Mexico - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

by Russell Maddicks

Overview

Culture Smart! Mexico takes you to the heart of Mexican society. It describes how people socialize and meet members of the opposite sex, the dynamics of daily life, the central importance of family, and the annual cycle of Catholic feasts and fiestas. For business travelers there are key sections on the economy and vital insights into the general business culture. The third-largest country in Latin America, Mexico is hugely diverse, having both rural areas where time seems to have stood still and manic urban centers like Mexico City, one of the most densely populated and exciting cities in the world. Famed for its well-preserved archaeological sites, cobblestoned colonial towns, and beautiful beaches, it is a major magnet for tourists. Mexico also has a name as a creative powerhouse in the region, with world-renowned artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, a cinema industry that has been producing award-winning movies since the Golden Age of the 1940s, and a literary scene second to none in Latin America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781857338508
Publisher:	Kuperard
Publication date:	05/01/2017
Series:	Culture Smart! Series
Edition description:	Second Edition, Second edition
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	257,699
Product dimensions:	4.30(w) x 6.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Russell Maddicks is an award-winning BBC-trained journalist, translator, and travel writer. A graduate in Economic and Social History from the University of Hull, England, he has spent the last twenty years traveling, living, and working in Latin America, most recently as a Regional Specialist for BBC Monitoring. He has visited Mexico on many extended trips, always finding some new and unusual facet to explore. He is also the author of Culture Smart! Venezuela, Culture Smart! Ecuador (which won the Gold Prize at the Pearl of the Pacific International Travel Journalism Awards at FITE in 2015), Culture Smart! Cuba, and the Bradt Guide to Venezuela.

Read an Excerpt

Mexico - Culture Smart!

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By Russell Maddicks

Bravo Ltd

Copyright © 2016 Russell Maddicks
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-85733-850-8

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CHAPTER 1

LAND & PEOPLE

GEOGRAPHICAL SNAPSHOT

The smallest of the countries that make up North America and the third-largest Latin American country after Brazil and Argentina, Mexico covers an area of 761,610 square miles (1,972,550 sq. km) — roughly three times the size of the North American state of Texas, or eight times the size of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean to the west, and stretches from the US states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas in the north to the Central American countries of Guatemala in the south and Belize in the southeast.

The country's largest river is the Río Bravo (Rio Grande in the USA), which marks the border with Texas and flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The largest lake is Lago de Chapala, in Jalisco State, home to Mexico's largest US expat community.

The country sits on the Tropic of Cancer and the terrain is extremely diverse, with large expanses of arid scrubland in the northern Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, temperate highlands running down the center of the country, swamps and seasonally flooded plains on the Gulf Coast, underground rivers and cenote wells in the Yucatán Peninsula, and lush rainforest in the southern state of Chiapas.

The central Mexican plateau is home to Mexico City, one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the world with an estimated population of 22 million people. The central highlands are flanked by two impressive mountain ranges — the Sierra Madre Oriental in the east and the Sierra Madre Occidental in the west, which is famous for the jagged valleys of Copper Canyon, Mexico's answer to the Grand Canyon.

In the south, the Eje Volcánico Transversal (Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt) is named for its snow-covered volcanic peaks. The smouldering cone of Popocatépetl is Mexico's second highest mountain at 17,802 feet (5,426 m) and can be clearly seen on smog-free days from Mexico City, some forty-three miles (70 km) to the northwest. The country's most active volcano, it has erupted several times in the last few years.

An Aztec legend that mirrors Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet states that the nearby volcano of Iztaccíhuatl (Nahuatl for "white woman") was a young maiden who fell in love with the warrior Popocatépetl and took her own life when she was falsely told he had perished in battle. The four volcanic cones of Iztaccíhuatl rise to 17,160 feet (5,230 m) and locals say they mark out the silhouette of a sleeping woman. The furious eruptions of Popocatépetl, they explain, are the rage of the brave warrior who lost his only love.

Citlaltépetl, or Pico de Orizaba — a dormant volcano — is the highest mountain in Mexico at 18,490 feet (5,636 m) and the third-highest in North America after Denali (Mount McKinley) in the USA and Mount Logan in Canada.

The Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt is also home to Mexico's rare and endangered oyamel (sacred fir) forests. From October to March these high-peak forests pay host to hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus), which come here on a 2,500-mile migration from Canada to overwinter. Considered one of nature's great spectacles, the monarch migration attracts a large number of naturalists and tourists each year and the oyamel forests in Michoacan State are now protected within the Reserva de la Biosfera Mariposa Monarca (Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve).

Mexico has the most biosphere reserves in Latin America, with forty-one of its unique and fragile ecosystems protected by UNESCO. El Vizcaino in central Baja California is Mexico's largest protected area, covering the whale-calving areas of Ojo de Liebre, Laguna San Ignacio, and parts of the Gulf of California. This is the best place in the world to watch whales and other marine life. The famous submariner Jacques Cousteau called the Gulf of California "the world's aquarium." Thousands of tourists come each year to see gray whales, blue whales, sperm whales, whale sharks, and dolphins during the whale-watching season from mid-December to mid-April.

Down in Quintana Roo State, in the southern Yucatán, the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that covers mangroves, tropical forest, and offshore access to the Mesoamerican Reef, home to a richer diversity of marine life than Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef.

CLIMATE

Temperatures in Mexico can vary considerably, depending on location and elevation, with hot, dry deserts in the north, snow and ice in high mountain valleys, cool climes in the high central plateau, hot and humid rainforest in Chiapas, hot and sticky swamplands on the Gulf Coast, and a warm year-round climate on the coast.

The main seasons are the temporada seca (dry season) from December to April, which is also known as invierno (winter), and the temporada de lluvias (rainy season) from May to November, which is also known as verano (summer). The hottest months are May and June, and the wettest months coincide with the hurricane season from late June to November.

Temperatures in Mexico City vary a few degrees from warm daytime highs of 71.6°F (22°C) in December to 80.6°F (27°C) in June, and night-time lows of 42.8°F (6°C) in December and 53.6°F (12°C) in June.

PEOPLE

Mexico is often described as a mestizo nation, from the Spanish word mestizaje, meaning "mixed ancestry." Some 64 percent of the population are identified as mestizo by researchers, but the country's racial reality is much more nuanced than the statistics suggest, and most people prefer to identify themselves simply as Mexicans. The sixty-two Amerindian indigenous groups recognized by the state make up about 14 percent of the population, for example, but 21 percent of those surveyed for the 2015 census self-identified as indigenous. There are nearly 2 million speakers of Nahuatl, the language of the ancient Aztecs, nearly a million speakers of Yucatec Maya, half a million Zapotec speakers, and the same number of Mixtec speakers.

The recent inclusion of Afro-Mexicans in the census acknowledges for the first time the descendants of Mexico's African slaves, who make up about 1.2 percent of the population, with important communities in Costa Chica, on the coast of Oaxaca, and in towns like Mandinga and Mozambique, near Veracruz.

Mexicans still refer to Arabic people — both Christian and Muslim — as "Turcos" (Turks), a legacy of the period before and after the First World War when many Lebanese Christians came to Mexico from a collapsing Ottoman Empire. Although small in number (some 400,000), the Lebanese are strongly represented in business and the professions. Famous Lebanese Mexicans include the multibillionaire Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, and the Hollywood actress and producer Salma Hayek.

Chinese communities were established in the nineteenth century. There is a large Barrio Chino (Chinatown) in Mexico City. Another, La Chinesca, in Mexicali, boasts the highest concentration of Cantonese-style restaurants in Mexico.

Blue-eyed, blond-haired German and Dutch Mennonites have established small but culturally distinct farming communities in the states of Aguascalientes, Chihuahua, Durango, and Zacatecas. The largest Mennonite group in Latin America is to be found in Ciudad Cuauhtémoc in Chihuahua.

THE STATES OF MEXICO

Mexico is a Federal Republic with thirty-one states and, until recently, a Distrito Federal (Federal District) representing the capital city and seat of government. In 2018, the Distrito Federal, better known by its acronym DF (day-efay), will be officially replaced by Ciudad de México (Mexico City), giving it more of the autonomous powers granted to states. The rebranding process has already started with the city's new abbreviation CDMX widely displayed on hoardings. Taxis are also being repainted pink and white to match the city's new colors. Traditionally referred to as "Chilangos" or "Defeños" (residents of DF), or irreverently as "Defectuosos" (defects), the inhabitants of the capital will also have a new name: "Mexiqueños." This should not be confused with "Mexiquenses" (people from Mexico State) or "Mexicanos."

