by Dr. David, Editor / Publisher

As a writer, if you're not upsetting someone, then you're doing something wrong. A while back, hitting the mark, I got an email from a reader.

I had written about the passive-aggressive attitude of slavery being endemic in Mexican culture, still now, many years after the end of the hacienda system. This, I suggested, was reflected in the dysfunctional bureaucracy; "But when you told me to come back with these two documents, why didn't you tell me to bring the third?"; and also, in a class of "slow, shoddy workmanship."

A reader wrote back: "'Slow and shoddy'? Where have you been?" I could have responded, "In San Miguel for 12 years, and before that visiting Mexico since I was 19." But, in a failed attempt at dialogue, I did write back, "Will you give me 'slow'?"

Cultural stereotyping must be done with a grain of salt. You no doubt live in a nicer house than I do, but just from where I am sitting writing this, I can see a dozen examples where a little more concrete and/or a final pass of the trowel would have made a significant difference.

Perhaps a certain class of worker just doesn't share our obsession with perfection? They just can't understand why anyone would want to put the short, cut piece of wall-to-wall carpeting to the back of the room where it will be hidden below the bed, instead of right up front where one walks in. They lack the category. It just didn't register, even after the home-owner's careful instructions.

I encountered another stereotype last week, this one offered by a Mexican acquaintance, G, who I met on one of my afternoon bicycle rides. My route is the same each day, up Prolongación de Aldama, unto Las Moras, and down through Guadiana, making two ascents of the hill there before retracing my route home. It's good exercise.

I first met G when he was working as maître de at Cent'Anni. They make a good pizza, a pizza which would be better if they took my advice and put the cheese down before the sauce, giving the dough a chance to bake without getting soggy. The farther you get away from New Haven (or a chef who has apprenticed on New Haven's Wooster Street) the less the pizza is actually pizza. I know there are different opinions on the subject, but as with Mecca or Jerusalem, all true pizza-ists pray towards New Haven.

Back in those days I was bartering advertising for food with that restaurant. Walking in with friends and picking up the tab, I felt like a big man. My amiability, jocularity and big tips made me a favorite with the staff, including, at their head, G. But, as it does, time passed; G left his position and I lost my barter.

We met up again, happily reunited some short time after this, when Cava Sautto opened (at the start of Codo) with G as its manager. I'm not a big wine drinker, but when I was dating Veronica, the Chilean to whom I owe whatever fluency I have in Spanish, I was a regular patron there. Even the cheap Chilean white wines are good. Again, those days passed. Again, G and I lost touch.

Then, last week, having just descended Guadiana's hill for the first time on my bici, I turned the corner and saw a few people in the street some distance up ahead. As I approached, shifting gears for the now level ground, I recognized one as the now more silver-haired G. I stopped and we caught up, speaking for 15 minutes while my heart-rate went back to a resting level.

After praising his wife, who was speaking with her friend a few steps away, for her regular job in real estate, by way of apologizing for his unsettled employment, G told me that he is about to open a new restaurant on Homo Bono. Further commenting on his difficulties, he ventured the Mexican stereotype: "When Mexicans see you getting ahead, they want to pull you back. Like when one lobster is climbing up out of the tank, the others pull it back down."

I wished him well and offered to give his new restaurant some free publicity. We said a very long goodbye, ending with him slapping my back, three times quickly, when I was already back in the saddle riding away. But a few days later, while I was compiling my news page, G's lobster metaphor came back to haunt me.

When I was dating Veronica, I would sometimes alter my bicycle route. Instead of turning down into Guadiana I would ride all the way down Las Moras and then up Cinco de Mayo to her house in Manantial. Along that farther part of Las Moras I would admiringly pass a muscle car, a high horsepower machine from the 70s. Sometimes the owner had it running. Sometimes it was parked in a slightly different location. Cosmetically, at least, it needed a lot of work.

Three days after meeting G, compiling my news digest, I came across a news article's headline (translated here): "The strange fire of a classic car in the Guadiana neighborhood." Turning to the article I saw with some small horror that it was that muscle car.

Electric cars, due to their batteries, are known to spring into flames, but auto-combustion (if you'll pardon the pun) is not a phenomenon among gas-guzzlers. This led me to conclude that here was a case of G's stereotype in action. Some jealous neighbor set the car ablaze, just to be mean.

Of course, blaming your failure on others is not exclusively a Mexican fault. These days, victimhood is an ideology particularly popular north of the border as well, where, while the cultural deck may still be stacked, it's a lot less stacked than it used to be. It's human nature, always easier to blame the system than yourself, and just burn the whole thing down.

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