I’ve lived in Mexico for five years, despite the fact that there’s no reason on Earth that I have to. I present this fact somewhat defensively because, as readers of my blog and this column may discern, I spend a great portion of my waking hours complaining about Mexico and Mexicans. This is often taking as hostility or disdain, but nothing could be farther from the truth. “Why don’t you go back to America?” is a frequent comment I get, usually offered as a suggestion rather than a question. Because I choose not to, dear commenter. I could move to the US with considerably greater ease than you could, but I don’t, because I love your country. If our situations were reversed, could you say the same? Really? You’re so sure?
It’s clear to me that Mexico wishes to be more than an isolated oasis of Mexicanism – it wants to be part of the global community at large. So, at the risk of being tremendously self-serving, the nation ignores the (sometimes harsh) assessment of outsiders at its own peril. The Voice of Mexico exists to provide a (microscopic minority of) foreigners’ perspective on a country we care about deeply. We can’t solve your problems and you’d be fools to let us try, but when it comes to identifying your problems, at least hear us out. We’re not just making fun of you. (Well, sometimes we are.)
Which brings me to a lunch I had with an amiga mexicana a while back. With great excitement, we went to a new Thai restaurant with a panoramic view of the city. Querétaro is not exactly a culinary destination. To put it another way, its Mexican food is pretty mediocre, never mind the cuisine of other ethnicities. Still, even the most ardent lover of Mexican food might have trouble eating it 1,095 meals a year. If someone opens a non-Mexican restaurant, and it gets even the slightest bit of positive buzz, they can count on at least one meal’s-worth of my money, even though my expectations are lower than a root cellar. My vecina shared my sense of adventure on this one.
The restaurant was new, and was definitely trying to be something different. The minimalist décor was well thought out and tastefully executed. There was a host and two bartenders and a fistful of waiters and busboys, all dressed in identical head-to-toe black. We were able to drink all this in while being escorted to our table, because there were no other diners to distract us. Maybe noon is a little early for lunch. Maybe business sucked. Either way, the place smelled great. We took a table by the window, ordered a couple of drinks, and turned to our favorite topic of conversation: What’s wrong with Mexico? (Note the question mark.)
Like many of my Mexican friends, mi vecina is well-educated, fluent in English and has traveled extensively outside of Mexico. This sets her apart from the majority of her countrymen, but is by no means a rare combination. What I like about people like her (besides the fact that they speak Spanish verrrry clearly) is that they are reliable guides for an outsider in Mexico, but they’re capable too of observing their own country from an outsider’s perspective. If Mexico ever decided to (once again) make a grossly unqualified foreigner emperor, and for some reason picked me, the first thing I’d do is send the entire population away on a national “junior year abroad.” Wholly impractical, I know, but tell me you don’t believe Mexico would be unrecognizable 20 years after everyone gets back.
We’d no sooner started talking when the waiter came over and took our orders. To judge from the menu, the restaurant served Thai food as envisioned by someone who had read a lot about Thai food but perhaps had never eaten it. Our expectations, as I said, were low; we simply were happy to be eating somewhere different. There was something on the menu called pad thai (which is to say, would probably offend anyone with a memory of actual pad thai - yes, I suffer from a severe case of food snobbery brought on by 20 years in New York City; sue me).
It sounded innocuous enough, and was also the restaurants featured dish. My vecina handled the ordering duties, asking the Mexican waiter in her perfectly-articulated native Mexican to give us two identical orders of the restaurant’s signature dish. The waiter nodded, and made his way through the still-empty restaurant, past the half-dozen identically-clad staffers to the kitchen, to submit the first and, thus far, only order of the day (which was, to repeat: two plates of the restaurants signature dish, no special requests, no substitutions).
“I have no idea what the problem is, vecino,” she said as I pressed her once again on why a country with so much potential, so many resources, so many talented, insanely-industrious people, unfailingly commits the sin of, as our high school guidance counselor emphatically put it to me all those years ago, “failing to live up to [its] potential.” She rattled off a few possible excuses, the same ones she rattles off completely sober or after seven glasses of wine, which I will not reproduce here because none of them make any sense and, in any case, they’re wild guesses and she doesn’t believe them any more than I do.
Mexicans like her are a tremendous asset to the nation for their ability to see the country’s flaws. But either they don’t know the root causes of those flaws, or they can’t bring themselves to honestly assess them in front of the gringos. I believe (for what it’s worth) that it’s the former, but regardless, attempts to solve the “what’s wrong with Mexico?” mystery usually end by changing the subject and ordering more cocktails than you were planning on.
“But a place like this, vecino, it give me some hope.” I looked around the empty, unremarkable Thai restaurant and back to her. “They care, you know? And they’re trying to expand the horizons a little bit. Mexico can be very insulated. It’s not that Thai food is going to save the country, but they‘re trying to do something a little bit different, and they’re trying to do it right. That’s something. They could have opened another place serving enchiladas queretanas, and it probably wouldn’t be empty, but they didn’t, did they?”
There’s a real nugget of truth in this. Whatever I think of the ability of Mexicans to make Thai food (and let’s be clear about this: when I actually did go to Thailand many years ago, I found the food inedible – what I consider first-rate Thai food probably offends Thais the way Mex-Thai offends me), their willingness to give it a shot bodes as well for the country’s future as any other metric you can think of.
Soon the waiter, a busboy trailing a few steps behind him, came and delivered a tray to a nearby folding stand and with great ceremony presented us with two magnificently appointed platters, neither of which happened to be what we had ordered. One was chicken, the other beef, both spread on a bed of fried rice and tossed with a medley of vegetables that I can’t recall because I was too busy searching the plate(s) for something resembling pad thai, the signature dish that we ordered in perfect Spanish in a restaurant blissfully free of any distractions that would interfere with the mission of producing two plates of the restaurant’s signature dish. We explained the screw-up to the waiter, who affectless reaction made me think that (a) this happened all the time, and (b) he wasn’t quite sure why we were complaining. Sullenly – or perhaps indifferently - he took the dishes back to the kitchen.
“As I was saying, vecino…”