This was my second trip to the tip of Baja, Calif., Mexico for fishing after a hiatus of almost 6 years, and things have changed.
The fishing wasn’t all that great the last time but my fishing buddy and I each brought back about 30 pounds of filets for our 3 days of effort. This time around we got less than half of that, and there were a lot less of us fishermen out on the water. The boat captains agree, the fishing is progressively getting worse.
Well, what can you expect? The area of ocean being fished is perhaps 20 miles long and 10 miles wide, and it’s been fished heavily for many years. So while this isn’t helping the Baja economy much, it’s not the real problem.
The general economic downturn is hitting the tourism industry of Mexico hard. The last time we went, our very large resort hotel was filled with fishermen. This time around we were the only fishermen staying there for 2 of our 3 days of fishing. That’s pretty dramatic. Worse yet, I never saw more than a dozen or so guests at any given time. The place was almost deserted and it was the same story at all the other resort hotels in San Juan Del Cabo. This tale is repeated all over Baja and in Mexico proper as the tourist industry has virtually collapsed.
Tourism is the major source of income for Baja California and for most of Mexico, and most of those tourists have always been Americans. The tremendous increase in crime in Mexico is directly related to the decrease in their income, coupled with the increasing return of illegals to their own country as jobs for them here dry up.
Now, the funny part of this is that the Mexican people blame us for their sudden return to poverty, because we’re no longer providing them with an easy income. In Baja, the service industry, waiters, cooks, etcetera, are, of all things, the elite income earners, the Upper Middle Class, entirely because of the generosity of Americans in leaving tips. They’re very resentful of our failure to continue to support them for doing almost nothing, and they show it. The second morning of my stay there I woke up dreaming that I was surrounded by humanoid vultures, all with their hands out. You can’t turn around without someone rushing up to help you with the slightest thing and looking at you resentfully if you decline the offer.
Another funny thing is the disparity between the way we accomodate them and the way they don’t accomodate us. All over the West coast states of America, you go in any store and the signs are all in English and Spanish. All over Mexico the signs are all in Spanish, including all the tourist sites that we frequent. Mexicans have a bad attitude toward the hands that feed them.
When we started making everyone entering the US, including Mexicans, fill out a customs form, their president got all pissy and said bluntly that if we were going to do that to them, they were going to do it to us, and they have, in spades. Entering Mexico, you fill out a virtual clone of our form, only with added and repeated sections that seem to have no purpose, and you’d better hang on to the bottom half because if you don’t have it on leaving, you have to fill out another one and pay a $50 fine. They treat us as if we were like them, filling their country with criminals and drugs and millions of illegal invaders and potential terrorists. Then they wonder why we don’t want to go there anymore after they take revenge on us for merely trying to protect our country from another major disaster.
On our departure from Mexico the Mexican customs put our luggage through an xray machine that was turned off and only the conveyor belt on it was running. At least our carry-ons were inspected by our airlines security people before we boarded. All in all, the Mexicans made both our entry and departure as much a pain in the ass as they could get away with, in stark contrast to our previous trip there. How stupid can you get when their whole economy depends on making us feel wanted and welcome?
The hotel, to save money in the face of decreasing guests, decided to shut off the air conditioning in the lobby/main dining room/bar. The temperature stayed around 95 degrees with the humidity at about the same percent. It was unbearable. The only cool place in this entire monster hotel was our room, in which we kept the air conditioning turned on. This place is a Best Western, yet they demanded an additional $4 a day to turn on the very tiny, cheap little refrigerator in the closet, which is insulting as Hell when you’re already paying $250 a day. This isn’t done in the US in any Best Western hotel. Ever.
Mexicans don’t seem to be able to see beyond themselves. Not one whom we talked to about their economy had the slightest understanding of the reasons for its collapse other than it was “Americas fault”, which it is not. They have only themselves to blame.
Mexico has lost me forever. My fishing partner as well. These people are simple, uneducated, greedy and without a trace of foresight. And worst of all from my point of view, they’re running out of fish.
A story I suspect that could be applied to many third world countries. Not been to either myself but have been told very similar tales about Nigeria and Barbados, hands out and faces full or resentment.
It never seems to occur to some of these people that the wealth of the West was gained through centuries of painful development. There is no way we can hand wealth to them even if we wanted to, advanced society is not just about technology but about the attitudes of those in it and they take generations to build.
Sorry to say, it but the likes of Mexico and Somalia are full of losers who are going backwards. As with the welfare dependent layabouts in our own societies who want quick riches but are unprepared for long term effort, misguided aid simply makes it less and less likely that they will ever succeed by their own efforts.
Anyway, I trust you both apologised to all those nice little fish and put them back afterwards.
PS This is good:-
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=43817095
Woohoo! Not just good. That was VERY GOOD!