I see you taking my picture!

It seems that San Luis Potosí doesn’t get the full share of foreign tourists that it deserves, so when I walked around the town several forward-looking citizens, clearly wishing to improve that situation, stopped to make sure that my visit was going well. When I first noticed that they may not see many tourists like me, I was in the Museum of Masks and three boys around 13 who were also touring the museum, very shyly tried to take a picture of ME! When I smiled at them to indicate that I knew what they were doing, their leader boldly asked if he could take my picture. Of course, I complied, told them my name and where I’m from, and took their picture with my camera in return. Outside, while following a map of a walking tour of the city, I had a couple of different well-dressed businessmen stop me and ask if I needed help and ensured that I had seen their favorite sites. As we departed, one man really impressed me by saying, “Thank you for choosing to visit Mexico”.
 

Later, while I was sitting on a bench in the plaza, a high school girl with her friend and mother came up and asked to interview me on videotape for a school project. As we were talking about tourism, she suggested one of the things that I had earlier considered myself: that the lack of foreign tourists in the town could be due to lack of advertising to show the rest of the world what Mexico offers. The city has plenty of hotel space (1 to 4 stars), restaurants, incredible 17th - 19th century churches, and a couple of fantastic museums. More than any amount of advertising though, I think that it will simply take decades to wash away the images of danger and corruption that Americans have been taught goes on in Mexico. To combat the corruption, it appears that the government must require all bus, taxi, and hotel prices to be posted. For me, this is re-assuring. Perhaps, I’m not always getting the lowest price that locals may get, but there is a published limit!
I talked to a guy on the bus who (legally) works highway construction in Houston and was on his way back to San Luis Potosí to visit his family for a few days. With what I see to clearly be such a large middle class, I wonder how the whole Mexican system works. Why do we think that Mexico is so poor? Why would people risk their lives to work illegally in the US? If the people in the countryside are so poor, what prevents them from piling into the wealthy cities? Sorry to get a bit philosophical, but no one could look around here and not start asking questions.

A group of teenagers approached me while I was walking in the town center, and asked the natural question of why I would possibly want to visit their boring town. They complained of not enough discotheques in the town and not enough for young people to do – sounds to me like a teenager anywhere in the world! I’m sure I said similar things about Victoria, Texas when I was 17!

I stopped into Aguascalientes for a day, and hated it. To me, it’s just a rushed and crowded big city, although they have run a couple busy streets through tunnels underneath the more popular plazas in order to give more pedestrian space. One of the things that surprised me most here is (am I allowed to say this?) how light-skinned the people are compared to just a two hour bus ride away in San Luis. They still have dark hair and naturally olive-colored skin, but if we were in the US, I’d never imagine they were Hispanic. I learned that they had just finished a huge month-long bull fighting festival, so that may be why they just seemed weary of tourists. While I was there, I finished reading Michener’s Mexico. The book is excellent and combines Mexican history with the story of two competing matadors in the 1960s. After reading of the traditions and skill of the bullfighters (toreros), I was at first disappointed that I had missed the festival. Then after seeing graffiti saying “asasinos” on the bullring wall, I came back to my senses and realized what a horrible antiquated practice this must be. It’s not so much the assassination that bothers me; after all, we assassinate cattle for food all the time. Instead, it’s the torture of the poor animal that I wouldn’t be able to accept.