Mexican Sociology.
Humor, Reality or Responsability?
We
have all heard many jokes about the defects that we have as Mexicans;
generalizing all the people in our country in a very wrong way.
Internationally we are known as people who live in
extreme poverty, as ignorant, drunk, lazy, thieves, offenders, aggressive, and
insensitive, people who live in a very unsafe context, full of corruption, and
finally, in a place where the abuse of power is part of our lives.
Physically,
it’s well known that we are ugly people.
On the one hand, Mexican men almost always have a moustache, are
potbellied, dark-skinned, and with an explosive personality and no respect to
women. They don’t like to work but they want to earn a lot of money, and they
are always drunk as they go from one party to another.
On the other
hand, women are pretty short, dark-skinned too, and with very few aspirations,
ignorant and always devoted to the home and family, all which helps us to
understand why the male chauvinist is so characteristic.
Most of the time, we find these ideas
disguised as jokes that exaggerate those stereotypes, or in movies or
television series which show representations of our culture that displays a third
world point of view about us. For example, they are always showing us as a
people who travel on very average urban transport, surrounded by chickens,
through unpaved roads.
We can find
this kind of funny, and sometimes we make jokes about ourselves, trying to be
cheeky but is that really the image that we want the world to have about us?
I believe
that it is our responsibility to make things change and to break all of those
stereotypes that countries have about us, and to let them know our positive
side, our solidarity and hard-working side, affectionate and brotherly; that
side of us unknown to the world that is very important for us.
Also, we
should be proud of our people, and of our ingenious ability to solve problems,
because there is nothing that can stop us; we are a very practical people, which
makes us special and unique.
