Monopoly Money

Picture this. You are in your office and have written a check to cash. You need to have cash because everything is done with cash. You pay the electric bill with cash. You pay the water bill with cash. You buy a ticket on the train in cash. What you get back are bills denominated in 500, 200, 100, 50 and 20. The bills are colored yellow, green, blue, and red. Drive in certain parts of town and you can see entire blocks uniformly painted in different bright colors. Add two dice and a silver colored dog and one could be forgiven for thinking this is all a life size version of Monopoly.

Such is life in Mexico.

A small tub of ice cream is 80 pesos. Two pounds of tortillas are 5 pesos. A 2 liter of Coke is 40 pesos. Minimum wage is 50 pesos a day. A normal lunch out is 200 pesos. A live in maid is 150 pesos a day. The current exchange rate is 11 to 1, so to get dollars divide all those numbers by 11.

So is living in Mexico cheap, expensive, or just confusing.

For me, it has been confusing. It is hard to say what things are “worth”. As an amateur economist, I am used to cost and price being rough approximations of value and worth. My first reaction to this shock has been to devalue money as a signal of value. The seemingly conflicting signals are just too much at odds with my values. As I begin to learn about Mexico, in particular its culture, history of socialism, and focus on pride, I find that they do still act as signals of value and worth. They make sense in their own way. It is just a way that is still difficult for me to understand. This is just another piece of the culture puzzle.

On Death in Mexico

What is culture exactly? Is it language, tradition, the holidays we celebrate or the God we worship? We talk about cultural differences but I tended to minimize them or at least I did before coming to Mexico. I am finding that culture is more than practice or habit. It is deeper. I recently got a good look at how we are different when I was invited to a funeral. There is a saying that you can learn a lot about a people by the way they deal with death.

One of my coworkers lost his father a few weeks ago. The funeral was the next day. I am still not exactly sure why I was invited but I joined my coworkers in leaving the office for the cemetery. The first observation was how this overruled everything else. There were no discussions, no plans. A coworker lost his father, all meetings were off and we were going. We are doing the most important project in the company but no one needed to ask. Family obviously comes before work. A member of the team lost a member of his family and that was obviously more important to all of us.

When we arrived at the viewing, we all stood around the room forming a kind of circle looking at the family. There we stood offering silent support while the family grieved. They sang religious songs, prayed, comforted his widow, cried and started again. For two hours, we stood silently while family and friends assuaged the most raw and painful emotions imaginable. No one spoke about him. This wasn’t about him; this was about comforting his wife and children. After a while a priest came offering a mass and communion. After his words of comfort about the coming kingdom, the coffin was carried out and we silently departed this mourning chamber for the burial.

After a somber procession, we all stood around the grave. No words were spoken. The coffin was carried over and lowered into the ground. Again there were no platitudes, no words on his life or his meaning. I expected this to be the end, with us filing away but no one moved. Then came a line of workers. With the family watching, they sealed him in the ground with concrete slabs. Before the last slab was placed, his daughters threw a little dirt or a rose in the cavity with sobs of “adios papa.” Then the buckets of mortar were brought to seal the slabs. Then another layer of slabs, more mortar. Lastly the gravediggers shoveled the dirt on the grave and huge piles and arrangements of flowers were placed. Telmex, his employer for many years, sent the two largest arrangements each was over 6 ft in diameter. A few led what can only be described as cheers for the deceased. Everyone then filed quietly away. Somber. So very final… He is gone. You saw the body, you felt the grief, you saw the coffin sealed in the ground. It is over.

I can’t help but thinking they have it closer to right.