Mexico

[Terry Hull]

Dan- If your are looking for more of the US style retirement abroad, you might consider San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. It has a large US expat community, and although I haven't been there in many years I know the saying that if Santa Fe is too expensive, then San Miguel is the next best thing.

Don- I don't think the solution to getting photo materials in Mexico is as easy as shipping from the states. I think the problem is bigger. For example, one of the better known photogs in Mexico, Enrique Segarra, told me last week he simply cannot get fiber paper. Not via customs, and not by people bringing it to him.

[sanking]

One of the places I like a lot in Mexico is Oaxaca. Located at about 15 degree north latitude and 5500 feet or so elevation the climate is very moderate. Highs are in the mid to upper 70s about eight months of the year, low to mid-80s the other four months. Lows are about 55-65. Humidity is very low most of the year.

And if anyone is interested in trying it out for a month or so between May-October let me know and I will put you in touch with a fried who has a very nice apartment ideally located in the city. She lives in Oaxac half the year there in a rented apartment, then the other half on Gabriola Island in BC in her home, so the apartment is available for rent about half of the year.

Sandy King

[Don Dudenbostel]

Terry:

If fiber paper isn't available and all else fails I will go digital. My commercial studio has been based around digital for the past ten years so it's no real transition. Wet prints on FB are first choice but second is shoot film and scan then do digital printing. Third is pure digital and print digital. I can live with either choice.

Sandy:

We're headed to Merida in July and will be staying with friends but the next trip might be to Oxaca to check it out. We might take you up on your offer.

Dan:

My wife and I have investigated cost of living all the way to medical care in Merida. From our friends that live there they tell us the cost and quality of medical care are fantastic. Physicians still make house calls for $25 and a night in a private hospital is around $35. Private health insurance is a small fraction of what we pay here and many Dr's in Merida are US trained. Merida has state of the are medical facilities and is building a totally new complete high tech medical and diagnostic center. From my findings I wouldn't call t 3rd world. If anything it equals or exceeds the US in care with considerable cost savings. Also I don't think language will be an issue. In Merida there's an English library where expats go and learn Spanish and teach English. Life there will be different but I think it will be very good.

[Dan Fromm]

Terry, Don, thanks very much for the reassurance.

[Ernest Purdum]

Merida is a fascinating city. Getting back to the original question, I would think the most salable photo opportunities in that area would be the unlimited Maya ruins. In Chichen Itza alone you could do like that Japanese phoatographer does with Fuji Yama - never shooting another subject.

I looked seriously at Mexico as a retirement destination. The area below Guadelajara has many expatriate Americans and they have an English language library, an amateur theatre company and other amenities. Google Ajijic. The main thing that kept me from moving down there (aside from inertia) was that as near as I could tell, I would have to make very frequent trips into Guadelajara for grocery shopping. I was also bothered by encountering a local cop with his hand out. It always concerns me that one of these clowns might get really greedy. Too much imagination, I guess.

To me the major interest in Mexico photographically is the colonial cities, my particular favorite being Guanajuato.

[claudiocambon]

As a frequent traveler in Mexico, and a hopeful future resident, I will strike an unfortunately discordant note.

Seen up close, life in many Mexican cities continues as it always has, although with far greater congestion than even 5 years ago given both deruralization and the liberalization of credit, which led to everyone buying a brand-new Nissan Tsuru (a Sentra equivalent), and driving it through the historic downtowns. Nevertheless, it remains beautiful.

From afar, though, on a macroscopic level, Mexico is in deep doodoo, and this could also have repercussions on foreign residents who up to now have felt inured from what ails Mexican nationals. Its three main sources of revenue (oil, tourism, and remittances) are drying up, creaky, and going down respectively. The drug war is spilling out into the general domain. Once confined to the industry itself and its hotspots along the border, it has moved into many new centers, even small towns. The Zetas have set up shop in all sorts of unexpected places, and begun extorting local businesses, kidnapping, shooting, among other things. When public figures and intellectuals accuse each other constantly of being right or wrong about whether Mexico is in the midst of a nascent civil war, you know it's not small change. The chaos factor is reaching the boiling point, and it's not clear what is going to turn it back.

As things stand now, if you're somewhere quiet, without a lot of problems, it feels as it always has. The violence is still confined to hotspots, just that there are more of them: southern Michoacan, rural Zacatecas, Aguascalientes. But that violence is also spreading, and the economic downturn will only exacerbate the instability within Mexico on all fronts, economic and political. In a worst case scenario, Americans and Canadians living along Lake Chapala and in Baja Norte may well become desirable targets. I say that because retiring to Mexico on a full-time basis may see increased risk in the near future. If you can swing living in both places so that you can pull up stakes quickly if you have to, you might consider that for the time being.

