Hey! Slow down. I can't keep up with you. I'm sure glad I didn't have anything else planned for today. <g>
"Mexico: So far from god and soooooo near the US"
I agree that it's a terrible shame to waste that unique position. Mexico has a lot going for it and times are good right now to take advantage if the leaders have the will for it. There is nothing that saddens me more than lost opportunity.
I have a real fondness for Mexico. I spent a semester there in 1963 when I was young and impressionable. [It was so long ago that it was my first plane trip. Flew from La Guardia to the DF on a prop plane. I recall pea fowl at the airport. Wonder if they're still there.] There were four of us students staying with a family on Avenida Astronomos. (It's amazing the detail one remembers.) We hooked up with four local guys so we got to interract with their friends and families and had a lot of fun.
My recollections of Mexico were almost all favorable. The one aspect that was not favorable was a certain coarseness, even a brutish quality to life, at least compared to what I was used to. And this despite our hanging around with very well-to-do Mexicans. The guy I spent time with was a grad student in architecture, raced stock cars, and played big-time futbol, his family had oil wells off California, and his father was ambassador to Argentina, I think. Much more splendid than my mill-town upbringing. His mother had green contact lenses. I had never heard of such a thing. But yet, life seemed brutish. Their wonderful homes were behind walls. Thieves were everywhere. No one stopped for red lights. Couldn't walk past a man on the street without some comment. And I recall my shock at being asked to check packages when entering a store. I remember distinctly being glad to be home where things were "civilized." Within about 20 years, of course, all those things had come to the good old USA. Stores in malls were asking customers to check packages. I've never gone into such a store. I'd rather eat a bug.
The pollution in the DF was terrible then. I understand it's unbearable now. I imagine everything is even more brutish. So sad.
From such a perspective... Do you think that the idea of a 51st. state seems far fetched ?
I would consider far fetched an extreme understatement. It might work, but it couldn't happen. Perhaps decades from now when half the U.S. speaks Spanish.
Mexico is among the world's most corrupt nations, according to watchdog Transparency International.
In the agency's 1999 report, which graded nations from 10 (least corrupt) to 0 (most corrupt), Mexico received a score of 3.4, compared to 7.5 for the United States and 9.2 for Canada.
The U.S. isn't doing so well, either.
Finally, a small bit of news re: Vicente Fox the opposition party (PAN) that may win next month presidential elections. He proposes a new Constitution for the country:
See, things have improved. I recall when I was at the university, there was some kind of election going on. The PRI had nice offices at the university. The communists were quite active around campus with petitions and things. That was my first experience with communists. They were the only opposition to the PRI.
The first punch would be to legalize the use of drugs, (with an accompanying regulation AND taxation of the trade and consumption of it...
I agree. I have been in favor of that approach since long before one could say so in public. Even that will happen before Mexico joins the union. <g>
, I went to Laguna San Ignacio on an "eco-tourism" excursion to visit and touch the whales and its calfs
I've not yet been to Baja California, but I have brochures in my pile of places yet to see. I've never touched a whale, although I've been splashed my many in Nova Scotia and Alaska. I can't recall the name of the place, but at the northern-most tip of Nova Scotia is a ship captain with wooden shoes who can get really close.
I've run out of steam.
Karen
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