Americans moving to Mexico: the role of technology

Recently a researcher on Americans moving to Mexico, a woman who is writing a scholarly book on the subject, contacted me with some questions. Here are my answers to her question about the role of technology in this migration:

As you may have already concluded, technology in the form of the internet, telephone services, ATMs, airlines, medical resources, and likely other things, seems to be a very important part of the migration of many Americans and Canadians to Mexico.

In reverse order:

Especially in the larger cities, Mexico has current medical technology, often at a fraction of the price people would pay up north.

The ease and relatively low cost of flying means that grandchildren and other dear ones can be visited (or come down here). It's under an hour from the GDL airport to anywhere on the north shore of Lake Chapala.

ATMs: Travelers checks, long a mainstay of my foreign travel, are a thing of the past. ATMs are the main way foreigners here get cash, and since Mexico is still very much a cash economy, we need more of it than we might NOB.

Phone services: skype, vonage, and cellphones are widely used here. For example, we have a Verizon plan which has since been discontinued, but existing subscribers continue. Our Colorado phone number means it's a local call for people from our community up north to call us. We call all over the US and Mexico for a flat monthly fee; while there is a limit on the number of minutes, we almost never exceed it. This has been extremely important to us in staying in touch with family and friends, as well as occasional business calls. Just a few minutes ago, I called an American friend of mine who lives a 20-minute drive from here, from my US number to hers, even though we both also have Mexican numbers.

Ah, the internet, now that's really the big important one. We and many others do our banking and manage investments with US banks or firms, all online. We stay in touch via email, with lots of photo sharing. We use the web for information, business, and entertainment. If I didn't have a good internet connection, very simply I wouldn't be here, and many other Americans feel that way.

I sometimes think back to a four-month trip my husband and I took through Mexico and Guatemala in 1979 in a Ford van. We received four pieces of mail from the US in Antigua, Guatemala, and maybe two in Mexico. We talked on the phone with family twice. If things were still like that, living in Mexico would not really be a long term option for me!

Discussing Crime with Jocotepec Government Officials

Last night, Kelly and I walked down to the center of San Juan Cosala for a meeting to discuss the numerous thefts that have been going on here. We were told about the the meeting by Gerardo Tolantino, a middle-school teacher (English and computers) who is also active with the sports program for teenagers. He led a fascinating historical tour of San Juan Cosala many months ago... that's how I first met him. He is deeply concerned about the well-being of the young people and the whole community.

He's a neighbor of some foreign friends of ours who recently experienced the most thorough burglary I've heard of. Our friends were away on vacation, and their housesitters out for the day, when three young guys broke into their house and took their time. They went through everything, and got away with a lot of stuff. They even helped themselves to food and made a mess with it. The good news is that neighbors called the police and some of the items have been recovered. But our friends are still very stressed, and uncertain about staying here. This event seems to have been one of the reasons for the meeting.

So at the meeting. Kelly and I sat in a circle with Gerardo, a Mexican couple and an American man from the Raquet Club development where there have been many petty thefts, government officials from San Juan Cosala and Jocotepec, the Chief of Police from Jocotepec, the head of the Fire Department which includes many aspects of public safety, and some other people whose roles I didn't catch. I was impressed with how many civil servants came to this evening meeting. San Juan Cosala is part of the municipality (kind of like a county) of Jocotepec, and the nearby larger town of that name is the county seat, so to speak.

The meeting was conducted in Spanish. I asked them to slow down a couple of times, and generally they did. Both Kelly and I could pretty much follow the drift of the conversation, but not all the nuances by any means. At first the people from the Raquet Club spoke of how much crime there had been and what could the police do about it? The Chief of Police described their situation, how much geographic area they have to cover, how much staff they have.

He and other officials stressed the importance of community members acting in concert with them, particularly by reporting when crimes occur. Various ideas for working together in the future came up. "Neighborhood Watch" and D.A.R.E were mentioned as the types of programs that have great potential, and I think it was said (the limits of my Spanish got in the way again) that there are similar programs in place here, to a degree.

By the end of the meeting, I felt a lot better about the future of San Juan Cosala for ourselves and other expats. Sure, as the Chief of Police had said, they are "not Superman," but I was quite moved by the depth of caring and dedication that he and others exhibited. Vicente Moya, one of the Jocotepec government officials, contributed a great deal to the meeting and to my greater confidence.

We hear a lot of complaints from both foreigners and Mexicans about corruption in government. We don't hear enough about the day-to-day hard work that goes on, largely unnoticed, to make this world a better place. To find out more about the workings of Jocotepec, you can browse their website at http://jocotepec.jalisco.gob.mx. It's in Spanish but you can still find out a lot.

When the meeting ended, people stood around chatting for a while. Kelly and I discovered that the head of the Fire Department had lived in California and speaks English as well as we do. Also we met another American who hadn't been at the meeting, who volunteers with the Police Department.

