Hola de Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila!

So! What’s the news?
I posted a quick entry after I arrived, and since it’s the last week of
school (writing this on jul31st), maybe it’s time to write more? Kinda hard,
but let me try! At first I wasn’t caring too much for parts of this
experience, like the non-seriousness (aka: greater interest in sex than AT
or spanish) on the part of multiple of my companions, plus this feeling that
México is just like the United States.. not really, but me and one of my
friends Armeda think that it’s definitely not in the model of a
“third-world” nation. She terms it “second-world,” but I think that term
must refer to something else. It’s really weird to see how much Coke
(Coca-Cola, the “Drink of the Death Squads“) people drink here. Additionally eery is considering
that Vicente Fox, el presidente de México was the CEO of Coke! EEK! My
friend Ali talks of “America’s cultural hegemony” (very interesting piece of writing btw, check it!), and that just seems like an extreme example of it, imho.

Anywho, more ramblings below..

Our Spanish teacher (Francisco Javier de la Cabada Huentes) had
described this town as more.. either “traditional” or “conservative,” and I
guess politically they’re supposedly the latter, and there’s definitely
wealth in this town, but! I dunno, I was definitely surprised to see that
the girls here don’t dress radically different (in terms of needing more
clothes) than in the U.S., which is weird.. our sense of style, and
exhibitionism, has transcended this cultural as well. (But maybe I’m just
repeating what I started this entry about..) I definitely had realized that
they’ve majorly got sex on the brain just from watching a tv program, or
even ads, here or there when I was in the U.S., but.. ¡Aye Caramba! We saw
the craziest billboard in Monterrey, too bad I don’t have a picture of it,
but, yeah..
And Alcoholism additionally abounds here.. Francisco said there are
something like 12 AAs (Alcoholicos Anonimos) here?! There’s no NAs
(Narcoticos Anonimos) here, but I met this older dude (señor) named Luis
here, who went to Monterrey for treatment a couple of years back, so it’s at
least good to know that they exist in México.

Additional similarity.. While México is spared some of the violence of other
Central/South American countries (e.g. Columbia that we had been reading
about in Gaviotas this semester), possibly partially because they banned the military from direct government involvement, they do have many other problems.
I once had an Indian (straight from Tamil Nadu!) roommate, who when I
talked to him about legalizing drugs, thought it was a bad idea. I repeated
the oft-cited example of Amsterdam, to which he responded that they’re
probably a much more homogenous culture. As opposed to the U.S., and as
opposed to México. He’s right, unfortunately. This is not to say that
diversity/heterogenity of people is bad, but it does seem to cause problems
that it shouldn’t. Why is that? I think we can all think of reasons why
this is so..

But! That’s a start, and I have so much more to write in other entries on
so many other topics, so, I must go now! Hasta luego, -Ajay