#58 / 2005 Tour 3: Life in Mexico

FAMILY LIFE

#58


Term: Fonda - a small family-owned stall set up in the outdoor or indoor markets where independent kitchens serve up beans, rice, meat, and seafood.

Depending on the size of the town, they are often lined up one after another filling up the length of a street

I haven't had a single bad experience here; the only scary people I've seen are some slovenly American tourists who might be on the prowl for something distasteful. I'm sure like everyplace else everything is to be had here for a certain price but it doesn't come up and slap you in the face with sex shops, strip shows, or aggressive drug dealers.

For the most part the streets are full of family-style amusements and restaurants. The Mexican families are very close and they all work together. There are obviously no child labor laws here. The super mercados like Krogers back home are full of twelve-year-olds sacking your groceries.

Small boys barely old enough for elementary school work the seashore helping beach the dinghies as they arrive from the yachts out in the bay. They expect a peso apiece to grab a tow rope (called the "painter") and help pull the dinghy up on the sand. Elementary school girls sell tiny little boxes of Chicklets and bubble gum for a peso. The rate is less than eleven pesos to a dollar right now.

The streets are full of young women hawking their colorful handmade necklaces of coral, crystals, shells, or colorful beads. Mom and dad are back at the fonda in the marketplace or palapa out on the beach serving up tortillas and fresh juice. The teenagers might show up in dance groups of three or four couples in places like Rick's Bar performing traditional dances, working for tips. It's all a very tight-knit affair of family effort for survival.

Back home these kids would be in front of a TV day and night while their parents were out working two jobs to pay for all the play stations and expensive tennis shoes. Here, indeed, the parents do seem to work all the time, mainly because they live where they work, but the whole family is in the enterprise and the genuine smiles and kindness that shows in people's eyes indicate that the stress level is much lower despite all the hard work.