Let me reiterate that I know Mexico fairly well, and am not trying to sound off like Chicken Little. I have traveled over hill and dale, and consider myself to have a high tolerance for what is often perceived as dangerous (not that I seek it out). Again, I hope to move there in a year's time. Nevertheless, the current situation should give anyone who wants to live there sufficient pause.

[Terry Hull]

Don- To see the downside of Mexico that Claudio mentioned you might want to get a copy of today's 21 Feb Wall Street Journal. The article discuss the drug problem in detail, although it still remains concentrated in Sinaloa, Nuevo Leon and the border areas, although other areas have also seen drug related violence. I would not hesitate to retire in certain areas of Mexico, but there are risks as Claudio points out. I lived in Mexico for several years, speak Spanish, and am comfortable with the country. If I were to give advice (against my wife's advice) it would be to learn to speak Spanish. Buena suerte.

[claudiocambon]

As a follow-up to my first post, the important thing is to gauge the two levels of issues you face when living in Mexico: the first is the relative services and conveniences you need for everyday living, and the second is the overall feasibility in terms of the current political and economic climate. The first you can kind of control by deciding where to live, but the second is a question of larger, more capricious atmospheric conditions that should be heeded.

For example, another statistic that has emerged in the last days, and that spells bad news for Mexico, is that emigration to the US, both legal and undocumented, feel last year from 1.1 million to 600,000. By all accounts it may fall more this year. Emigration has always been the Mexican government's great safety valve, in the sense that people who have their backs pushed up against the wall economically and politically will either fight back or leave. So, instead of protesting the government's inability, or lack of willpower to participate meaningfully in people's lives in terms of providing services and economic development for the tax revenues they collect, that person comes to the US, and works around this problem, often supporting many others back home in the process. Now that opportunities are fewer here in the US, that becomes another person who instead stays in Mexico not earning enough for his/her family who will add to the overall social malaise. Another factor that raises the political pressure.

There is little trust in the government to find workable solutions to the country's problems, which is part of the reason why Mexicans have had so many bloody revolts. They don't demand accountability, because by and large they don't believe the government has any; instead, they overthrow it. Historically the country has had huge periods of instability, and it is in the middle of one now. As they like to say in Mexico, in 1810, independence, in 1910, the modern revolution, and in 2010....?

Put another way, Americans are, the Civil War aside, pretty docile in terms of how they handle social problems; the Depression, for example, did not spark huge revolts, for all the misery people lived through. Mexico is another matter...

[Don Dudenbostel]

Thanks for all of your help. We're not looking to move immediately but are seriously considering it in the next few years. I don't jump into decisions of this importance without extensive research. This is probably the biggest decision of my life and has to be one that will be good for me and my wife. Over the next couple of years we will be preparing for a move to retirement whether out of the country or just a change within the US. I've lived in the same area for 57 years and need a change. We're even exploring moving to an area in the US where we feel the art community is stronger and then traveling out of the US for a month or more and renting while out of the country. There are distinct advantages to this plan allowing us to live in different areas and experience different cultures. Also if the political climate becomes uncomfortable then we can pull up and come back to the US without potentially losing our investment in our home. I know political climates change and that's been a concern when we've discussed moving to Mexico. It only take one bad political decision on the part of the US to PI$$ off another country. Politics is fragile and I certainly don't want to be caught up in something like that when I'm 80 years old.

Many thanks!

Oh yes, we're learning Spanish.

[Dan Fromm]

Don, there's a law of nature to the effect that a person who learns a language after around the age of 20 can't ever become fluent in it. I b'lieve you're over 20.

BTW, I learned Spanish properly (by total immersion) at the age of 48, have since done field work, lived with families, ..., in Spanish. I can get by but I'm not fluent and it isn't easy. I currently have a large translation project (Spanish to English) and rely heavily on dictionaries; I just can't retain all of the jargon.

This discussion has made me think of Costa Rica and what's happened there. Now that all the girls go to college, there are no inexpensive maids to be had. This greatly annoys an old friend, a Costa Rican woman who's not used to doing her own housecleaning, laundry, or cooking. And this will happen in Mexico too.

Costa Rica has for years (but no longer, I understand) offered foreign pensioners tax incentives to retire there. What's interesting is that most pensionados last around five years and then go home. I've never seen why my wife and I should be different, even though we've got on well with the locals whenever we've been in Latin America.

The problems that Claudio discussed are, in essence, a small civil war between highly organized criminals and a badly organized not particularly effective central government. The US' only contribution to it is continued criminalization of the drug trade. But a discussion US drug policy doesn't belong in this forum.

Cheers,

Dan