Comments on: Interview: Biggest Adjustment

By: mexpat

mexpat — Tue, 13 May 2008 14:55:58 +0000

The biggest adjustment I had was more just a change of rolls. Since I’m the only one who speaks Spanish in our house, I now had to set up all the utilities, pay bills, do all the dirty work that involved dealing with people. So adjusting to my husband constantly asking “Did you ask him…?” and me not anticipating what he would have wanted me to ask was the biggest adjustment.

Since then, teaching my husband to be able to go pay bills and stuff has made it much easier.

By: mwshead

mwshead — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:10:24 +0000

@Lynn – It may depend on where you are, but the police and military we encountered in Durango were nice and helpful. Tijuana is right on the border so I’d expect there to be many more problems there.

I don’t think puling out the military in Mexico border towns would make them any safer. It might temporarily reduce the number of people getting murdered by shifting the balance of power toward the mafia, but just letting them run things isn’t really a sustainable solution.

I think a lot of the problem is that Mexico doesn’t seem to have the resources (or perhaps the will) to really do away with the mafia so neither side is going to really win. In the US, a lot of the mafia wasn’t brought down for their biggest crimes–it was tax evasion that did them in. The corruption in Mexico isn’t helping the problem either.

I’d be hesitant to draw conclusions about the country as a whole from the border towns. Even in the US, the border towns can be pretty dangerous, but that doesn’t really tell you anything about the US as a whole. It is like measuring the dangers of living in inner city LA to determine the danger of living in rural Nebraska.

Thanks for your thoughts. It sounds like the Tijuana area is a lot more dangerous than I realized.

By: Lynn DeWeese-Parkinson

Lynn DeWeese-Parkinson — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:24:52 +0000

On military (and police) “protection:” Every shootout in Tijuana (where we have lived for 3.5 years now) has involved police or military on all sides. Nobody is safer, in my opinion, by increased police or militarization (in any country, but certainly not in Tijuana, Mexico). The U.S. is not safer because it is involved in two (or more) wars. Mexico is not safer with more weapons on the street. Crime rates have gone up with the increased militarization. Every time more soldiers arrive, more murders occur.

This is especially frightening along the border where there has been a tremendous increase in military presence on both sides. Recently a young man (Mexican) was shot along the border with Arizona by a U.S. soldier who said he thought he was a goat. ???

Send the military back to their barracks on both sides!