Talk to a few gringos who’ve been here awhile and you’ll inevitably hear, “Well, it’s Mexico.” New resident gringos spend a lot of time scratching their heads. They may wonder where the fellow is who said he would come today and pour the new cement driveway. They have a hard time understanding why the Costco in Cabo makes them wait in the check-out line for printer ink, and then doesn’t have it in stock. They can’t figure out why the bank is closed at two o’clock in the afternoon on a weekday. Learning which things are done differently here takes time, but it takes even longer to understand why. Sometimes, the why has more to do with culture than logic.

Mexico has a collective culture. This means that Mexicans readily share with others. The philosophy is, “What’s mine is yours.” Mexicans don’t generally expect something in return, but when they need something, they may just take it. This part of the philosophy is, “What’s yours is mine.” In gringo homelands, the tendency is to be more individualistically oriented; “What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours.” When gringos become neighbors or friends of, or even just friendly acquaintances with, a Mexican, they are sometimes shocked and annoyed to discover, for instance, that their limes have all been picked off the ground right from their own backyard. A missing tool, presumed by a gringo to be stolen, may be in the possession of a Mexican neighbor who’s building a storage shed. The neighbor is likely only to feel that it’s very convenient having this gringo as a neighbor, and the gringo may or may not get the tool back. There are gates, walls, locks and bars on windows for a reason here. Mexicans native to the Baja frequently think it’s understood that if a gringo leaves something in sight, they have a natural right to it. After all, you’re in their country and you obviously have more than they do. They’ll deny this is stealing, and at least part of this has to do with their collective culture.

"Pescadero" Oil Painting by Jolyn Wells-Moran, Ph.D.

The collective culture is taken for granted by most Mexicans, just as the individualistic one is by the gringos. Most Mexicans won’t think to explain it to a gringo because they just don’t think about it, just as gringos may not think to explain their notions of ownership. This is often part of culture shock for gringos in Baja Sur.

Tom Vineyard, a real estate associate with Paraiso California in El Pescadero, just moved there in December from Dallas, Texas, and admits to another aspect of culture shock. “I asked my boss about a piece of land we’re handling; like where’s the infrastructure? How can I sell it? What about paved roads and electricity?” Tom laughed. “He says it’s coming, but, who knows when.”

Luckily, there are plenty of Pescadero properties that already have electricity, although rarely do they have paved streets. Tom seems to be getting used to expecting the unexpected in Baja Sur. He says he didn’t know before coming here that some things would be so inexpensive, like renting a house, and some items and services, like large appliances, would cost more than he had imagined. As a business major with many years of business experience, he says the pricing just doesn’t make any sense that he can figure out.

Maybe the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary is correct that culture shock means, “A sense of confusion and uncertainty, sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation.” It doesn’t say how one would ever become adequately prepared beforehand, though.

Being perplexed by a lot of what he has found here has been a trial for Tom. He’s a guy that’s used to understanding his world, and his has definitely changed. He loves getting to know new people, though, and enjoys the simpler lifestyle in Baja Sur. He says meeting new people helps him feel more at home here.

Molly Fox has been living in Cabo for 23 years, but originally hailed from Chicago where she worked in a bank. “Cabo, back then, was a very small town,” she said. When Molly and her husband moved here, she said, “I felt like we were pioneers.” Baja is still often referred to as, “a last frontier.” Thinking of the new life in Baja Sur as an adventure may help with acculturation.

“It’s still hard to adjust to the mañana mode, but there’s not anything wrong with it,” she says.

Mexicans native to Baja Sur are almost invariably later than they say they’ll be. It seems to gringos that the more in a rush they are to get something accomplished, the more their Mexican friends or employees procrastinate. While this may be true—after all, Mexicans are forever saying that gringos are too impatient—there is surely often at least some sabotage involved. What the Mexican will rarely say, because it would be impolite, is that gringos act as if they have a right to get their priorities met, they often don’t feel this way themselves and even in their own country, and they refuse to be what they think would be slave-like with gringos. Having a regular job, with pre-set expectations, a time schedule and a supervisor is not a natural state for Mexicans native to Baja Sur. Ask any local builder or restaurant owner and they’ll usually tell you they like to hire mainland Mexicans, for that very reason.

A friend, who originally came from Mexico City and owns a restaurant in Baja Sur, says he has tried for years to keep a local Mexican employed in his restaurant. “They don’t show up or will work a couple of days and not show. They complain about the work, the hours, come in late and gripe about the pay. I tell them they’ll get pay increases when they’ve worked for me for a couple of months, but I’ve never been able to keep one on that long,” he says

My friend speculates that this is because the people native to Baja have always been able to survive easily by living off the land and sea, that they prize time with family above all else and they would rather spend time socializing with friends than working. When they’ve worked for someone else, it has usually been in a field for a day or a few days at a time. There’s also the fact that every other native family here has some small business they run themselves. When someone in the family does have a business, even selling tacos only on Saturdays in the high season, it’s likely that everyone in the extended family will have turns working and earning in it. In any case, someone in the family will probably give them money food, or other goods in a pinch.

My neighbor, another local business owner and originally from Acapulco, says she thinks that if you weren’t born and raised here, you are seen as an outsider. She has lived here for over 10 years and says she has, “a terrible time” getting anyone local to work for her and her husband. She says that might be, too, because regular jobs have only become available in the past decade or two here and they haven’t recognized that to get the things they now see that so many gringos have brought to the area, one has to work for them. She suggests that there is an attitude here, common among formerly oppressed peoples, that they won’t kowtow to an employer. She shakes her head in frustration, “They just don’t see that the things they see outsiders own can only be purchased if they’ll work a regular job, and yet, they are angry and envious of those possessions.”

It may not be helpful, at least to gringos and other non-natives of Baja Sur living here, that Mexican labor law protects workers far more than employers. A local Mexican has far more rights and becomes a regular employee more easily, than do citizens in most other parts of the world. Generous severance packages, even after a short duration of employment, are mandated in many cases. Holidays are frequent, benefits are common and employers have few avenues of recourse if employees are not performing satisfactorily on the job.

Yet, Jaime Dobies, a US citizen who has lived in El Pescadero for 13 years, has had the opposite experience. He says it has to do with relationships, perhaps not surprising in a region where survival has historically depended on strong human relationships. Dobies owns and operates the El Pescadero Surf Camp, a popular spot for tourist surfers near Playa Los Cerritos. He employs several local native Mexicans gardeners and maintenance people, and says he has never had a problem with an employee because he treats them all like “brothers.” He has learned the language well, gets to know each employee personally and is a flexible employer, but even more importantly, he treats every employee as a member of his family. This includes having them to his home for meals, being generous with what he has, getting to know their relatives, interacting with the utmost respect by always asking, rather than telling, them what tasks need to be done and in what broad timeframe. He doesn’t pay a lot, but he keeps satisfied employees who he also considers friends.

Acculturating to Baja Sur takes time, strong relationship-building skills, patience, and perhaps, above all, that attribute most highly valued by Baja Sur Mexicans, a sense of humor. It also helps if you don’t try to do anything quickly.

Source

Culture Shock

One entry found for culture shock.
Function: noun
: a sense of confusion and uncertainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation

Merriam Webster Online Dictionary
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/culture%20shock