Mexico is like any other country in the world. Sometimes there's a sun, and other times there's a moon. The rivers are wet, and the mountains are made of rock. If you say good morning out loud, especially between sunrise and 11:59 am, Mexicans will say good morning back. Gravity also works the same. If you hang a naked Mexican from a bridge, the ground will pull the dead body toward the pavement, which is to say, a hanging Mexican won't float away—it'll turn purple and bloat if you leave it there, neck to rope. Acceleration, speed, distance, all these variables work the same. When a Mexican forces another Mexican's hand inside a blender, the blades will rip through flesh and bone as expected. Same thing with sound. When Mexicans throw grenades at each other, they go BOOM! And their body parts fly up in the air just like yours would.
If you're a foreigner, the inhabitants of Mexico will proudly tell you that theirs is a marvelous, magical place. And it is. It's full of magic. Sometimes a Mexican puts another Mexican inside a barrel, fills it with cement, says goodbye, closes it, and nobody finds out who did it. Sometimes, thirty students are buried in a ditch, and nobody finds out who did it. Journalists and candidates with a silly penchant for justice disappear, and nobody knows who did it. A truck carrying over a hundred severed heads is abandoned mid-morning at a supermarket, and nobody knows who did it. Cartel leaders and politicians are caught and sent to prison, and then the sun comes up, and their cells are empty. Sometimes, the police parade some guy as the culprit, and people ask, What did he do? And the police say, Everything. And people ask, Everything, everything? And the police reply, From alpha to omega.
Mexicans are tremendous entrepreneurs. They like to hide each other as a way to fuel the economy. Mexicans with little money hide Mexicans with more money. This is done to promote spending. One person suggests a business transaction over the phone: if you give me money, I'll tell you where I hid your Mexican. Everyone who receives that call wants their loved one back, but only some want to pay. They ask the police to find the hidden Mexican for free only to discover that they've added an intermediary to the deal—and the merchandise goes up in value. After the exchange takes place, the Mexican always reappears. Sometimes, he resurfaces with pieces missing, but other times, he's complete, absent his ability to draw breath. But he reappears—most of the time. Or sometimes. Again, Mexico is a magical place.
Mexicans are famous for being creative. They can fix a broken car with a hanger. But don't ask them to build better cars. More importantly, don't tell them it's the mark of every third-world country to patch broken things. Mexicans are oversensitive, so when they tell each other, “por eso estamos como estamos” (that's why we are the way we are), and “así son las cosas” (that's the way things work here)—only they can say it. A foreigner delivering the same message would incite resentment. Presenting statistics and scientific evidence would worsen the situation since Mexicans are not forward-thinking. This country, despite having plenty of intelligent people, does not specialize in the production of physicists, mathematicians, artists, philosophers, or innovators; it specializes in producing feelings—more specifically, indignation.
Think about the first human who climbed down from a tree, stretched his back, and said, “I'm thinking of starting a journal.” Now, think of all the time between that moment and today. Suns imploded. Galaxies collided with each other. Pluto became a planet, and then Pluto lost its planet status. We figured out the universe is expanding, forcing us to wonder, If the universe equals time and space, what is it expanding into? And why does it bother to exist?
We went through millennia of cultural synergy, trial and error, problem-solving, struggle, discovery, and invention—all incidental because, for the most part, we have created countries like Mexico.
