Thrills and spills

I wrote this comment yesterday on the blog of the lovely Laura:

It's a very ponderable question - danger and excitement vs safety and security. I love that Mexico is - to me - always a little bit unpredictable and crazy, that people don't worry so much about risks and making everything safe and sanitised, that the streets are full of colour and noise and music, that people - on average - seem to throw themselves more wholeheartedly into living (even though they can also be very conservative, very cautious). On the other hand - for all the great sense of community and much greater love of children here - I would have serious concerns about bringing up children in a place where the police are not to be trusted, where random crime feels so much more likely, and likely to go unpunished, where rules on the environment, on food safety, road safety, etc are so much weaker and in any case barely enforced, where money is power and power is routinely abused. It is not a comfortable place... and yet it is exciting, alive, exhilarating. The question is, can you have one without the other? I sort of suspect not, which is sad.

Ideally I would polish this up into a longer and more thought-out post, but knowing me I wouldn't get round to it. Meanwhile, this sums up something that is often on one's mind here, one way or another.

A little chaos, danger, unpredictability are fine things to be able to enjoy as an adventuring outsider, but not for the people who have to live with corruption, unfairness, lack of redress, pointless risk. Of course I wouldn't argue that all of the vibracy of Mexican culture is tied up in this or somehow depends on it. But there is so much here that is relaxed and disorganised and chaotic and spontaneous and fun - music, street vendors, celebrations, pilgrimages, parades - that just wouldn't be allowed in Britain, they'd be regulated out of existance. You can't have family-run stalls springing up overnight to sell every kind of sweet and savoury treat on high days and holidays when there are strict laws on food hygiene and not clogging up the streets and reporting your taxable income and who can sell what where. You can't have trucks packed with excited pilgrims, or rattletrap buses decorated with crucifixes and vases of crysanthemums and Virgins and miscellaneous stickers, or you and seven friends squeezed into one car on the way home from a club, if road safety is regulated and taken seriously.

I don't have a conclusion, I don't know how things can be balanced for the best, but I do know that I am in a privileged position to be able to enjoy this crazy place, largely without having to struggle with all the things that make life difficult for ordinary people here. And a wonderful, crazy place it is.