Great post. I fully agree with all your observations, and am doing plenty of my own notes for future writing while here in Mexico. I emigrated out of the US in 2015, to Canada, for all the same reasons and more, and just became a Canadian citizen earlier this year. Of course, some problems are not that different there (opioid epidemic), but the overall education, social and safety and health nets are in a far better place. I’m sort of settled nowadays in a more functionally-neutral (if boring) country to reengage with travelling and being in more humane and adventurous places like MX, and I really think there’s something special about Oaxaca, as I already wrote, and want to keep returning here. Would also like to travel around Chiapas and other places in the future, I think despite a place like Mexico’s problems and annoyances (water!! Noise!!), there is a deep humanity and presence in people and their interactions I think that are largely missing in basically all to most of the developed world at this point, but compared to the extremes of dysfunctions in America it is especially galling—it’s hard to say what the culture or root for most people is at this point beyond consumerism and acquisition of power and status to the degree it’s available, even Mexicans here I’ve talked with who have lived there and profited from it said it’s a much more stressful place to live overall.
Great post. I fully agree with all your observations, and am doing plenty of my own notes for future writing while here in Mexico. I emigrated out of the US in 2015, to Canada, for all the same reasons and more, and just became a Canadian citizen earlier this year. Of course, some problems are not that different there (opioid epidemic), but the overall education, social and safety and health nets are in a far better place. I’m sort of settled nowadays in a more functionally-neutral (if boring) country to reengage with travelling and being in more humane and adventurous places like MX, and I really think there’s something special about Oaxaca, as I already wrote, and want to keep returning here. Would also like to travel around Chiapas and other places in the future, I think despite a place like Mexico’s problems and annoyances (water!! Noise!!), there is a deep humanity and presence in people and their interactions I think that are largely missing in basically all to most of the developed world at this point, but compared to the extremes of dysfunctions in America it is especially galling—it’s hard to say what the culture or root for most people is at this point beyond consumerism and acquisition of power and status to the degree it’s available, even Mexicans here I’ve talked with who have lived there and profited from it said it’s a much more stressful place to live overall.