A BRIEF HISTORY

The epic, turbulent, and remarkable story of Mexico covers such a vast swathe of time that it is only possible to give a brief sketch of the arrival of the first nomadic mammoth-hunters; the rise and fall of the great civilizations of the pre-Columbian era; the conquest of the Aztecs by the Spanish; the fight for independence; foreign military interventions; the loss of territory to the USA; the Revolution; and the building of a modern democracy. For an instant snapshot of Mexico's colorful history there is no better place to start than Diego Rivera's magnificent mural that graces the staircase of the National Palace in Mexico City.

The First Americans

The traditional theory of the peopling of the Americas suggests that bands of hunter-gatherers came across the Bering Strait from Siberia in the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago. However, new dates of stone tools from Florida suggest humans were in the Americas by at least 14,500 years ago, and some archaeologists have suggested dates as far back as 45,000 years ago. The most complete skeleton of an early American so far discovered is a teenage girl that scientists have named Naia. Her well-preserved skull and skeleton date back 12–13,000 years and were found — alongside bones of pleistocene mammals such as saber-tooth cats, giant ground sloths, and cave bears — in an underwater cave system called Hoyo Negro (Black Hole) in the Yucatán Peninsula. Early Americans, also known as Paleo-Indians, hunted giant mammals, such as Columbian mammoths, until these became extinct around 9,000 years ago, through overhunting or climate change. The bones of some fifty mammoths have been excavated around Mexico City.

Following the domestication of corn (Zea mays) from a plant called teosinte about 10,000 years ago, several important civilizations arose in Mesoamerica (Middle America), a cultural area that extends from central Mexico to Nicaragua and Costa Rica in Central America.

Formative Period

The first major group to emerge in Mesoamerica are the Olmec, who between 1,800 and 400 BCE settled in cities or ceremonial centers in San Lorenzo, La Venta, Laguna de los Cerros, and Tres Zapotes on the Gulf Coast. They built earth pyramids to worship their gods, carved large, enigmatic stone heads of their warrior kings, practiced cranial modification to distinguish castes, traded with distant groups in Central America for jadeite and serpentine, and had a religion that incorporated strange "were-jaguars" (half human and half feline). Sometimes described as the Mother Culture of Mesoamerica, the Olmec are also believed to have used a complex calendar based on astronomical observations and to have made blood sacrifices to their gods. Although some glyphic inscriptions survive, there is not enough early Olmec writing to give any deep insights into their beliefs or social structures. Even their name has come to us from the later Aztecs, who called a contemporary people on the Gulf Coast Olmeca (the rubber people). A 3,000-year-old rubber ball excavated at the Olmec site of El Manati, in Veracruz, is evidence that the Olmec played the Mesoamerican ball game, a ceremonial face-off between two teams that had a ritual significance.

Pre-Classic and Classic Period

From about 150 BCE to 150 CE, at the end of the Pre-Classic period, important city-states arose, such as the Zapotec city of Monte Alban in modern-day Oaxaca and Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. The Classic Period from 250 to 900 CE saw the Maya civilization reach its zenith across modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras in city-states run by warrior chieftains such as Palenque, Uxmal, and Chichén Itzá.

Teotihuacán

At its height this imposing city of stone pyramids and ceremonial plazas was home to some 200,000 people, but because there are no hieroglyphic inscriptions to fill in the details we know little about those who ruled here. The name comes from the Aztecs who visited it hundreds of years after it had been burned and abandoned. They were so impressed by the monumental scale of the architecture that they called it Teotihuacán, Nahuatl for "Birthplace of the Gods." The Pyramid of the Sun is the biggest pyramid structure in the Americas, and a tunnel found under the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl (the Plumed Serpent) is shedding new light on the religious ceremonies practiced there.

The Maya

Like the city-states of Ancient Greece, the Mayan population centers that flourished in Southern Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala shared a common culture, including a huge pantheon of gods, a complex calendar based on astronomical observations, an advanced mathematical system employing zero, and a sophisticated hieroglyphic writing system. Warrior kings ruled these city-states, and their stone monuments list royal dynasties, wars of conquest, and human sacrifice. Brightly colored murals in the Mayan city of Bonampak, in Chiapas, show ritual bloodletting and the sacrifice of captive lords. Dating to 790 CE, they mark the beginning of the end, as climate change, poor harvests, and unsustainable populations caused the main Mayan city-states to collapse.

