Bus Fares and Tortillas: Small Price Rises, Big Challenges

This past winter, the cost of tortillas rose. About the same time, the cost of riding the city buses in Guadalajara went up.

The price increases were hardly anything you or I would notice. What's a couple more pesos for fresh tortillas now and then?

But I found them a reminder of the income gap between even the poorest of the expats and the working class of Mexico. To save bus fare, people were walking long distances in the city.

Here's an astonishing figure:

Seven out of ten households in Guadalajara live on less than two Mexican minimum wages a day. This works out to about 94 pesos a day, or about $8.60 for TWO minimum wages for a day's work. (Source: a study by the University Students' Federation quoted in the Guadalajara Colony Reporter, January 13-20, 2007, page 3.)

Whether this is exactly true or not, I don't know. But it certainly gives a ballpark figure. Even if it's twice that, it's peanuts to us. Many Mexicans around Lake Chapala do better than this, in large part due to the influx of foreign money, creating jobs in construction and much more.

I never forget that I am among the wealthy of this planet. And I am grateful, and I feel it as a responsibility too.