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Mexico
enjoys a cultural blend that is
wholly unique: among the fastest
growing industrial powers in the
world, its vast cities boast
modern architecture to rival any
in the world, yet it can still
feel, in places, like a
half-forgotten Spanish colony,
while the all-pervading
influence of native American
culture, five hundred years on
from the Conquest, is
extraordinary.
Each aspect can
be found in isolation, but far
more often, throughout the
Republic, the three co-exist –
indigenous markets, little
changed in form since the
arrival of the Spanish, thrive
alongside elaborate colonial
churches in the shadow of the
skyscrapers of the Mexican
miracle. Occasionally, the
marriage is an uneasy one, but
for the most part it works
unbelievably well. The people of
Mexico reflect it, too; there
are communities of full-blooded
indígenas, and there are
a few – a very few – Mexicans of
pure Spanish descent. The
great majority of the
population, though, is
mestizo, combining both
traditions and, to a greater or
lesser extent, a veneer of urban
sophistication.
Despite
encroaching Americanism, a tide
accelerated by the NAFTA free
trade agreement, and close links
with the rest of the
Spanish-speaking world (an avid
audience for Mexican soap
operas), the country remains
resolutely individual. Its
music, its look, its sound, its
smell rarely leave you in any
doubt about where you are, and
the thought "only in Mexico" –
sometimes in awe, sometimes in
exasperation, most often in
simple bemusement – is rarely
far from a traveller's mind. The
strength of Mexican identity
perhaps hits most clearly if you
travel overland across the
border with the United States:
this is the only place on earth
where a single step will take
you from the "First" world to
the "Third". It's a small step
that really is a giant leap.
You have to be
prepared to adapt to travel in
any country that is still
"developing" and where change
has been so dramatically rapid.
Although the mañana
mentality is largely an
outsiders' myth, Mexico is still
a country where timetables are
not always to be entirely
trusted, where anything that can
break down will break down (when
it's most needed), and where any
attempt to do things in a hurry
is liable to be frustrated. You
simply have to accept the local
temperament – that work may be
necessary to live, but it's not
life's central focus, that minor
annoyances really are minor, and
that there's always something
else to do in the meantime. At
times it can seem that there's
incessant, inescapable noise and
dirt. More deeply disturbing are
the extremes of ostentatious
wealth and absolute poverty,
most poignant in the big cities
where unemployment and austerity
measures imposed by the massive
foreign debt have bitten
hardest. But for the most part,
this is an easy, a fabulously
varied, and an enormously
enjoyable and friendly place in
which to travel.
Physically,
Mexico resembles a vast horn,
curving away south and east from
the US border | 