The Post-Classic Period

One group that established itself at present-day Tula was the militaristic Toltecs, whose pyramids feature standing warriors carrying atlatls (spear throwers) and who established a trading empire from about 800 to 1000 CE. As yet unexplained by archaeologists, Toltec influence also appears 800 miles away in the Post-Classic architecture of the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá, including stone statues of seated warriors, called chacmools, and a central temple, El Castillo, dedicated to Kukulkan, the feathered serpent that the Toltecs worshipped as Quetzalcoatl. This Toltec style of building coincides with the brief resurgence of Chichén Itzá and other Mayan cities around 900 CE.

The period also saw the arrival in central Mexico of nomadic Chichimec tribes from the northern deserts. One of those tribes, the Aztecs, would go on to build the most powerful empire ever seen in Mesoamerica.

The Aztecs

Following a prophecy from Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun, fire, and human sacrifice, the Mexica tribe left their ancestral homeland in Aztlán and wandered for many years until they came across an island in Lake Texcoco and found the sign they had been seeking: an eagle perched on a cactus devouring a snake. On that spot, in 1325, they built the city of Tenochtitlán. That's the legend, at least, and the image of the eagle is enshrined in Mexico's flag.

The real story of the Mexica is of a vassal tribe to more powerful neighbors, who, over a century of fighting for others, grew powerful enough to take control of the city-states around Lake Texcoco and build their own empire. At its height, just before the Sanish conquest, this vast trading empire extended down to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The basis of Aztec religion was sacrifice, either by ritual bloodletting or by full-on human heart extraction, because they believed that the gods of the sun, Huitzilopochtli, and rain, Tlaloc, had to be nourished with blood. War became a ritual enterprise, and death, blood, and sacrifice were exalted in elegant Aztec poems. Warriors dressed as eagles and jaguars fought so-called "flowery wars" with neighboring states where the object was not to kill enemies on the battlefield but to bring back captives whose hearts would be cut out at the top of the Templo Mayor, the vast stone pyramid at the heart of Tenochtitlán.

It is easy to focus on the bloodletting that left the steps of the great pyramid sticky with gore, but the Aztec city was also a marvel of organization, home to 200,000 citizens, who were fed by an ingenious system of floating gardens called chinampas that can still be appreciated in the Mexico City suburb of Xochimilco.

The hierarchy of the Aztec Empire started at the top with the emperor and the royal family. Then came the priests and the warrior generals. The pochteca (traders) formed a middle class, then there were craftsmen and the rest of the population, who received food and goods for working in agriculture and construction. There was no money economy: trade was carried out through barter, and goods came to Tenochtitlán as tribute from conquered states, who were able to keep their own leaders.

The Spanish Conquest

The conquest of the mighty Aztec Empire by a group of six hundred Spanish conquistadors is one of the key events in world history: a collision of the Old World with a New World in which the Europeans were victorious and an advanced American civilization was stopped in its tracks. Like the conquest of the Incas in Peru, the conquest of the Aztecs hinges to some extent on the more efficient arms of the Spanish, who brought steel, horses, and cannons to the battlefield. But it was aided by the Old World diseases of smallpox and influenza that swept before the invaders, decimating local populations and sapping their ability to defend themselves. The Spanish policy of seizing the emperor was crucial at the beginning of both campaigns. In the long run it was the key alliances with disaffected tribes, providing thousands more fighters, that allowed a small band of soldiers to conquer a vast territory, although the full conquest of present-day Mexico took 150 years to complete.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Mexico - Culture Smart! by Russell Maddicks. Copyright © 2016 Russell Maddicks. Excerpted by permission of Bravo Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Map of Mexico,
Introduction,
Key Facts,
Chapter 1: LAND AND PEOPLE,
Chapter 2: VALUES AND ATTITUDES,
Chapter 3: CUSTOMS AND TRADITIONS,
Chapter 4: MAKING FRIENDS,
Chapter 5: THE MEXICANS AT HOME,
Chapter 6: TIME OUT,
Chapter 7: TRAVEL, HEALTH, AND SAFETY,
Chapter 8: BUSINESS BRIEFING,
Chapter 9: COMMUNICATING,
Further Reading,
Acknowledgments,