It had gotten late, and Gerardo asked if we wanted a ride home. I said sure, and he said that he had to go pick up his wife someplace but that the Chief of Police could drop us off. So he did. A classy ending to an encouraging event.

San Juan Cosala Video I Just Made

The other evening, I was playing around with the free Windows Movie Maker, on my Windows XP laptop, and I made a one-minute video about San Juan Cosala, using photos of Kelly's that have been in this blog, along with some music I had the rights to use.

It was fun... maybe the start of a new phase of multimedia for me! You can see it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7TbYGStMG0

The Blanket on the Highway

I just drove home to San Juan Cosala after attending church in Riberas del Pilar. St. Andrew's is a large Anglican -- think Episcopal -- congregation, with many of its members coming from a variety of Christian backgrounds. (I'm mainly Quaker in my Christian background, though I sometimes went to an Episcopal church when I was a child.) The priest at Saint Andrew's turns out to be a Stanford classmate of mine, and his sermons are worth the trip... I've been twice now. I've never enjoyed sermons so much before! (Have I ever even enjoyed a sermon before? Hmm...)

On my way home, I was mulling his comments over, feeling that they were helping me to put in perspective the grief I often feel about our world, the injustices, the suffering, the ecological disasters.

West of Ajijic, traffic slowed down. There had been an accident, long enough ago that police were there and if ambulances had been needed, they were already gone. Only one of the two lanes of this highway was open, and the other lane was coming through. I waited for a couple of minutes, doing a Quakerish kind of prayer, "holding in the Light" the whole situation.

A number of Mexicans were standing by the side of the road, serious in demeanor. I felt that some of them were in prayer too.

When it was the turn of my lane to go through, next to an emergency vehicle I saw a blanket on the highway, with an unmoving body beneath it. (I later found out that a teenage girl had been hit and killed by a truck.)

I felt sad. I also felt grateful that I had just come from St. Andrew's and had my mind more on the larger picture, rather than just coming from grocery shopping or something like that. I couldn't help but think of another death that touched me this week. Gerry, a much-loved resident of Crestone, Colorado, had been taken off life support (as he had previously indicated he wished) after a serious heart attack and stroke. He'd been brought back to his home, where he could see the mountains and his friends could come by, till he peacefully passed on one evening.

I was sorry not to be back in Crestone (my hometown for most of the last decade) for the celebration of his life. But as it happened, on the day of the service for him Kelly and I were celebrating another life down here. A new friend of ours, Bill, had just been declared cancer-free by a PET scan, after having had quite a bout with cancer. He and his wife invited several other couples to have a spontaneous celebratory meal at Pedro's, my favorite restaurant in Ajijic. There was a lot of joy around that table!

So when I got home this morning, Kelly and both dogs greeted me wildly -- the dogs especially. My eyes brimmed a little with how dear they all are. Kelly was cooking up a pancake breakfast and had Beethoven's 9th playing. Life is sweet!

Rottweiler Puppy in the Family

As I've written, in the year and a half that we've lived here, there have been a number of minor and not-so-minor thefts from our yard and our patio de servicio, which is the locked area with open metal gates where our laundry facilities, lawnmower, etc., are kept. We've never had anyone in the house, partly because it's not easy to break into (bars on the windows) and a lot of the thievery is quick and opportunistic -- but quite likely the sight of LarryDog barking and snarling from inside the windows makes the house unappealling.

We had lunch one day last week with a dog loving friend, also originally from Colorado, who lives in the Lake Chapala area too. She commented that in her town here, Riberas del Pilar, there have also been more problems lately with things being taken. Her family has not had anything taken, and she said it's because they have a Doberman and two other large dogs. She made a pretty strong case for large guarding-type dogs.

Well, we have usually had two dogs. It's just been the last couple of years, with travel and all, that we've just had one. We'd already been talking about another dog, and now that we're back from the US and have no travel planned, it's a good time.

So when she emailed me about a 6-month-old Rottweiler puppy who neeeded a new home, Kelly and went to take a look. The rest is history, and I posted pictures of Lola, Kelly, LarryDog and me and that story on my dog training blog:

http://www.training-dogs.com/blog/wp/rottweiler/six-month-rottweiler-2.html

I will add that Lola and I are already very bonded. When I pop into the bathroom, she comes too and settles down companionably at my feet! I've been on a Rottweiler forum and discovered this desire to be your shadow is characteristic of the breed!

Ah, the Rainy Season by Lake Chapala!

We're getting settled back in here, and greatly enjoying all the rains. The rainy season here in San Juan Cosala is in full swing. Kelly recently noticed waterfalls above town, and hiked up to very near them. (He went up the street that goes between the church and the plaza, continuing on trails and on streets in the Raquet Club development.)

Here's one of the waterfalls, up close. You can see how lush and green everything is!



Here's a photo he took while in the Raquet Club, looking across at the south side of Lake Chapala. Is that more weather coming in?



We've heard that it rains more at night here, and lately that's really been true. Very convenient, though we've also had some massive downpours in the daytime too. The curliness of my hair tells me it's been quite humid!