A Tale of Two Mexicos

Today we stopped at Costa Maya in the province of Quintana Roo Mexico. Don't bother to look for it on a map, you won't find it. It's port constructed just for the cruise ships. There are about 20 shops, a couple of restaraunts, and a couple of pools.

This was not my first visit to Mexico. I spent every family vacation for I think a decade or so in Sonora, at another town constructed for the Americans: San Carlos, outside Guaymas. It's on the Sea of Cortez. My grandmother and grandfather built a house there.

This was just a bit different: Sonora is desert, Quintana Roo is jungle. But one thing was the same: the staggering incongruity in lifestyles between the locals and visitors.

We drove two hours out to the Kohunlich Mayan ruins. On the way, we passed a number of small settlements. Since the two collections of people closest to Costa Maya number about 400 people, I hesitate to use the word Town. Our guide assured us that people do still live in 12x12 thatch huts. I saw some cinder block construction, but not much. Still, multiple generations of local families live in a space smaller than my state room. I wondered if I was the only one on the bus to consider that juxtoposition.

I'm cruising around on a floating pleasure palace for a week while people in the Caribbean are losing their lives and homes, and the local standard of living in Mexico is...significantly lower than that in the US. I won't even try to consider how many people all the food on board would feed, or how the clothes shelter. Or the wealth house! I'm conflicted about this whole thing. I'm not sure whether I feel lucky or guilty, probabably both.

The fact sheet for Costa Maya informs me that in 1999, 36% of the Tourist income for all of Mexico came from Quintana Roo. I have no idea how many people my grandmother employed in her time in Mexico -- the construction crews on the houses, gardeners, maids, craftsmen, the list goes on.

So I'm another in a line of Gringos coming down to take my pleasure and spend my money in Mexico. I have to wonder what the locals think of me. They probably don't. They're too busy living.

I bought a book today. It's an explination of the Mayan Calendar, and they printed a page for me that is a reconstruction of an existing text, with information about the date of my birth. The cover is stucco, and the page is hand made Banyan paper that took a month of manual labor to make. I paid 25 bucks for the whole package. Since it is a joint project of a couple of schools in Mexico and Miami, and at least part of the funds go to the locals, it seemed a good purchase.

Now I'm off to a 4 course dinner. Later tonight we plan to go sit in the pools under the stars, where they'll be having a midnight buffet. I will enjoy it, but I hope with a fuller understanding of how different my life could be.

Pax.