the restaurant closed, and we walked and stood in line at the register, behind two people that were placing orders. As we were standing there, a woman got up from a table and came over to the counter, but she didn't get in line. She stood off to the side, and when the first person in line finished ordering and walked away, she just butt in, in front of the other guy that was waiting to order, and ordered a Coke®. The guy waiting in front of us didn't seem that bothered by it, and after all, she did just order a Coke®.

The guy in front of us starts ordering. At this point, we've been in line for about five minutes. Another woman enters from off the street and again stands off to the side. This time I was a bit suspicious, but I thought maybe she was just going to ask for directions or something. But no, before the guy in front of us received his change, the second woman pushed her way in and started placing an order. Shawn and I just walked out. The woman at the counter taking orders gave us a "sorry!" look as we left, but she wasn't taking any steps to prevent our getting the shaft.

Since that time, I've had the same thing happen in countless other stores. On a rare occasion, the clerk will tell the person butting in to wait while they take care of people in order. At other times, I've had people with lots of items insist that I go ahead of them in line because I have but a soda or newspaper. Once I had a man ask me if we were in line, and then he actually stood behind us when we told him that yes, we were. Yet in most cases, it seems that many Mexicans find the line at a register, paquetería or front desk to be an inconvenience that they have a right to ignore.

People are also very rude on buses. Admittedly, inner-city buses seem to bring out the worst in everyone, everywhere. Yet in Guadalajara you see a lot of passive-aggressive acting out on the city buses. It is as if your ticket is a license to be a bratty child and all the other passengers take on the roles of all authority figures of your youth: parents that wouldn't let you stay up late, teachers that made you stay after class for something you didn't do, neighbors that made you clean up their trees after a friendly toilet paper attack. You can exact a silent and indirect revenge against them by refusing to clear the way for them to board or exit, you can cut them down to size by sitting in the aisle seat and disallowing them to take the empty seat at the window, or you can put those pesky elderly people in their place by not offering your seat to them, all the while watching them pitched to and fro as the bus lurches along.

The bus drivers are equally awful. Last week, riding along with Shawn to his job so that we could meet afterwards for lunch, we saw a blind man get onto the bus. The bus driver would not have let him on had a traffic cop waved him down as he tried to pull away. Once he boarded the bus, as he was digging in his pocket for the fare, the driver sped off, nearly throwing him down to the floor. Luckily he fell into the seat where some riders were sitting, and they pushed him back up. After paying, he struggled to find a seat, and the people sitting in the seats that are supposed to be surrendered to the handicapped and elderly did not budge. Shawn and I got up and offered him our seats, while the people in the handicapped seats were needlessly explaining to us that he was blind. I guess they were just trying to do their part.