expatslacker: life outside those United States: May 2006

things you miss most

drinking water from the tap, t.v. log in a language i can read

This is a picture of the school library. The statue in front is of Benito Juarez, a liberal Zapotec from Oaxaca whom many Mexicans regard as the greatest President. Just behind the library you can barely see the Apartment complex in which I live.

Ixtepec

I, the expatslacker, live in Ixtepec, in the region of the Isthmus, in the state of Oaxaca, in Mexico. It is a small city, population around 25,000 people. There is not much to do here, the local young people call is tristepec. The word triste means sad in Spanish, it is not so much sad as boring. The closest nearby big city is Juchitan with around 80,000 people and it is where I go about once a month to do some real shopping.
It is located at the 16th latitude, so it is pretty far south. Even though it is located nearby the pacific the area is pretty arid. The number of days that it is hot: 364. The number of days it is not hot but still pretty damn warm: 1. The only truly unbearable time is during the rainy season in the spring, it is not so rainy as it is humid. The rest of the year the dry heat is not so oppressive if you are out of the sun.
Before I moved to Ixtepec I lived in Shanghai for 7 years. The contrasts between a sleepy backwater Mexican town and one of the most dynamic cities on earth, of course, could not be more extreme. So why did I move here? I suppose I got the 7 year itch, except not in marriage but in lifestyle. You can never quite get away from people in Shanghai, you literally have to travel half the day to get to a place where there are not as many people, and even then there is a sense of crowdedness. Even the forests in the state park on Chongming island seem somehow artificial. It so happened one day I recieved an email from this university inviting me to apply. My resume is online so it is not uncommon to receive some inquiries but most were from within China. Mexico offered something truly new and unique. A chance to be closer to the states, a different culture but one a little more accessible, another language to conquer (more on that later), and what seems to be a safe place to raise my sons.
The school I work at is the University of the Isthmus, here is its web page. http://www.unistmo.edu.mx/ixte.htm
There are actually 2 sister universities, one in Ixtepec and one in Tehuantepec. It is a fairly small state university. Even though the web page is in Spanish I recommend taking a virtual tour of the school.
The people of this region are primarily a mixture of Zapotec, who were the original inhabitants, with many having some Spanish lineage, and people of other regions of Mexico. The languages spoken are Spanish and Zapoteca. Interestingly, Zapoteca is a tonal language like Chinese. I fled China to get away from my linguistic difficulties based on that fact and here I find the same thing. Luckily, everyone speaks Spanish so I do not need to learn Zapoteca. Of course, I need to learn Spanish, but as I mentioned before that will be covered in a seperate post.

On immigration

I live in Southern Mexico so it is with great interest that I follow the issue of illegal immigration. The town of Ixtepec has a train station and it is common to find central Americans literally hanging off the northbound trains on their way to way to America. During the trains layover the migrants catch some sleep in the fields along the sides of the tracks, or eat a simple meal of beans and rice. Although I might consider myself poor, compared to them I live a life of luxury. To see them is both humbling and heartbreaking, as such I can not view these people as criminals. Yet I also readily acknowledge a country needs to maintain its borders and set its own immigration policy.
Generally, I do support the Senate bill that was recently passed, I seriously doubt how it will stem the flow of immigration though. It seems to me that people who were not deterred by the daunting trip from Central America will be deterred by a ten foot fence. There is a saying, to overcome a ten foot fence build an eleven foot ladder. Also, I am reminded that if East Germans were willing to brave bullets and minefields in order to live a better life, how much less successful will our efforts be at border enforcement because, and thank God, no one is proposing shooting the illegal immigrants. So it seems to me one the solutions is to address the causes of the immigration. The Central American countries and, to a lesser extent, Mexico need fundamental economic reform. The United States can accomplish this by offering aid or other inducements predicated on the enactments of these reforms.
One such inducement could be to give preferential immigration treatment to the citizens of Central America and Mexico. America does offer preferential treatment to Cubans, they only need to set foot on American soil. Likewise, if a Mexican, or Dominican, can throw a hundred mile an hour fastball and bat over 300 a visa would be quickly forthcoming, but to obtain a visa in order to clean the bathrooms at a baseball stadium for that selfsame person is very difficult to obtain.
I understand how an African, or a Latvian for that matter, might find it unfair but this is acknowledging the simple fact of geography.
Another inducement is education. Mexico is the 12th largest economy in the world and has the 12 largest population, but according to some statistics I have read it is ranked 56th in education. An expanded Peace corps presence or inducements for American teachers to live and work for a year in these countries can be vital because education is a key to prosperity.